Born on this day
Friday, October 16, 1863. : Daisy Bates, the Irish-born Australian woman who lived for many years among the Aborigines, is born.
Daisy Bates was born Daisy May O’Dwyer on 16 October 1863, at Caraig Hill, County Tipperary, Ireland. She arrived in Townsville, Queensland, Australia, when she was 21, and shortly after became a governess on Fanning Downs Station. In 1884 she married Edwin Henry Murrant, also known as Breaker Morant, but after he was caught pig-stealing, she insisted he leave. (Breaker Morant later enlisted in the Second Contingent of the South Australian Mounted Rifles.) In 1885, Daisy married Australian stockman and drover John Bates, but continued to travel around Australia, and even returned to England for awhile, leaving behind her husband and child.
In England, Bates worked as a journalist, and became concerned about the stories of cruelty being suffered by Western Australian aborigines. She was commissioned by The Times newspaper to return to Australia and investigate the stories of cruelty. She settled in northwest Australia, at the Beagle Bay Mission near Broome, absorbing Aboriginal culture, language and legends. Here, she compiled a dictionary of several Aboriginal dialects, common words and phrases.
In 1910, Bates was appointed a Travelling Protector with a special commission to conduct inquiries into native conditions and problems, such as employment on stations, guardianship and the morality of native and half-caste women in towns and mining camps. She became a true friend and protector of the Aborigines, using her own money to buy them rations, sacrificing her own lifestyle to improve theirs, whilst preserving their culture and traditions. Bates died on 18 April 1951.
Australian History
Monday, October 16, 1837. : The first group of German migrants arrives in the new colony of South Australia.
In the 1800s, under King Friedrich Wilhelm III, German/Prussian Lutherans suffered religious persecution. Friedrich Wilhelm was an autocratic king who believed he had the right to create his own state church from the two main Protestant churches – the Lutheran church and the smaller Reformed church – in a united Prussian state church. This would effectively remove the right of Lutherans to worship in a way of their choosing. Penalties for non-adherance to the state religion were severe. Many Lutherans immigrated to Australia to escape the persecution.
Later groups of German immigrants were fortunate to be sponsored by wealthy Scottish businessman and chairman of the South Australian Company, George Fife Angas. However, the very first group of German immigrants sailed under difficult conditions aboard a ship that was infested with cockroaches. The ‘Solway’ was a wooden ship built at Monkwearmouth Shore, Sunderland in 1829. It departed from Hamburg, Germany in June 1837 under the command of Captain R Pearson. The journey was particularly rough and at one point, after a bad storm, the passengers retreated below decks for a prayer meeting. It is said that, as the boat rocked violently to and fro, and with the passengers and crew expecting the ship to break apart and sink at any moment, the prayer leader told them to have faith and all would be well. At that point, the storm abated.
The Solway arrived at Kangaroo Island on 16 October 1837. Just two days earlier, one of the passengers, Mrs Kleemann, had died from pneumonia. Her distraught husband begged Captain Pearson to delay burial at sea, and to wait two days to see if land could be sighted, with the proviso that if no land was sighted, the burial would proceed. When the ship berthed at Kingscote on October 16, Mr Kleemann brought ashore his deceased wife for burial on land.
Australian History
Wednesday, October 16, 1867. : James Nash sparks off the gold rush in Gympie, Queensland.
James Nash was born in Wiltshire, England in 1834. He migrated to Australia in 1858, and initially worked as a labourer, who spent his spare time prospecting. He moved to Queensland in 1863, and initially tried prospecting in the Nanango and Calliope districts, without success. He sparked off the Gympie gold rush when he found gold in a gully off the Mary River on 16 October 1867. The goldfield was originally called Nashville, but less than a year later, it was renamed Gympie after nearby Gympie Creek.
Australian History
Wednesday, October 16, 1996. : It is reported that thieves stole a set of fossilised dinosaur footprints from a sacred Aboriginal site.
On 16 October 1996, it was reported that a set of fossilised dinosaur footprints had been stolen from a sacred Aboriginal site in outback Australia. The footprints came from the best preserved trackway of a stegosaur in the world, and were the world’s only known set of fossilised stegosaurus prints. They were also the only evidence that stegosaurs had once populated the Australian continent. The footprints were regarded by Aborigines near Broome, northwestern Australia, to belong to a mythical creature from their “Dream Time”. The theft shocked and outraged Aborigines, as it violated an Aboriginal sacred site on the isolated coastline near Broome.
On 30 December 1998, one of the missing footprints was recovered. Police investigations found that the thieves had attempted to sell the prints on the Asian market, but had been unsuccessful, possibly because of their size and weight. Each of the three toes of the large print measured 15 cm. The 30kg block of rock in which the print was embedded measured 60cm by 40 cm and was 13cm deep. Police did not elaborate on how they had come across the missing fossil.
World History
Wednesday, October 16, 1793. : Marie Antoinette, queen of France and wife of Louis XVI, is beheaded.
Marie Antoinette was born in Vienna on 2 November 1755, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and his wife Empress Maria Theresa. When a new peace treaty was signed between Austria and France, it was hoped that a royal marriage would seal the peace. At age fourteen, Marie Antoinette was chosen to marry the dauphin in France. He became King Louis XVI four years later.
