This Day in History

[El Pinguino]

And on this day in 1963 - a mere 58 years ago - three Australians phoned Canada and it only took 75 seconds to get a call through to the UK from Melbourne.

'They were using the new co-axial cable link with London, opened earlier yesterday.

“The Age” last night rang its London correspondent Herbert Mishael and was put through in 75 seconds.

A P.M.G. spokesman said there was a steady demand after the cable was opened. The P.M.G connected 30 calls to England, 12 to the United States and three to Canada. Another 39 to England, 21 to the United States and three to Canada were booked for today.'

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/v...19-p59agb.html

[GordMay]

December 4

2012: Typhoon "Pablo" kills over 1,000 people in the Philippines

On December 4, 2012, “Bopha”, a Category 5 typhoon nicknamed “Pablo,” struck the Philippines. Rushing flood waters destroyed entire villages, and killed over one thousand people, in what was the strongest typhoon ever to strike the Southeast Asian islands.

The hardest hit areas, the Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental provinces, the heavy rainfall triggered landslides and floods. Floods destroyed farming and mining towns all along the coast, flattening banana plantations, and completely destroying some citizens’ livelihoods. Some towns were left completely decimated; muddy heaps of collapsed houses. CNN reported that the iron roofs of some buildings were swept away by the 175 mph winds, like "flying machetes." Over 200,000 people were stranded after the storm, unable to get anywhere, due to the landslides and rising waters.

When the storm first showed up on radars, in late November, it wasn’t expected to develop; but on Nov. 30, it quickly picked up strength and speed. Once the government realized the threat posed by the storm, officials scrambled to evacuate people from the most dangerous areas, but residents were hard to convince. About 20 typhoons and storms lash the northern and central Philippines each year, but they rarely ever hit the southern region. Warnings to evacuate were not taken seriously.

Even the more than 170,000 Filipinos who heeded the warnings to flee, weren’t safe. The floods and strong winds battered not just the riverbanks, but also places where residents where supposed to be safe.

The death toll started in the hundreds, and climbed as days passed, and missing people went unfound. The day after the storm, rain started to fall again, triggering panic, and fear of another day of flash floods. The fear, as well as the effects of the storm, would continue for years. Hundreds were left in poverty. Before the nation could even recover, it had to suffer through an even stronger typhoon in 2013 - Typhoon “Haiyan”. It took years to rebuild from all the damage. The Department of Social Welfare and Development were still building new homes for victims in 2015.

The damage had such long lasting effects on the region, that the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration decommissioned the name “Pablo”, from its list of names for storms and typhoons.

➥ https://asiafoundation.org/2012/12/1...free-mindanao/
➥ https://www.worldvision.org/disaster...on-bopha-facts

[GordMay]

December 4, 1952: Killer 'Smog'

If you were in London, England on Thursday, Dec. 5, 1952, you wouldn't be able to see past five metres in front of you. This was a result of cumulative events that occurred the day before, on Dec. 4.

It would be the first of five days of killer smog.

A high-pressure air mass, over the Thames River Valley, mixed with the sudden cold air that came in from the west.

The city had low temperatures, so coal furnaces were blazing across residences. Adding to residential pollution, there was also smoke, soot, and sulphur dioxide from cars, industrial plants, and buses.

London had recently replaced an electric tram system with steam locomotives, and diesel-fuelled buses.

There was a ton of pollution in the air, and nowhere for it to go.

On Dec. 4, an anticyclone stalled over London, which was completely windless, causing a temperature inversion, with cold, stagnant air trapped under a layer of warm air.

That fog mixed with pollutant smoke, and created a thick smog. The stagnant soot particles gave the smog a yellow-black colour, earning the moniker "pea-souper."

Between Dec. 4-8, an estimated 4,000-12,000 people died.

