Gday...

1815  -     Australian politician and the 'Father of Federation', Sir Henry Parkes, is born.

Henry Parkes was born in Warwickshire, England, on 27 May 1815. A failed business venture prompted him to seek passage with his wife to Australia, and he arrived in Sydney in 1839. Moving up from a position of farmer's labourer, to clerk, to managing his own business, a number of failed ventures indicated that he did not have good business acumen. He was first elected to the New South Wales Parliament in 1854, was Premier of New South Wales several times between 1872 and 1891, and was knighted in 1877.

Parkes was a staunch supporter of the Australian culture and identity. As a politician, he is perhaps best remembered for his famous Tenterfield Oration, delivered on 24 October 1889, at the Tenterfield School of Arts. In this speech, he advocated the Federation of the six Australian colonies. Parkes convened the 1890 Federation Conference and subsequently the 1891 National Australasian Convention. He proposed the name Commonwealth of Australia for the new nation.

Parkes died of natural causes on 27 April 1896, four years before Australia became a Federation, having established the political directions for the new country. His image appears on the Centenary of Federation commemoration Australian $5 note issued in 2001. The suburb of Parkes in Canberra is named after him as well as the town of Parkes in central New South Wales.

1897  -     The mummified bodies of Australian explorers Charles Wells and George Jones are discovered.

Very little of Australia was left unexplored by the late 1800s, but the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia remained un unconquered frontier. In 1896, Albert Calvert, a London-based gold-mining engineer with interests in Western Australia, sponsored an expedition to fill in the unexplored blanks on the map and hopefully, find some likely gold-bearing country into the bargain. The Royal Geographical Society of South Australia was asked to organise the Calvert Scientific Exploring Expedition, financed by Calvert. The expedition's leader was surveyor Lawrence Wells, and accompanying him was surveyor Charles Wells, his cousin, an Adelaide mineralogist by the name of George Jones, a cook and a camel driver.

In October 1896, the party camped at a small permanent waterhole south-east of Lake George, which they named Separation Well. Here, on 11 October 1896, Lawrence Wells made the fateful decision to split the party into two groups. Charles Wells and Jones set off on a bearing of 290 degrees to survey lands for 144 kilometres north-west, before turning north-north-east to rejoin the main party at Joanna Spring, located and mapped by explorer Warburton in 1873. When Lawrence Wells's party reached Joanna Spring on 29 October, there was no sign of the other party. Unable to even locate the spring, the leader made for the Fitzroy River, where he raised the alarm regarding the missing explorers via the Fitzroy Crossing Telegraph Station.

Four search parties were dispatched, covering over five thousand kilometres, with no success. At some stage, when Wells and Jones had died, Aborigines plundered the bodies of all clothing and other items. When some of these items were located in the Aborigines' possession, the Aborigines led the searchers to where the bodies lay. On 27 May 1897 the bodies of Wells and Jones were recovered by the white search party, perfectly preserved by the intense heat, just 22km from Joanna Spring. The mummified bodies were sewn in sheets and taken to Derby, where they were shipped to Adelaide and given a State funeral on 18 July 1897.

1937  -     The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is opened to pedestrian traffic. 

The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the opening into the San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. It connects the city of San Francisco on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula and a portion of the south-facing Marin County headlands near the bayside city of Sausalito.

The bridge, including the approach, spans 2.7 km long; the main span, or distance between the towers, is 1,280 m, and the clearance below the bridge is 67 m at mean high water. Each of the two towers rises 230m above the water. The diameter of the main suspension cables is 0.91m, just under a metre. The Golden Gate Bridge was the largest suspension bridge in the world when it was built in 1937. Begun in 1933, it was completed on 27 April 1937 and opened to pedestrians on 27 May 1937. The following day, President Roosevelt pushed a button in Washington DC, signalling the start of vehicular traffic over the Bridge.

During the bridge's construction, a safety net was set up beneath it, significantly reducing the expected number of deaths for such a project. 11 men were killed from falls during construction, and approximately 19 men were saved by the safety net. 10 of the deaths occurred near completion, when the net itself failed under the stress of a scaffold fall.

An internationally recognised symbol of San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge has been declared one of the modern Wonders of the World by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

1967  -     An Australian referendum recognises more Aboriginal rights as equal citizens.

Aboriginal people became Australian citizens in 1947, when a separate Australian citizenship was created for the first time. Prior to this, all Australians were "British subjects". Aboriginal people gained the vote in Commonwealth territories in 1965, and earlier in different states, according to various state laws.

The referendum of 27 May 1967 approved two amendments to the Australian constitution relating to Indigenous Australians, removing two sections from the Constitution. The first was a phrase in Section 51 (xxvi) which stated that the Federal Government had the power to make laws with respect to "the people of any race, other than the Aboriginal race in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws." The referendum removed the phrase "other than the Aboriginal race in any State," giving the Commonwealth the power to make laws specifically to benefit Aboriginal people.

The second was Section 127, which stated: "In reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, Aboriginal natives shall not be counted." The referendum deleted this section from the Constitution. This was not a reference to the census, as Aboriginal people living in settled areas were counted in Commonwealth censuses before 1967. Rather, the section related to calculating the population of the states and territories for the purpose of allocating seats in Parliament and per capita Commonwealth grants. This prevented Queensland and Western Australia using their large Aboriginal populations to gain extra seats or extra funds.

The referendum was endorsed by over 90% of voters and carried in all six states. Ultimately, the real legislative and political impact of the 1967 referendum was to enable the federal government to take action in the area of Aboriginal Affairs, introducing policies to encourage self-determination and financial security for Aborigines.

1995  -     'Superman' actor Christopher Reeve is paralysed after a riding accident.

Christopher Reeve was born on 25 September 1952 in New York City, USA. Contrary to popular belief, Christopher Reeve is not related to George Reeves, who played Superman on television in the 1950s. Reeve graduated from Princeton Day School in Princeton, New Jersey. He attended Cornell University but left before earning his degree, and began studying at the Juilliard Drama School under John Houseman. While at Juilliard, he became friends with actor Robin Williams. Reeve's first big break as an actor came in 1975 when he co-starred opposite Katharine Hepburn in the Broadway play A Matter Of Gravity, earning favourable reviews. He won the role of Superman in the 1978 film directed by Richard Donner.

On 27 May 1995, Reeve was riding his horse "Eastern Express" cross country, in the Commonwealth Dressage and Combined Training Association finals at the Commonwealth Park equestrian centre in Culpeper, Virginia. Approaching the third of 18 jumps, a triple-bar just over a metre high, the horse made an abrupt refusal, throwing Reeve to the ground, where he landed on his head. As a result of the accident, he was confined to a wheelchair and unable to breathe, except for short periods, without the assistance of a mechanical respirator for the remainder of his life.

With the staunch support of his wife Dana, Reeve opened the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Resource Centre, a facility in Short Hills, New Jersey, devoted to teaching paralysed people to live more independently. The couple also chaired the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, which funds research on paralysis and works to improve the lives of the disabled. To date, the Foundation has awarded $55 million in research grants and $7.5 million in quality-of-life grants. Reeve died of heart failure at 52 years of age, on 10 October 2004, after suffering cardiac arrest brought on by an infection.

Cheers - John