Born on this day
Thursday, September 24, 1936. : Jim Henson, creator of the ‘Muppets’, is born.
Jim Henson was born James Maury Henson on 24 September 1936, in Greenville, Mississippi. His family moved to Maryland when he was a teenager, and it was there that he began creating puppets for a Saturday morning children’s television show. In 1955, he created “Sam and Friends”, a five-minute puppet show for WRC-TV, while attending the University of Maryland, College Park. “Sam and Friends” included an early version of Kermit the Frog, and the success of the segment led to a series of guest appearances on network talk and variety shows. In 1968, the Muppets began appearing on the children’s show “Sesame Street” and from there, their fame grew to eventually include their own television show, and several films.
When Henson died of pneumonia on 16 May 1990, a memorial service for him was watched by millions of viewers around the world. The University of Maryland, College Park, honoured Henson with a permanent tribute on 24 September 2003. A special ceremony dedicated a life-sized statue of Henson conversing with one of his best-known creations, Kermit the Frog, on the college campus.
Australian History
Monday, September 24, 1928. : The Coniston Massacre of Aborigines occurs at a cattle station in the Northern Territory.
The Coniston Massacre was the last known massacre of Australian Aborigines. Occurring at Coniston cattle station, Northern Territory, Australia, it was a revenge killing for the death of dingo hunter Frederick Brooks, who was believed to have been killed by Aborigines in August 1928. Constable William Murray, officer in charge at Barrow Creek, investigated and concluded that the killing had been done by members of the Warlpiri, Anmatyerre and Kaytetye people. There were no witnesses, and apparent inconsistencies in Murray’s report were never questioned.
Murray took matters into his own hand. Over the next few days, up until 30 August, he shot 17 members of the Aboriginal tribes he believed were responsible, and claimed his actions were made in self-defence and that each tribal member he had killed was in possession of some item belonging to Brooks.
In the ensuing weeks, Murray again encountered several groups of Aborigines while investigating another non-fatal attack on a settler named Nugget Morton at Broadmeadows Station. Together with Morton, one other white man and an aboriginal boy, Murray embarked on a campaign of revenge, during which another 14 Aborigines were killed.
Murray was never punished for his actions. On the contrary, the Board of Enquiry members were selected to maximise damage-control. It was believed at the time that Murray’s actions were appropriate for the circumstances. The Central Land Council organised the seventy-fifth anniversary of the massacre, commemorated near Yuendumu on 24 September 2003.
World History
Sunday, September 24, 1493. : Christopher Columbus departs on his second voyage to the “New World”.
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 on 24 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.
World History
Wednesday, September 24, 1664. : The Netherlands surrenders New Amsterdam (New York) to England.
Henry Hudson was the discoverer of the Hudson River, Long Island, and the site of present-day New York. Because Hudson had been hired by the Dutch East India Company to find a quicker trade route to Asia, the Dutch later claimed the area and established a colony, naming it New Amsterdam. Peter Minuit of the Dutch West Indies Company bought the island in 1626 from the Manhattan Indians for $24 worth of merchandise.
New Amsterdam developed into the largest Dutch colonial settlement in North America. During the second Anglo-Dutch War between England and the United Netherlands, the colony was surrendered to the English on 24 September 1664, and renamed New York. When the Dutch retook control briefly in 1673, they renamed it “New Orange”, but ceded it permanently to England after the signing of the Treaty of Westminster in 1674.
World History
Saturday, September 24, 1960. : ‘USS Enterprise’, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is launched.
The USS Enterprise (CVN-65) was the world’s first nuclear aircraft carrier, powered by eight A2W reactors. The ship’s keel was laid in 1958 and it was launched on 24 September 1960, at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia. After being commissioned on 25 November 1961, Enterprise underwent a lengthy series of tests and training exercises. Flight operations commenced in January the following year, when an F8U Crusader became the first airplane to land on board the Enterprise’s giant flight deck.