[GordMay]

December 5

1945: The “Lost Squadron”, Flight 19, disappears in the Bermuda Triangle

At 2:10 p.m., five U.S. Navy TBM ‘Avenger’ torpedo-bombers, comprising Flight 19, take off from the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station, in Florida, on a routine three-hour training mission [Navigation Problem No. 1]. Flight 19 was scheduled to take them due east for 120 miles, conduct bombing runs at ‘Hens and Chickens Shoals’, then north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 120-mile leg, that would return them to the naval base.

They never returned.

Two hours after the flight began, the leader of the squadron, Charles C. Taylor, an experienced combat pilot, who had been flying in the area for more than six months, reported that his compass and back-up compass had failed, and that his position was unknown. The other planes experienced similar instrument malfunctions. Radio facilities on land were contacted, to find the location of the lost squadron, but none were successful. After two more hours of confused messages from the fliers, a distorted radio transmission, from the squadron leader, was heard at 6:20 p.m., apparently calling for his men to prepare to ditch their aircraft simultaneously, because of lack of fuel.

By this time, several land radar stations finally determined that Flight 19 was somewhere north of the Bahamas, and east of the Florida coast, and at 7:27 p.m. a search and rescue Mariner aircraft took off, with a 13-man crew. Three minutes later, the Mariner aircraft radioed to its home base that its mission was underway. The Mariner was never heard from again. Later, there was a report, from a tanker cruising off the coast of Florida, of a visible explosion seen at 7:50 p.m.

The disappearance of the 14 men of Flight 19, and the 13 men of the Mariner, led to one of the largest air and seas searches to that date, and hundreds of ships and aircraft combed thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and remote locations within the interior of Florida. No trace of the bodies or aircraft was ever found.

Although naval officials maintained that the remains of the six aircraft and 27 men were not found, because stormy weather destroyed the evidence, the story of the “Lost Squadron” helped cement the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, an area of the Atlantic Ocean where ships and aircraft are said to disappear, without a trace. The Bermuda Triangle is said to stretch from the southern U.S. coast, across to Bermuda, and down to the Atlantic coast of Cuba and Santo Domingo.

➥ https://www.history.com/news/the-mys...e-of-flight-19

➥ https://www.nasflmuseum.com/flight-19.html

➥ https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-...flight-19.html

[GordMay]

December 6

1240: The Mongols, under Batu Khan, occupy and destroy Kiev; out of 50,000 people in the city, only 2,000 survive.

1768: 1st edition of "Encyclopedia Brittanica" published, in Scotland.

1865: 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, ratified
On December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, officially ending the institution of slavery, is ratified. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” With these words, the single greatest change wrought by the Civil War was officially noted in the Constitution.
The House passed the measure in January 1865, and it was sent to the states for ratification. When Georgia ratified it [the 27th U.S. state to do so], on December 6, 1865, the institution of slavery effectively ceased to exist in the United States.

1917: The Great Halifax Explosion
At 9:05 a.m., in the harbor of Halifax in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, the most devastating manmade explosion in the pre-atomic age occurs when the “Mont Blanc”, a French munitions ship, explodes 20 minutes after colliding with the Norwegian vessel “Imo”.
On the morning of December 6, Imo left its mooring, bound for New York City. At the same time, the Mont Blanc, [its cargo hold packed with highly explosive munitions–2,300 tons of picric acid, 200 tons of TNT, 35 tons of high-octane gasoline, and 10 tons of gun cotton] was forging through the harbor’s narrows, to join a military convoy, that would escort it across the Atlantic.
At approximately 8:45 a.m., the two ships collided, setting the picric acid ablaze. The Mont Blanc was propelled toward the shore by its collision with the Imo, and the crew rapidly abandoned the ship, attempting without success to alert the harbor of the peril of the burning ship. Spectators gathered along the waterfront to witness the spectacle of the blazing ship, and minutes later it brushed by a harbor pier, setting it ablaze. The Halifax Fire Department responded quickly and was positioning its engine next to the nearest hydrant when the Mont Blanc exploded at 9:05 a.m. in a blinding white flash.
The massive explosion killed more than 1,800 people, injured another 9,000, including blinding 200, and destroyed almost the entire north end of the city of Halifax, including more than 1,600 homes. The resulting shock wave shattered windows 50 miles away, and the sound of the explosion could be heard hundreds of miles away.


