Australian Explorers
Saturday, September 21, 1872. : Warburton departs Adelaide on his journey to explore central Australia from Alice Springs to Perth.
Peter Egerton Warburton was born on 15 August 1813, at Northwich, Cheshire. He joined the navy at the tender age of 12, initially serving as a midshipman on the HMS Windsor Castle. He then served for many years in India before retiring in 1853. He then came to Australia, whereupon he was appointed to command the Police Forces of the Colony of South Australia, an office he held until 1867. It was during this time that he developed his love of exploring.
Warburton undertook numerous smaller expeditions, but his goal was to complete the first crossing of the central Australian continent from east to west. In 1872, he was selected by Sir Thomas Elder, a Member of the Legislative Council to lead an expedition in an attempt to find a route from central Australia to Perth, and to report on what sort of country lay in between. On 21 September 1872, Warburton departed Adelaide with his son Richard, two white men with bush knowledge, two Afghan camel drivers and a black tracker. His purpose was to attempt to find an overland route from Alice Springs to Perth and determine the nature of the country in between. Warburton’s expedition departed Alice Springs on 15 April 1873.
The expedition was particularly hard going. The men endured long periods of extreme heat with little water and survived only by killing the camels for their meat. After finally crossing the Great Sandy Desert, they arrived at the Oakover River, 800 miles north of Perth with Warburton strapped to one of the two remaining camels. Warburton received a grant of £1000 and his party received £500 from the South Australian parliament for the expedition.
Australian History
Sunday, September 21, 1817. : In an official dispatch, Governor Lachlan Macquarie advocates the adoption of the name Australia for the continent, as suggested by Matthew Flinders.
Australia was previously named New Holland by the Dutch sea explorers who landed on the western coast in the early 1600s. James Cook claimed the eastern coast of the continent for England in 1770, naming it New South Wales. After the First Fleet arrived in 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip was given orders to extend the claim further west. The western half of the continent continued to be known as New Holland, and the eastern half was New South Wales.
Matthew Flinders became the first explorer to circumnavigate the entire continent, doing so between 1801 and 1803. After being wrongly imprisoned by the French for seven years, accused of being a spy, Flinders returned to England. In 1810 he wrote an account of his expeditions, ‘A Voyage to Terra Australis’. It was in this account that Flinders proposed the name ‘Terra Australis’ or ‘Australia’ be adopted for the southern continent. There were many supporters of his proposal in England, but wealthy sponsor Sir Joseph Banks did not support his suggestion. Flinders died before the new name of the continent could be decided upon.
It was Governor Lachlan Macquarie who, impressed by Flinders’ arguments, advocated that the name ‘Australia’ be adopted, and began to use this term regularly. In an official dispatch dated 21 September 1817, Macquarie stated:
‘I hope [Australia] will be the Name given to this Country in future, instead of the very erroneous and misapplied name hitherto given to it of “New Holland” which properly speaking only applies to a part of this immense Continent.’
World History
Thursday, September 21, 1522. : The first edition of Martin Luther’s German translation of the New Testament is published.
Martin Luther, born in 1483, was a German theologian and leader of the Reformation. The Reformation was a movement in Western Europe during the 16th century, which aimed at reforming some doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in the establishment of the Protestant churches. Luther himself was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic church for his attacks on the wealth and corruption of the papacy, and his belief that salvation would be granted on the basis of faith alone rather than by works.
In 1521, the same year in which he was excommunicated, Luther was summoned before the Diet of Worms. The Diet was a general assembly of the estates of the Holy Roman Empire that occurred in Worms, Germany, from January to May in 1521. When an edict of the Diet called for Luther’s seizure, his friends took him for safekeeping to Wartburg, the castle of Elector Frederick III of Saxony. It was here that Luther translated the New Testament into German. This was published on 21 September 1522. Luther also began translating the entire Bible, which took him 10 years to complete. Luther’s extensive writing on church matters included the composition of hymns, liturgy, and two catechisms that are basic statements of the Lutheran church
World History
Thursday, September 21, 1741. : A strange substance known as “Angel Hair” falls over Selborne, England.
Angel Hair is a fine substance so named because of its likeness to very fine hair. While there is no conclusive evidence on its formation or origin, it is commonly believed to be fine web strands left by migrating spiders.
On 21 September 1741, a thick fall of Angel Hair occurred over Selborne, England. The phenomenon was documented in “The Natural History of Selbourne (England)” by Gilbert White, where he described it as follows: “A shower of cobwebs falling from very elevated regions and continued without interruption until the end of the day. Most were not single filmy threads floating in the air in all directions, but perfect flakes or rags, between an inch and 5 or 6 long, which fell with a degree of velocity that they were considerably heavier than the atmosphere. On every side the observer looked might he behold a continual succession of fresh flakes falling into his sight, twinkling like stars as they turned their sides towards the sun. How far this wonderful shower extended would be difficult to say, but we know it reached Bradley, Selbourne and Alresford, the three who lie in a sort of triangle, the shortest of whose sides is about 8 miles in extent.”
World History
Tuesday, September 21, 1897. : The famous “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” letter is published.
On 21 September 1897, an eight year old girl named Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the New York “Sun” newspaper, asking if Santa Claus was real, after her friends had told her he was not. One of the newspaper’s editors, Francis Pharcellus Church, answered the letter in such a way that its timeless message has resounded down through the generations, becoming a much-loved Christmas message of hope. The reply was as follows:
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
World History
Monday, September 21, 1964. : Today is Malta’s Independence Day.
Malta is a European sovereign state, made up of three main islands: thus it is an island nation. It is located in Southern Europe, south of Sicily (Italy), in the Mediterranean Sea. Throughout its history, Malta has seen influence from a variety of ancient cultures, including Sicilians, Romans, Phoenicians, Byzantines and Arabs. Christianity came to the island when St Paul was shipwrecked there, as recounted in the Biblical book of Acts, chapters 27-28.
The Order of Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem managed Malta from 1530 until the island was captured by Napoleon in 1798. After Britain assisted the people of Malta to overthrow the French in 1800, the island became a British Dominion, and was formally acquired by Britain in 1814. Malta remained a firm ally of Britain through the twentieth century, and was granted full independence on 21 September 1964. It joined the European Union on 1 May 2004.
World History
Sunday, September 21, 2003. : The mission of the Galileo space probe ends, after it has collected much data on Jupiter.
The Galileo space probe was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis in October 1989. Its mission was to orbit Jupiter and probe its atmosphere. As well as orbiting Jupiter 35 times, it also made numerous orbits of Jupiter’s largest moons, Europa, Callisto, Ganymede, Io and Amalthea. The probe was named the Galileo after the Italian scientist who discovered Jupiter’s major moons in 1610.
After its fourteen-year mission, the Galileo, travelling at 170,000 kilometres an hour, was directed into Jupiter’s atmosphere by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. This was intended to destroy the probe completely. Its complete vaporisation was necessary to prevent the possibility that any residual microscopic organisms carried on the probe from Earth might contaminate one of the moons if it crashed, uncontrolled, into one of the moons as its orbit decayed. Contact with the Galileo was lost just after 3:40 pm on 21 September 2003. The end of the mission was watched solemnly by over 1000 people who had worked on the program since its conception in 1976.