Born on this day

Thursday, October 30, 1451. :   Christopher Columbus, discoverer of the Americas, is born.

Christopher Columbus is believed to have been born circa 30 October 1451: there is some doubt as to his actual country and region of birth. Columbus was determined to pioneer a western sea route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia. On 3 August 1492 Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, with three small ships, the Santa Marýa, the Pinta, and the Niña. During his journeys, Columbus explored the West Indies, South America, and Central America. He became the first explorer and trader to cross the Atlantic Ocean and sight the land of the Americas, on 12 October 1492, under the flag of Castile, a former kingdom of modern-day Spain. It is most probable that the land he first sighted was Watling Island in the Bahamas.

Columbus returned to Spain laden with gold and new discoveries from his travels, including the previously unknown tobacco plant and the pineapple fruit. The success of his first expedition prompted his commissioning for a second voyage to the New World, and he set out from Cýdiz in September 1493. He explored Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and various smaller Caribbean islands, and further ensuing explorations yielded discoveries such as Venezuela. Through all this, Columbus believed that he was travelling to parts of Asia. He believed Hispaniola was Japan, and that the peaks of Cuba were the Himalayas of India.

Although passionate about converting the world to Christianity, Columbus fell out with the Spanish King and Queen, as he repeatedly suggested slavery as a way to profit from the new colonies. These suggestions were all rejected by the monarchs, who preferred to view the natives as future members of Christendom. Columbus was stripped of his governorship of Hispaniola for mismanagement and his treatment of rebellious settlers and Indians. Thus, although he became wealthy as a result of his explorations, he was not given the rewards he felt he was due. Although it was originally thought Columbus continued to believe that he had found the route to the Asian continent, excerpts from his journals indicate he came to believe he had found a new, hitherto-unknown continent. Columbus died on 20 May 1506.

Born on this day

Saturday, October 30, 1948. :   Australian actor and comedian, Garry McDonald aka Norman Gunston, is born.

Garry McDonald was born on 30 October 1948. One of the most famous characters he created was Norman Gunston, nicknamed “the little Aussie bleeder”, as he always wore patches of tissue paper on his face from where he had supposedly nicked himself shaving. As the satirical TV reporter’s persona he took on, he interviewed a variety of celebrities and media personalities, most of them unsuspecting of his direct and confrontational reporting technique. Norman Gunston was undaunted by the outright rudeness of some personalities: his interview with Keith Moon of ‘The Who’ was famous for his naively direct manner, and refusal to be fazed by Moon’s arrogance.

McDonald also created the character of long-suffering Arthur Beare in the ABC series ‘Mother and Son’, in which Beare’s stubborn and strong-willed mother, Maggie, regularly subjects her son to her selective dementia.

Australian History

Thursday, October 30, 1890. :   Oodnadatta, in far north South Australia, is surveyed and declared a township, ahead of becoming a significant railway terminus.

Oodnadatta is a tiny town in the remote region of far north South Australia. With a 2006 population of just 277, it lies approximately 1,011 km from Adelaide. Close to the edge of the Simpson Desert, its name is derived from the Arrernte word “utnadata”, meaning “blossom of the mulga”.

The first explorer to arrive in the region was John McDouall Stuart, who explored and mapped the area in 1859. The Overland Telegraph line followed in the wake of Stuart’s exploration. Soon after, the railway line from Adelaide was also constructed, with its terminus at Warrina. Oodnadatta was surveyed on 30 October 1890, and on that day it was also declared a Government township. Less than three months later, the railway line was opened from Warrina to Oodnadatta, and Oodnadatta became the terminus of the Great Northern Railway, later The Ghan.

With the development of the railway, Oodnadatta became a busy town in South Australia’s far north, being a government service centre and supply depot for the surrounding pastoral properties. A post office was established in 1891, and an Anglican Sunday School a year later. A General store and Butcher also followed, among other businesses. Until the railway was extended to Alice Springs in 1929, the town was largely supplied from Alice Springs by Afghan camel trains. Oodnadatta’s importance continued through to World War II, when the Australian Defence Forces established facilities to service troop trains and fighter aircraft en route to Darwin.

In 1981, the railway line was moved to the west, and the town became a residential freehold town for indigenous Australians.

World History

Sunday, October 30, 1938. :   Actor Orson Welles creates panic as his radio broadcast of ‘War of the Worlds’ is taken as live action.

Orson Welles was an actor and director of unusual talent. Born in 1915 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, USA, by 1934 he was acting and directing on American radio. In 1938, Welles and the Mercury Theatre began weekly broadcasts of short radio plays based on classic or popular literary works.

The night of 30 October 1938 began as any other peaceful Sunday evening. Welles’s ‘Mercury Theatre on the Air’ had been playing on CBS radio for 17 weeks and, as Halloween loomed in the United States, Welles sought to present something that would fire people’s imagination. At 8:15 pm, there was a report during the broadcast that Martians had landed in New Jersey. Almost instantly, people listening responded to the shocking news, with reports of panic coming in from across the country.

Unknown to the people, Welles and the Mercury Theatre were performing an adaptation of the science fiction novel by H G Wells, “War of the Worlds”, in which Martians invade the Earth. The adaptation involved performing the play so that it sounded like a news broadcast about an invasion from Mars, a technique which heightened the dramatic effect. The program created such panic among some listeners who found it completely convincing, that they failed to hear the short explanations, every forty minutes, assuring the audience it was just a radio play.

The broadcasters of the program, upon hearing of the furore created, quickly reassured the public that the technique used in the program would not be repeated. Orson Welles also expressed his regrets.

World History

Monday, October 30, 1944. :   WWII Holocaust diarist, Anne Frank, is deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Anne Frank was born on 12 June 1929. As persecution of the Jews escalated in WWII, she was forced to go into hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands. She, her family and four other people spent two years in an annex of rooms above her father’s office in Amsterdam. After two years of living in this way, they were betrayed to the Nazis and deported to concentration camps. On 30 October 1944, Anne was deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Bergen-Belsen was in Lower Saxony, southwest of the town of Bergen, near Celle.

At the age of 15, Anne Frank died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen. The date was March 1945, just two months before the end of the war. Anne Frank’s legacy is her diary. It was given to her as a simple autograph/notebook for her thirteenth birthday. In it she recorded not only the personal details of her life, but also her observations of living under Nazi occupation, until the final entry of 1 August 1944.