1921: Irish Free State established
The British government and Irish leaders Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, and others signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, establishing the Irish Free State, as an independent member [Dominion] of the British Commonwealth, this day, in 1921. Partition creates Northern Ireland.
➥ https://www.onthisday.com/photos/anglo-irish-treaty

[GordMay]

December 7

1968: Richard Dodd returned an overdue library book, to the University of Cincinnati. His great-grandfather had checked out the volume in 1823. The book was 145 years late.
The university waived the calculated late fee, of $22,646.

The record for most overdue library book is held by Robert Walpole of England, who borrowed a book from the Sidney Sussex College in 1668. The book was returned 288 years later [16 January 1956], and it has been reported that no fine was taken, on the return of the book to the library.
➥ https://www.sid.cam.ac.uk/worlds-mos...e-library-book

Five months into his first presidential term, George Washington borrowed “The Law of Nations”, by Emmerich de Vattel, from the historic New York Society Library. For the next 221 years, it remained stowed away at his Virginia home, and organization officials wondered if they’d ever see it again. “We’re not actively pursuing overdue fines,” joked head librarian Mark Bartlett. “But we would be very happy to see the book returned.”
His wish was granted, when Mount Vernon staff finally sent it back in 2010 (luckily, they dodged a whopping $300,000 late fee).

[GordMay]

December 10

1684: Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws, from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper ‘De motu corporum in gyrum’, is read to the Royal Society by Edmond Halley.

1901: The first Nobel Prizes are awarded, in Stockholm, Sweden, in the fields of physics [Wilhelm Röntgen], chemistry [Jacobus van 't Hoff], medicine [Emil von Behring], literature [Sully Prudhomme], and peace [Jean Henri Dunant & Frederic Passy] on December 10, 1901 [the fifth anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel].
➥ https://www.nobelprize.org/

1941: British battleship “Prince of Wales” and battlecruiser “Repulse” (Force Z) sunk, following Japanese aerial attacks. off Malaya. 840 men die.

1948: UN General Assembly adopts the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
➥ https://www.un.org/en/about-us/unive...f-human-rights

1982: A treaty codifying the Law of the Sea was signed by 117 countries.
➥ https://www.un.org/depts/los/convent...convention.htm

[GordMay]

December 12

1901: First radio transmission sent across the Atlantic Ocean.

Italian physicist and radio pioneer, Guglielmo Marconi, succeeds in sending the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean, disproving detractors, who told him that the curvature of the earth would limit transmission to 200 miles or less.
The message was the Morse-code signal for the letter “s” [which consists of three dots], which traveled more than 2,000 miles, from Poldhu in Cornwall, England, to Signal Hill, in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.

Ironically, detractors of the project were correct, when they declared that radio waves would not follow the curvature of the earth, as Marconi believed. In fact, Marconi’s transatlantic radio signal had been headed into space, when it was reflected off the ionosphere, and bounced back down toward Canada.

In December 1902 he transmitted the first complete messages to Poldhu, from stations at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, and later Cape Cod, Massachusetts, these early tests culminating in 1907, in the opening of the first transatlantic commercial service, between Glace Bay and Clifden, Ireland, after the first shorter-distance public service of wireless telegraphy had been established, between Bari in Italy and Avidari in Montenegro.
In 1909, he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, with the German radio innovator, Karl Ferdinand Braun, the inventor of the cathode ray tube.

Nikola Tesla said he had developed a wireless telegraph in 1893; and in 1943 the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated four Marconi radio patents*, citing Tesla’s prior work [also John Stone’s & Oliver Lodge’s].

