Australian History
Saturday, October 28, 1916. : Australia’s first referendum on conscription fails.
William Morris ‘Billy’ Hughes was Australia’s seventh Prime Minister. Born in London on 25 September 1862, he migrated to Australia in 1884. After many years of wandering from job to job, he established a mixed business which sold, among other things, political pamphlets. As a result, his shop came popular with young reformers, and listening to their discussions piqued Hughes’s interest in politics. In 1894, he won preselection for the seat of Lang, allowing his debut into state parliament.
Although initially opposed to Federation, Hughes saw the advantages Federation offered for his particular areas of interest, those being defence, immigration and industrial relations. He won the federal seat of West Sydney in 1901, and held it until 1916, being an eloquent speaker and shrewd tactician. During the opening years of World War I, Hughes, as attorney-general, was active in his ministry. When Prime minister Andrew Fisher resigned due to ill health in 1915, Hughes was chosen to succeed him.
One of the most controversial of Hughes’s policies was conscription, an issue which not only created a rift in the Labor Party, but divided the young nation as well. On 28 October 1916, the first referendum to introduce compulsory military enlistment was voted on, and narrowly defeated.
Two weeks later, on 13 November, the Labor Party expelled Hughes over his support for conscription. However, just a few days earlier Hughes had formed the Nationalist Party which incorporated both expelled Labor Party members and members of the opposition. Hughes formed a new cabinet and remained as Prime Minister, a position he retained until 1923.
Australian History
Monday, October 28, 1940. : The Advisory War Council is formed in Australia.
The Advisory War Council (AWC) was an Australian Government body established during World War 2 to strengthen Australia’s war effort. The purpose of the Council was to “… consider and advise the Government with respect to such matters relating to the defence of the Commonwealth or the prosecution of the war as are referred to the Council by the Prime Minister and may consider and advise the Government with respect to such other matters so relating as it thinks fit.”
At the outbreak of World War 2, Prime Minister Robert Menzies formed a War Cabinet in September 1939 as the main government body advising on the Australian war effort. The War Cabinet consisted of eight Australian Government ministers chosen by the Prime Minister and was crucial to the war effort. However, an air crash in August 1940 killed three members of the Cabinet: Minister for Air James Fairbairn; Minister for Navy Frederick Stewart; and Minister for Information Henry Gullet. This tragedy was one of several circumstances which considerably weakened the United Australia Party-Country Party coalition leading to the loss of several seats for the Menzies Government in the general election in September 1940.
Menzies approached opposition leader John Curtin to form a national government. Curtin declined but proposed an Australian War Council, made up of members of both the government and the opposition, to help enhance the war and defence efforts. Menzies agreed and the AWC was established under National Security regulations on 28 October 1940. Jurisdiction of both the War Cabinet and the AWC was to cover military strategy, armaments and munitions, aircraft production, transport, and railways. When John Curtin’s Labor Party achieved victory in 1941, it was agreed that the War Cabinet would automatically accept any AWC recommendation supported by the majority of ministers, giving the AWC greater power and authority during the war years.
After the war ended, the Advisory War Council was disbanded, on 30 August 1945.
World History
Thursday, October 28, 1886. : The first ticker-tape parade is held as the Statue of Liberty is dedicated.
The Statue of Liberty stands on Liberty Island, formerly Bedloe’s Island, in New York Harbor. Its full title is “Liberty Enlightening the World”. Gustave Eiffel was the Structural Engineer of the Statue of Liberty, and its Sculptor was Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. The Statue was completed in Paris in June 1884, presented to America by the people of France on 4 July 1884, then dismantled and shipped to US in 1885 as 350 individual pieces in 214 crates. In response, the American community in Paris gave a return gift to the French of a bronze replica of the Statue of Liberty, standing about 11 metres high, and sculpted to a quarter-size scale.
The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on 28 October 1886. Over a million people lined the streets for the dedication. The New York Times reported that as the parade passed by, the office boys “… from a hundred windows began to unreel the spools of tape that record the fateful messages of the ‘ticker.’ In a moment the air was white with curling streamers.” This began the tradition that came to be known as the ticker-tape parade.
World History
Tuesday, October 28, 1919. : The Volstead Act is passed, resulting in Prohibition in the USA.
Prohibition generally refers to the time between 1920 and 1933, during which the Eighteenth Amendment was in place. The Eighteenth Amendment, forbidding the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes”, was passed by Congress and ratified on 16 January 1919. The ensuing Volstead Act, which made provisions for the enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment, was passed on 28 October 1919.
Advocates of Prohibition were disturbed by the other vices, such as gambling and prostitution, which many saloonkeepers introduced in an attempt to increase their profits. The strength of the movement grew after the formation of the Anti-Saloon League in 1893. Prohibition began on 16 January 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect.
World History
Sunday, October 28, 1962. : The Cuban Missile Crisis ends, after bringing the world to the brink of nuclear warfare.
Cuba is an island between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately 150 km south of Florida, in the USA. In 1962, it was controlled by a socialist government under Fidel Castro. Castro had already sought support from the Soviet Union after the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s, during which the country had adopted Marxist ideals. This had put the country in direct conflict with the USA, and Cuba needed a powerful ally.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was seen as the point in the Cold War when the USA and USSR were closest to engaging in nuclear warfare. Reconnaissance photographs taken by a high-altitude U-2 spy plane on 14 October 1962 revealed that Soviet missiles were under construction in Cuba. A tense standoff ensued for two weeks, during which the USA placed a naval quarantine around Cuba to prevent further weapons being conveyed to the island.
It was not until 28 October 1962 that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced that he would dismantle the installations and return the missiles to the Soviet Union, and remove Soviet light bombers from Cuba. This occurred on the condition that the United States would not invade Cuba.
World History
Friday, October 28, 2005. : A Dutch-Mauritian research team discovers an intact layer of dodo bones, allowing for the first modern research into the extinct dodo.
The dodo was a flightless bird believed to be endemic to the island of Mauritius. Standing about a metre tall and weighing around 20kg, the dodo had only small, rudimentary wings which were useless for flight.
The dodo was first sighted by Dutch travellers, who originally referred to it by the name of “Walghvogel”. This translated to “wallow bird” or “loathsome bird” because the early travellers who killed it for food found the meat to be tough, as they cooked it for too long. The dodo’s existence was first recorded by vice-admiral Wybrand van Warwijck in 1598 and, eight years later, was described in more detail by Cornelis Matelief de Jonge.
Once the island of Mauritius was settled, dodo habitat was cleared, while new species were introduced, including dogs and pigs which killed the dodos, cats and rats which were a threat to the chicks, and Crab-eating Macaques, which ate the eggs of the dodo. Controversy surrounds the date the last dodo was sighted, but it was believed to have been between 1662 and 1690.
On 28 October 2005, a research team consisting of Dutch and Mauritian scientists uncovered the first known intact layer of dodo bones, along with botanical matter at a Mauritian sugar cane plantation. The find included the bones of adult birds and chicks, along with part of a beak. It also included the bones of other extinct bird species and some tortoise bones, all together in a mass grave which may possibly have been due to a natural disaster. The discovery opened the way for the first modern research into the dodo bird.