The name ‘Enterprise’ later came to be synonymous with pioneering vessels, both in real life and in the TV show ‘Star trek’. The ‘Enterprise’ of Star Trek fame was named after the historical maritime vessels. The ‘Enterprise’ was also the name of the prototype space shuttle which preceded ‘Challenger’, ‘Columbia’ and ‘Discovery’.
World History
Tuesday, September 24, 1985. : A Chinese farmer finds an uncut diamond inside a chicken he is preparing for his meal.
Throughout history, unusual objects have often been found inside animals. There is the story of the fish vendor in a Cambridge market who found a rare book inside a fish he was cleaning in June 1626; there is also the case of the Siouz Indian woman who found a gold nugget inside a chicken she was cleaning, in 1985.
In that same year, on 24 September 1985, a Chinese farmer from Hunan was cleaning a chicken he had just killed for his evening meal. Within the chicken’s gizzard, Yungzhong Li found a 1.18 carat uncut diamond. It is uncertain what the diamond’s real value was, as Yungzhong Li was a poor peasant, and keen to sell the diamond for a good amount of money. However, he was given 300 pounds for the diamond, which was three times the amount he would have earned in one year.
Born on this day
Tuesday, September 25, 1764. : Fletcher Christian, the man who led the mutiny on the Bounty against Captain Bligh, is born.
Fletcher Christian was born in Cumberland, England, on 25 September 1764. He went to sea at the age of sixteen, and two years later he sailed aboard HMS Cambridge where he met William Bligh for the first time. Bligh, ten years older, had also started his seagoing career at the age of 16, quickly rising through the officer ranks. Bligh and Christian were very close during their early years together.
The ‘HMS Bounty’ sailed with a crew of 45 men from Spithead, England in December 1787 under Captain William Bligh, bound for Tahiti. Their mission was to collect breadfruit plants to be transplanted in the West Indies as cheap food for the slaves. After collecting those plants, Bounty was returning to England when, on the morning of 28 April 1789, Fletcher Christian and part of the crew mutinied, taking over the ship, and setting the Captain and 18 crew members adrift in the ship’s 23-foot launch. Captain Bligh sailed nearly 6000km back to England, arriving there on 14 March 1790, where he was initially court-martialled and ultimately acquitted. The mutineers took HMS Bounty back to Tahiti, and collected 6 Polynesian men and 12 women. They then continued on to Pitcairn Island, arriving there on 15 January 1790. After burning the ship, they established a settlement and colony on Pitcairn Island that still exists.
Fletcher Christian was killed during a conflict between the Tahitian men and the mutineers which killed all the island men but one. By the time Captain Mayhew Folger of the American sealing ship ‘Topaz’ landed at Pitcairn Islands in 1808, only John Adams survived. Adams, by then a changed man after his conversion to Christianity, went on to become the respected leader on Pitcairn.
In 1856, the Pitcairners had outgrown their island. Many of them requested resettlement, and were taken to Norfolk Island in the South Pacific. Norfolk’s convict settlement had recently been closed and the British authorities were concerned that French or Spanish interests might take over the island if it were completely evacuated. Today, many of Christian’s descendants, along with the descendants of the other mutineers, remain on Norfolk, where they keep alive the traditions, culture and language of the Pitcairn Islanders.
Born on this day
Thursday, September 25, 1862. : Australian Prime Minister during WWI, Billy Hughes, is born.
William Morris Hughes was born on 25 September 1862. He was born in London but migrated to Australia in 1884. He joined the newly formed Labour Party in 1893. Hughes was elected to the first federal Parliament as Labor MP for West Sydney in 1901, and continued to develop his political career until he was elected as the Prime Minister in 1915.
Hughes was pro-conscription during WWI, and passionate about supporting England with troops. His war efforts earned him the nickname of the “Little Digger”. Even after he was no longer Prime Minister, Hughes retained a seat in Parliament, with a political career which spanned 58 years. He was the last member of the original Australian Parliament elected in 1901 who was still in the Parliament when he died on 28 October 1952.
Australian History
Monday, September 25, 1876. : The current state flag of Tasmania is adopted.