* ➥ https://mercurians.org/antenna-newsl...tory-of-radio/

[GordMay]

December 13

1577: English seaman Francis Drake sets out from Plymouth, England, with five ships [including his “Golden Hind”], and 164 men, on a mission to raid Spanish holdings on the Pacific coast of the New World, and explore the Pacific Ocean. Three years later, Drake’s return to Plymouth [September 26, 1580] marked the first circumnavigation of the earth, by a British explorer. In 1581, Queen Elizabeth I knighted Drake, the son of a tenant farmer, during a visit to his ship.
➥ https://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/cata...famousvoy.html

1642: Dutch navigator Abel Tasman sighted South Island, New Zealand, and later, mistaking the strait north of the island for a bay, believed he had found the west coast of a hypothetical southern continent. Initially he calls it Staten Landt, and changes it, a year later, to Nieuw Zeeland.
➥ https://nzhistory.govt.nz/people/abel-tasman

1774: Paul Revere and Wentworth Cheswell ride to warn Portsmouth of the approach of British warships. Paul Revere rode West, and that is where the initial action took place. However, Cheswell rode North, and that is where the reinforcements, that made victory possible, came from. Also riding and alerting people of the plans of the British, where William Dawes, Samuel Prescott, Israel Bissell, and although not on the same night, Sybil Ludington, a 16 year old girl.
➥ https://www.newenglandhistoricalsoci...e-paul-revere/

1937: The Japanese Imperial Army seized Nanjing, China, during the Sino-Japanese War, leading to the Nanjing Massacre [‘Rape of Nanjing’], in which up to 300,000 Chinese may have been killed.
➥ https://www.history.com/this-day-in-...ape-of-nanking

[GordMay]

December 14

1911: Norwegian Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen [and four others] becomes first explorer to reach the South Pole, beating his British rival, Robert Falcon Scott.
In early 1911, Amundsen sailed his ship into Antarctica’s ‘Bay of Whales’ and set up base camp, 60 miles closer to the pole than Scott. In October, both explorers set off: Amundsen using sleigh dogs, and Scott employing Siberian motor sledges, Siberian ponies, and dogs. On December 14, 1911, Amundsen’s expedition won the race to the Pole, and returned safely to base camp in late January.
Scott’s expedition was less fortunate. The motor sleds broke down, the ponies had to be shot, and the dog teams were sent back as Scott and four companions continued on foot. On January 18, 1912, they reached the pole only to find that Amundsen had preceded them by over a month. Weather on the return journey was exceptionally bad [two members perished], and a storm later trapped Scott and the other two survivors in their tent, only 11 miles from their base camp. Scott’s frozen body was found later that year.
Amundsen was also the first to the first to winter in the Antarctic, and make a ship voyage through the Northwest Passage, and one of the first to cross the Arctic by air. In 1928, Amundsen lost his life, while trying to rescue a fellow explorer, whose dirigible had crashed at sea, near Spitsbergen, Norway.
➥ https://www.south-pole.com/p0000101.htm

1958: Soviets Reach the ‘Southern Pole of Inaccessibility’
A Pole of Inaccessibility is a location on Earth that is extremely difficult to access.
In the North, it is the point in the Arctic Ocean that is farthest from land, while in the Southern Hemisphere it is the point farthest from the Southern Ocean on Antarctica.
In 1958, a Soviet team, led by Yevgeny Tolstikov, became the first people in history to reach the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility, which is 546 miles (878 kilometers) from the geographic South Pole. Temperatures at this location averages around – 73 degree F (–58 C].
➥ https://www.rbth.com/history/333992-...lity-lenin-n2i

[GordMay]

December 15

1488: Bartolomeu Dias returns to Portugal, after becoming 1st known European to sail round the Cape of Good Hope.

1791: US Bill of Rights ratified, when Virginia gives its approval, becomes amendments 1-10 of the US constitution. The first 10 ammendments to the U.S. Constitution, introduced by James Madison, which limit the power of the U.S. federal government, are ratified by three-fourths of the States. The Bill Of Rights protect the natural rights of liberty and property, including freedom of religion, freedom of speech, a free press, free assembly, and free association, as well as the right to keep and bear arms.

1941: USS “Swordfish” becomes 1st US submarine to sink a Japanese ship.

