Australian Explorers
Sunday, September 16, 1770. : Captain Cook becomes the first European to note the appearance of the Aurora Australis
Captain Cook, the first European to chart Australia’s eastern coast, was hired in 1766 by the Royal Society to travel to the Pacific Ocean to observe and record the transit of Venus across the Sun in mid-1769. Following this, Cook’s next orders were to search the south Pacific for Terra Australis Incognita, the great southern continent. Cook came across New Zealand, which Abel Tasman had discovered in 1642, and spent some months there, charting the coastline. Nearly a year later, Cook set sail west for New Holland, which was later to become Australia.
Some time after beginning his journey up the eastern coast of the continent, Cook became the first European to note the appearance of the Aurora Australis. On 16 September 1770, Cook described a phenomenon which was similar in some ways to the Aurora Borealis, but different in other ways: they had “a dull reddish light” with other “rays of a brighter coloured light” passing between them, and “entirely without the trembling or vibratory motion” he had seen in the Aurora Borealis.
By this time, Cook was as far north as Timor, and the Aurora Australis is not usually seen at that latitude. However, considerable solar activity in September 1770 is believed to have contributed to the appearance of the phenomenon.
Australian Explorers
Thursday, September 16, 1847. : Explorer Edmund Kennedy returns to his depot to find that Aborigines have ransacked his supplies.
Edmund Kennedy was born on 5 September 1818 on the Island of Guernsey, in the Channel Islands. He arrived in Australia in 1840, and took up the position of Assistant-Surveyor of New South Wales. Kennedy accompanied Major Thomas Mitchell’s 1845-46 expedition to the interior of Queensland, where he gained much experience in exploration.
In 1847, Mitchell appointed Kennedy to lead a second expedition to trace the course of the Barcoo River (originally named the Victoria River) in the hope that it would lead to the Gulf of Carpentaria. The expedition left on 13 March 1847, and followed the river north to Cooper Creek. This then flowed into the desert, proving it was not linked to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Never one to give up, Kennedy continued southwest, and discovered the Thomson River, on 20 August 1847. He returned to his depot on 16 September 1847, planning to continue north to the Gulf. However, he was dismayed to find that Aborigines had dug up the expedition’s carefully buried provisions, and mixed 181kg of flour with clay. This prevented Kennedy from continuing his northward trek, and he was forced to return prematurely to Sydney.
Australian History
Sunday, September 16, 1956. : Australia’s first television broadcast is made by TCN Channel 9 in Sydney.
Although John Logie Baird first demonstrated the television in 1926, it was not until the 1940s that steps were made to bring the medium to Australia. They began with the initial Broadcasting Act of 1948, which prohibited the granting of commercial television licences. In 1950, Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced a gradual introduction of television in Australia, commencing with a launch of an ABC station. Three years later his government amended the 1948 Broadcasting Act to allow for commercial television licences.Test transmissions commenced in Sydney and Melbourne in July 1956. At 7:00pm on 16 September 1956, Australia’s first TV broadcast was made by TCN Channel 9 in Sydney. Bruce Gyngell introduced the broadcast with the words “Good evening, and welcome to television”.
At the time, there were approximately 2,000 television sets in Sydney. The station was owned by Frank Packer, but it was his son Kerry who later saw and developed the potential of television as an informative media source. Packer’s TCN 9 launched approximately two months ahead of its nearest competitor, ABN 2. However, a regular broadcasting service was not provided until January of the following year, by GTV 9. GTV 9 had already been granted permission to use the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne for test transmissions, and officially opened with a regular broadcasting service on 19 January 1957.
Australian History
Tuesday, September 16, 1975. : Papua New Guinea is granted full independence from Australia.
Papua New Guinea is a country in Oceania, positioned to the north of Australia. Consisting of the eastern half of the island of New Guinea, as well as numerous offshore islands, it shares the island with the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua. The country is renowned for being largely unexplored, with ancient tribes still occupying dense jungles in the rugged mountains, while it is also believed that undiscovered flora and fauna species lie in its interior.
The first known European incursions into the island began with the Dutch and Portuguese traders during the sixteenth century. The name ‘Papua New Guinea’ is a result of the country’s unusual administrative history prior to Independence. ‘Papua’ comes from a Malay word, pepuah, used to describe the frizzy Melanesian hair, while ‘New Guinea’ is derived from ‘Nueva Guinea’, the name used by Spanish explorer Yñigo Ortiz de Retez, who coined the term due to the physical similarities he noted in the people to those occupying the Guinea coast of Africa.The northern half of the country fell to German control in 1884, and in 1899 the German imperial government assumed direct control of the territory. At this point, the territory was known as German New Guinea. In 1884, Britain had taken control of the southern half, annexing it completely in 1888. The southern half was known as British New Guinea. After the Papua Act of 1905, the British portion was renamed to Territory of Papua. During World War I, Australian troops began occupying the island to defend the British portion. Once the Treaty of Versailles came into effect following World War I, Australia was permitted to administer German New Guinea, while the British portion came to be regarded as an External Territory of the Australian Commonwealth, though in effect still a British possession. The two territories remained separate and distinct as ‘Papua’ and ‘New Guinea’.
Following the New Guinea Campaign of World War II, the two territories were merged as ‘Papua New Guinea’. Australia continued to administer the country until it was granted full independence on 16 September 1975. Since independence, the two countries have retained close ties.
World History
Wednesday, September 16, 1908. : General Motors Corporation (GM) is founded in the USA.
General Motors Corporation (GM) was founded on 16 September 1908 when William C Durant consolidated several motor car companies, including Buick, Oldsmobile, and Cadillac. In GM’s early years, Durant bought out 30 other companies, including Chevrolet, Delco, the Fisher Body Company, and Frigidaire. By 1929, GM had surpassed Ford to become the leading American passenger-car manufacturer, and amassed manufacturing facilities and branch sales offices in countries around the world as far as Europe, Asia and Australia. By 1955, it was the first company in America to exceed over $1 billion in a single year.
World History
Thursday, September 16, 1982. : Over 1000 Palestinian refugees are massacred by Lebanese Maronite Christians.
Between 1975 and 1990, civil war raged in Lebanon between groups which allied themselves with neighbouring countries. The Lebanese Maronite Christians, led by the Phalangist party and militia, were allied with Syria, then with Israel. Palestinians and Shiites from the south fleeing the war, found refuge in the neighbouring areas of Sabra and Shatila, in the southern outskirts of West Beirut.
On 16 September 1982, Lebanese Maronite Christian militias in then-Israeli-occupied Beirut stormed into the Palestinian refugee camps in Sabra and Shatila. An undetermined number of refugees were killed, but estimates range between 850 and 3,500, with entire families being wiped out. In 1983, an Israeli judicial inquiry report into the massacre condemned the Israeli Government’s role for failing to prevent the bloodshed.