Gday...

1837  -    Streets and squares in Adelaide, capital of South Australia, are first named. 

Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia, the only Australian state to have remained entirely free of convicts during its early history. The city of Adelaide was designed by Colonel William Light, born at Kuala Kedah, Malaya on 27 April 1786. He was the first Surveyor-General of South Australia, arriving in South Australia in 1836 to decide on a suitable site for the new settlement.

Colonel Light began surveying Adelaide on 11 January 1837, beginning at the junction of where North and West Terraces now stands. This point is now marked by a granite obelisk. Completing his survey on 10 March 1837, Colonel Light then commenced the task of naming streets and squares in the new town on 23 May 1837.

Following Light's death on 6 October 1839, he was buried in Light Square, Adelaide. 

1930  -    Extensive aerial surveying and mapping of the Australian outback begins.

Donald George Mackay, born 1870, was a descendant of wealthy pastoralists from Yass in New South Wales. An adventurer who had cycled around Australia and participated in expeditions to Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific, Mackay was interested in mapping unexplored regions of Australia. His interest intensified following the 1929 incident in which Charles Kingsford Smith's 'Southern Cross' was lost in the outback: whilst Kingsford-Smith was located after twelve days, would-be rescuers Bobby Hitch**** and Keith Anderson died in the process.

Following this incident, Mackay decided to finance aerial mapping of unknown regions of Australia's outback. Pilots Frank Neale and H B Hussey were enlisted to fly two aircraft leased from Australian Aerial Services, Melbourne, and the services of four other experts in aerial mapping were also engaged. The expedition was farewelled from Canberra by Australian Prime Minister James Scullin on 23 May 1930.

The initial survey intensively triangulated a region of thousands of square kilometres around Ilbilla Soak near the Ehrenberg Range in central Australia. New discoveries were made, including the fact that Lake Amadeus, which had previously been mapped as being several hundred kilometres in length, was in fact less than 100km long. Another large lake was discovered, 96km wide and 160km long, which the Federal Government named Lake Mackay in honour of Donald Mackay.

Over the ensuing years and up until 1937, Mackay pioneered numerous aerial surveys of the outback. He financed aerial mapping of the central western deserts and northwest Western Australia, the Great Victoria Desert and the Nullarbor Plain, providing vital information on Australia's vast outback.

1934  -    Notorious US robbers, Bonnie and Clyde, are ambushed and killed. 

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker, born 1 October 1910, and Clyde "Champion" Chesnut Barrow, born 24 March 1909, both of Texas, were robbers and criminals who targetted small businesses and banks in the central United States during the Great Depression. Whilst it remains uncertain how and when they met, the pair teamed up immediately to become two of the US's most notorious robbers.

Barrow already had a criminal background, cracking safes, robbing stores and stealing cars, before he met Parker. He served two years in prison, where he was subjected to a variety of abuses; there is some conjecture that his aim was not to gain fame and fortune from robbing banks, but to seek revenge against the Texas Prison system for the abuses he suffered whilst incarcerated. However, public sympathy waned when Barrow's gang began murdering both civilians and lawmen.

Bonnie and Clyde and the "Barrow Gang" evaded numerous ambushes intended to secure their capture. However, Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed and killed on 23 May 1934, on a desolate road near their hideout in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. They were shot by a posse of four Texas and two Louisiana officers. The posse was led by former Texas Ranger captain Frank Hamer, who had begun tracking the pair on 10 February 1934, after being specifically hired by the Texas Department of Corrections with orders to put an end to Bonnie and Clyde. 

1949  -    West Germany is formed after Germany is split, following World War II. 

Following Germany's defeat in World War II, Germany was split into two separately controlled countries. West Germany, also known as the Federal Republic of Germany, was proclaimed on 23 May 1949, with Bonn as its capital. As a liberal parliamentary republic and part of NATO, the country maintained good relations with the Western Allies. East Germany, or the German Democratic Republic, was proclaimed in East Berlin on 7 October 1949. It adopted a socialist republic, and remained allied with the communist powers, being occupied by Soviet forces.

The Soviet powers began to dwindle in the late 1980s, and the Communist Party in East Germany began to lose its grip on power. On 18 March 1990, the first and only free elections in the history of East Germany were held, producing a government whose major mandate was to negotiate an end to itself and its state. The German "Einigungsvertrag" (Unification Treaty) was signed on 31 August 1990 by representatives of West Germany and East Germany. German reunification took place on 3 October 1990, when the areas of the former East Germany ceased to exist, having been incorporated into The Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany.

1960  -    Television finally comes to Tasmania with the launch of TVT-6.

In 1950, Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced a gradual introduction of television in Australia, commencing with the 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. Australia's first TV broadcast was made on 16 September 1956 by TCN Channel 9 in Sydney. Melbourne was the next city to commence transmissions, which occurred later that year. Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide each launched their own television station in 1959.

Tasmania was the last of the state capitals to begin transmissions. Four years after the first test transmissions in Australia, on 23 May 1960, TVT-6 launched in Hobart, bringing television to Tasmania. TVT stood for TeleVision Tasmania; at first, it transmitted from Mt Wellington, and covered just the southern part of the state.

Cheers - JOhn