1944: Glenn Miller, one of the best selling recording artists of his time, is killed, when his U.S. Army plane disappeared over the English Channel.

1961: Adolf Eichmann, the former German Gestapo official, accused of a major role in the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews, is sentenced, by a Jerusalem court, to be hanged.

1976: Oil tanker MV “Argo Merchant” runs aground, on the Nantucket Shoals, spilling 7.6 million gallons of fuel oil.

1997: The U.S. Department of Defense ordered that all Americans in its service (about 2.5 million people) be inoculated against anthrax, a potential weapon of biological warfare.

[GordMay]

December 16

1497: Portuguese navigator, Vasco da Gama, is 1st European to sail along Africa's East Coast, names it Natal.

1631: More than 3,000 people were killed, by a major eruption of Mount Vesuvius, in Italy.

1707: Last recorded eruption of Mount Fuji, in Japan.

1773: In what is known as the ‘Boston Tea Party’, American colonists, disguised as Mohawk Indians, threw 342 chests of tea, belonging to the British East India Company, into Boston Harbor, to protest a LOWERED tax on tea [Tea Act of 1773].
The act’s main purpose was NOT to raise revenue from the colonies, but to bail out the floundering East India Company, a key actor in the British economy.
The act granted the company the right to ship its tea directly to the colonies, without first landing it in England, and to commission agents, who would have the sole right to sell tea in the colonies.
The act retained the duty on imported tea, at its existing rate, but, since the company was no longer required to pay an additional tax, in England, the Tea Act effectively lowered the price of the East India Company’s tea, in the colonies.
By allowing the East India Company to sell tea directly in the American colonies, the Tea Act cut out colonial merchants, who purchased tea from Dutch smugglers, and the prominent, and influential colonial merchants reacted with anger.

1850: Ships the “Charlotte-Jane” and the “Randolph” bring the first of the Canterbury Pilgrims to Lyttelton, New Zealand.

1880: Transvaal region declares itself as the Republic of South Africa, beginning the First ‘Boer War’, between British Empire, and Boer South African Republic.

1900: Boer army, under general Kritzinger, take Cape colony.

1901: Boer general Kritzinger captured.

1938: Voortrekkers killed 3,000 Zulu impis , at the ‘Battle of Blood River’, in South Africa [the ‘Great Trek’].

1944: In World War II, German forces attempted to push through Allied lines in the Ardennes forrest, in Belgium. As the center of the Allied line falls back, it creates a bulge, leading to the name, the ‘Battle of the Bulge’.

[GordMay]

December 17

1903: First self-propelled, heavier-than-air airplane flies, at Kill Devil Hills, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, as Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first successful flight in history.
Orville piloted the gasoline-powered, propeller-driven biplane, which stayed aloft for 12 seconds, and covered 120 feet, on its inaugural flight.

On December 14, Orville made the first attempt at powered flight (they tossed a coin to see who would first test the Wright Flyer, which older brother Wilbur won).
The engine stalled during take-off, and the plane was damaged, and they spent three days repairing it.

Then at 10:35 a.m. on December 17, in front of five witnesses, the aircraft ran down a monorail track, and into the air, staying aloft for 12 seconds, and flying 120 feet. The modern aviation age was born.

Three more tests were made that day, with Wilbur and Orville alternately flying the airplane. Wilbur flew the last flight, covering 852 feet, in 59 seconds.
As Orville and Wilbur stood discussing the final flight, a sudden strong gust of wind caught hold of the aircraft and flipped it several times. The aircraft sustained such heavy damage to its ribs, motor and chain guides that it was beyond repair. The Wright Flyer was crated back to Dayton and never flew again.


x

[goboatingnow]

Sorry the Flyer was the first “ manned “ heavier then air flight . There had been unmanned flights from various craft before that.( with various degrees of success )

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Sorry the Flyer was the first “ manned “ heavier then air flight . There had been unmanned [self propelled?] flights from various craft before that.( with various degrees of success )

Interesting.
Tell us a little more.