Marie Antoinette embraced the lavish lifestyle with enthusiasm. She had little regard for the poor and struggling peasants, and spent money frivolously. For her attitude, she became the symbol of the people’s hatred for the old regime during the French Revolution. When the French Revolution began, Marie Antionette supported the old regime. When the National Convention established the French Republic in 1792, Marie Antoinette and the king were imprisoned. Antoinette was beheaded on 16 October 1793.
World History
Monday, October 16, 1978. : The first non-Italian Pope for more than 400 years, Pope John Paul II, is elected.
Pope John Paul was elected to the papacy on the third ballot of the 1978 Papal Conclave, but the popular man who came to be known as the “Smiling Pope” died after just 33 days in office. Pope John Paul was succeeded on 16 October 1978, by Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Poland, who took the name of Pope John Paul II in deference to his predecessor. He became the first non-Italian Pope to be elected for over 400 years. At just 58 years old, the new Pope also became the youngest pope to be elected in the twentieth century.
In his later years, Pope John Paul II’s health began to suffer, particularly after he developed Parkinson’s Disease during the 1990s. He died on 2 April 2005. His reign was marked by his untiring ecumenical approach to accommodate other Christian sects as well as to forge a better understanding with the Islamic world, without compromising his own Catholic stance. A major theme of his papacy was also his fight for freedom of religion in the Communist bloc and during his term as Pope, was significant for his contribution to the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe.
World History
Friday, October 16, 1987. : 18 die as England is hit by destructive hurricane winds, dubbed The Great Storm.
On 16 October 1987, England was hit by a night of destructive storms with hurricane-strength winds. Wind speed reached 151 km per hour in London and 177 km per hour in the Channel Islands. 18 people were killed and hundreds more injured, while damage was estimated at £1 billion. The southern coast was the area worst-hit, with 5 killed in Kent and Dover Harbour, and two firemen killed in Dorset as they responded to an emergency. A Sea Link cross channel ferry was blown ashore at Folkestone, and its crew had to be rescued. Around 15 million trees were felled, and entire forests levelled.
Storms had been predicted earlier in the week when a depression was identified as strengthening over the Atlantic Ocean. It was expected that the weather system would track along the English Channel. However, the Meteorological Office could not predict the nature and ferocity of the Great Storm as it cut inland unexpectedly.
Special Days
Monday, October 16, 1758. : Today is National Dictionary Day in the United States.
National Dictionary Day is an unofficial holiday celebrating the birth of lexicographer Noah Webster. Webster, who is regarded as the Father of the American Dictionary, was born on 16 October 1758 in Hartford, Connecticut.
Upon leaving school, Webster hoped to study law, but he was unable to afford to pursue his chosen field. Instead, he turned to teaching. He published his first book, ‘A Grammatical Institute of the English Language’, in 1783. The book was designed to address the shortfall of quality textbooks available to students, and it became the standard English textbook for American students for the next century.
Webster published his first dictionary, ‘A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language’, in 1806. This dictionary defined 37 000 words. The following year, he began compiling a much more detailed dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language. This dictionary, which contained 70 000 words, took over twenty years to complete. In order to appraise the etymology of words and define them accurately, Webster undertook the study of twenty-six languages, including Greek, Latin, Spanish, German, French, Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit and Old English. The new dictionary also featured 12 000 words which had not been included in any previous dictionary, many of which were unique to the Americas, such as ‘skunk’, ‘hickory’, ‘opossum’ and ‘squash’. Deciding that English spelling rules were too complex and that the American language should reflect the country’s independence, Webster changed some spelling rules common to UK English. Words like ‘colour’ or ‘neighbour’ became ‘color’ and ‘neighbor’, while many words ending in ‘re’ such as ‘centre’ were altered to end in ‘er’, as in ‘center’.
National Dictionary Day is a day which highlights the value of learning and using dictionary skills and increasing one’s vocabulary.
Special Days
Tuesday, October 16, 1945. : Today is World Food Day and World Bread Day.
Today is World Food Day. World Food Day is dedicated to finding solutions to the problem of world hunger. It commemorates the anniversary of the establishment of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in 1945. The FAO was created to help eliminate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition; make agriculture, forestry and fisheries more productive and sustainable; reduce rural poverty; enable inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems; and increase the resilience of livelihoods to threats and crises. World Food Day is designed to promote awareness of these issues and possible solutions that could lead to the eventual eradication of world hunger.
The Latin motto of the FAO is ‘Fiat panis’, which is translated as ‘Let there be bread’. Thus, today is also World Bread Day. Coinciding with World Food Day, it was introduced by the International Union of Bakers and Confectioners (UIBC) to celebrate bread as not only one of the world’s oldest prepared foods, but its role as a staple food across most countries of the globe. World Bread Day features breads made from wheat and other cereals, including rye, barley, oats, maize, rice, millet and sorghum. It is suggested that citizens worldwide celebrate World Bread Day by baking or enjoying a loaf of freshly baked bread.