Australian History
Monday, September 10, 1906. : The first Australian licence plates and drivers licence are issued.
The first petrol-driven car to be manufactured in Australia is believed to have been produced by Harry A Tarrant in 1897. After modifications and improvements, Tarrant produced a second vehicle in 1901, which he named the Tarrant. This was followed by a number of improved designs, including the first fully enclosed body made in Australia, and later models included locally designed and manufactured engines, gearboxes and rear axles. Other vehicles began to be imported from 1900, when a Benz No 1 Ideal arrived in Sydney. Australians gradually embraced the concept of the motor car and the horseless carriage gained in popularity.
With the increased number of automobiles came the need for more rules and controls. In 1888, Karl Benz became the first man, worldwide, to obtain written permission to drive his automobile on public roads after citizens in Mannheim complained about the noise and smell from his vehicle. In 1903, Prussia became the first European state to make a driver’s licence compulsory, and it was soon followed by other European nations.
South Australia was the first Australian state to pass a Motor traffic Regulation Act, doing so in 1904. This was followed by the first driver’s licence in Australia, issued in Adelaide on 10 September 1906. The recipient was Dr William Arthur Hargreaves, a chemist and government analyst, born on 29 October 1866 at Ipswich, Queensland. Hargreaves had moved to South Australia in 1899. Trained as a chemist, Hargreaves had an interest in vehicles and fuel sources, and examined the feasibility of alternative fuel sources during World War I and II, even powering his own automobile on a mixture of molasses and petrol as World War I came to a close.
Licence plates and drivers’ licences were introduced in Victoria and New South Wales in 1910.
World History
Thursday, September 10, 1846. : American inventor Elias Howe patents the sewing machine.
Elias Howe was born in Spencer, Massachusetts on 9 July 1819. After losing his job in a factory, he moved to Boston, where he was employed in a machinist’s shop. This provided him with the opportunity to experiment with inventing a sewing machine. He successfully demonstrated his first sewing machine in 1846, and patented his lockstitch sewing machine on 10 September 1846 in New Hartford, Connecticut.
Howe faced a legal battle after Isaac Singer invented the up-and-down motion mechanism, and Allen Wilson developed a rotary hook shuttle, both filing for patents. After winning one suit, the three inventors pooled their patent rights in the Sewing Machine Combination. It was under this patent that the sewing machine was then successfully marketed.
World History
Friday, September 10, 1869. : American Baptist minister, the Rev. E. Jonathan Scobie, invents the rickshaw in Yokohama.
Rickshaws are a commonly used means of transportation in Asia. Originally, a runner pulled a two-wheeled cart which could seat one or two people. Nowadays, rickshaws are either drawn by bicycle or engine-driven. The word “rickshaw” or “ricksha” comes from the Japanese word ‘jinrikisha’, which means “human-powered vehicle”.
The first rickshaw was believed to have been invented and utilised on 10 September 1869 by an American Baptist minister, the Reverend E Jonathan Scobie, who needed to transport his invalid wife around the streets of Yokohama, Japan. However, there is some dispute as to the identity of the original inventor of the rickshaw. Some sources credit American blacksmith Albert Tolman with inventing the rickshaw around 1848 in Worcester, Massachusetts for a missionary. Still others say the rickshaw was designed by an American Baptist minister in 1888. Japanese sources often credit Izumi Yosuke, Suzuki Tokujiro, and Takayama Kosuke, who are said to have invented rickshaws in 1868, inspired by the horse carriages that had been introduced to the streets of Tokyo shortly beforehand.
World History
Friday, September 10, 1897. : The world’s first conviction for drunk driving occurs in London.
In 1831, Parliament in England passed the London Hackney Carriage Act, which made it a punishable offence for cab drivers to injure anyone or damage property as a result of having imbibed too much drink. The Licensing Act of 1872 extended the range of the previous legislation, making it an offence for anyone to be drunk while in charge of a carriage on the highway.
On 10 September 1897, a citizen by the name of George Smith became the first driver of a horseless carriage to be prosecuted under the new statute. After drinking two or three glasses of beer, Smith drove his electric cab up onto the footpath and ploughed into number 165, Bond Street, in London.
World History
Friday, September 10, 1976. : 176 are killed in a mid-air crash over Yugoslavia.
On 10 September 1976 near Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia), an Inex Adria Air aircraft collided in mid-air with a British Airways Trident, resulting in the deaths of all 176 aboard both planes. The British Airways Trident had been carrying 54 passengers and a crew of nine from London to Istanbul, while the Inex Adria Air DC-9 was heading to the Yugoslav resort of Split to Cologne with a crew of five and 108 Germans on holiday. Ultimately, five air traffic controllers and two supervisors were arrested. Whilst the others were released, Gradimir Tasic, who had been working short-handed that day, was given a seven-year sentence. He was released when fellow workers around the world brought attention to his plight as one of many overworked, over-stressed air traffic controllers.