Tasmania began as a second colony in 1803, administered by the Governor of New South Wales. In June 1825, Van Diemen’s Land, as it was then known, was separated administratively from New South Wales, and Hobart Town was declared the capital of the colony. The colony was officially renamed Tasmania, in honour of its discoverer Abel Tasman, in 1856.
In 1869, Queen Victoria proposed that each of the colonies in Australia adopt a flag, which should consist of a Union flag with the state badge in the centre. The first Tasmanian flag was adopted by proclamation of Tasmanian colonial Governor Sir Frederick Weld in November 1875, but as it included two badges – both a white cross and the Southern Cross – it was discarded within two weeks.
A year later, it was decided that the badge should consist of a red lion on a white disc. The new flag was adopted on 25 September 1876, and has remained virtually unchanged since then, with only a minor alteration to the lion.
Australian History
Wednesday, September 25, 1957. : The largest explosion in a second series of British atomic tests at Maralinga, South Australia, takes place.
Australia’s relative remoteness from the major populated countries of the world made it a strategic location for testing of British atomic weapons in the 1950s. Initial tests were conducted at the Montebello islands, off north-west Western Australia. In 1953, Britain’s first atomic test on the Australian mainland was carried out at Emu Field, in the Great Victoria Desert of South Australia, about 480 kilometres northwest of Woomera. Several years later, testing was moved to Maralinga, a remote area of South Australia, and the home of the Maralinga Tjarutja, a southern Pitjantjatjara Aboriginal group.
“Operation Buffalo” involved four open-air nuclear test explosions at Maralinga, commencing in September 1956, and continuing through to October 22. The next series of tests at Maralinga was codenamed “Operation Antler”. These tests commenced in September 1957, with an explosion of one kiloton on 14 September. The second, much larger explosion took place on 25 September 1957, and yielded six kilotons. A third detonation took place from a balloon at a high altitude. Acid rain fallout was reported from as far away as Adelaide.
The tests at Maralinga left a legacy of radioactive contamination. Clean-up operations were insufficient to combat radiation poisoning among Australian servicemen and Aborigines who were at Maralinga during the tests. The site was formally handed back to the Maralinga people under the Maralinga Tjarutja Land Rights Act in 1985. In 1994, the Australian Government made a compensation settlement of $13.5 million with Maralinga Tjarutja, in relation to the nuclear testing.
World History
Tuesday, September 25, 1956. : The world’s first trans-Atlantic telephone cable system commences operations.
The Trans-Atlantic telephone system opened in 1927. Prior to 1956, however, telephone calls across the ocean had been transmitted via radio waves. Cables, which provided better signal quality, avoided atmospheric interference and presented greater capacity and security, were not used until the first Trans-Atlantic submarine cable commenced operations on 25 September 1956.
While the first transatlantic telegraph cable had been laid in 1858, modifications and technological advances had to be made for it to suit telephonic communications. These advances were not practical until the 1940s. The initial capacity of the cables was 36 calls at a time, costed at $12 for the first three minutes. In the first 24 hours of service, there were 588 London-US calls and 119 from London to Canada. The capacity of the cable was soon increased to 48 channels.
World History
Wednesday, September 25, 1957. : Over 1000 US paratroopers are required to escort nine black students into a previously all-white school.
Civil rights for African-Americans was becoming a prominent issue in the 1950s. In 1954, the United States Supreme Court had granted African Americans the right to an equal education. Early in September 1957, 9 black students were due to enrol in the previously segregated Little Rock Central High School. The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, rallied 270 armed National Guardsmen to prevent the nine students from entering the school.
President Eisenhower deliberated with the governor and the mayor of Little Rock for many days. During this time, there were frequent scenes of racial hatred and prejudice shown by the white community in Little Rock, and fears grew that the tensions would escalate into violence. On 25 September 1957, Eisenhower was forced to send in 1,100 paratroopers to escort the students into the school. Eisenhower federalised the Arkansas National Guard, because as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he felt this was the only way to establish law and order. For the entire school year, the federalised National Guard remained as a peace-keeping force, and to protect the African-American students.