Gday...

1881  -             Bacteriologist and discoverer of penicillin, Alexander Fleming, is born.

Alexander Fleming was born near Darvel in Ayrshire, Scotland, on 6 August 1881. He was educated at St Mary's Hospital medical school in London until World War I, when he gained further experience in a battlefield hospital in France. After seeing the effects of infections in dying soldiers, he increased his efforts to find an effective means of fighting infection.

It was Fleming's untidiness as a worker which led to his greatest discovery. In the summer of 1828 he went away for a holiday, but left a clutter of plates growing various bacteria lying about his desk. After his return, whilst working on an influenza virus he noticed that mould had developed accidentally on a staphylococcus culture plate, and that the mould had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. Further experimentation proved that even a weaker-strength mould culture prevented growth of staphylococci. Thus, Fleming initiated the development and practice of antibiotic therapy for infectious diseases.

Practical difficulties with creating and isolating the discovery which he named Penicillin prevented Fleming from continuing his research. However, after 1939 two other scientists, Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain, continued to work to develop a method of purifying penicillin to an effective form. The 1945 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was shared between the three men. Fleming died on 11 March 1955.

1911  -             American actress and comedienne, Lucille Ball, is born.

Lucille Désirée Ball was born in Jamestown, New York, on 6 August 1911. At the age of fourteen, she enrolled in the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts, where after just a few weeks, she was told she was too shy and had no future as a performer. Ball persisted with her dream, and in 1930 she gained success as a fashion model for designer Hattie Carnegie and as the Chesterfield cigarettes girl. Three years later she moved to Hollywood, gaining many small film parts, but no real fame.

Ball's fame in 'I Love Lucy' came about as a result of her being cast in a CBS radio programme. The programme was 'My Favourite Husband', and she was cast as wacky wife Liz Cugat, later Liz Cooper. The program's subsequent success resulted in its development as a television program, which eventually became 'I Love Lucy'. Lucille Ball died on 26 April 1989.

1915  -             The August Offensive at Gallipoli commences.

Gallipoli, on the Turkish Aegean coast, marks the site of a long and drawn-out campaign against enemy troops during World War 1. Every year, Australians and New Zealanders celebrate ANZAC Day to commemorate the ANZAC troops landing on 25 April 1915 at Gallipoli. Hundreds were killed on the first day of the campaign, and by the time the troops withdrew eight months later, around 8700 had died at Gallipoli.

6 August 1915 saw the beginning of the August Offensive. At 5:30pm, units of the 1st Australian Division attacked Turkish trenches at Lone Pine, and within half an hour, the Turkish front line had fallen. The Turkish troops retaliated with aggressive counter-attacks. At 8:30pm, the regiments of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles mounted a successful assault through the valleys leading up the Sari Bair Range on the peninsula. This opened the way for a combined attack by the New Zealand Infantry Brigade, the 4th Australian Infantry Brigade and the 29th Infantry Brigade of Sikhs and Gurkhas upon the range heights.

The August Offensive continued for 5 days, but strong Turkish counter-attacks prevented the troops from making any real headway.

1945  -             The first atomic bomb is dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

On the morning of 6 August 1945, the "Enola Gay", an American B-29 Superfortress dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in Japan. Hiroshima was targetted as it was one of the chief supply depots for the Japanese army. 70,000 Japanese were killed immediately. Radiation from the ensuing mushroom cloud killed many thousand more and radiation related diseases affected families for generations. The final death toll was around 140,000. 48,000 buildings were flattened within the 13 square kilometres destroyed by the bomb, and fires continued for days afterwards. President Truman issued the order to drop the bomb after Japan failed to act upon the Potsdam Declaration. The declaration had been issued 10 days previously, calling for the unconditional surrender of Japan.

Another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later, killing 74,000 immediately. However, the real death toll from the impact and the effects of the two bombs was closer to 300,000, not including the effects on generations to come.

Japan surrendered to the Allies on 14 August 1945.

2009  -             Sam the koala, rescued from backburning operations in Victoria, is euthanased due to the effects of chlamydia.

Sam the koala was a koala rescued during backburning operations just prior to the devastating Black Saturday bushfires in February 2009. Several weeks of heatwave conditions in Victoria and southern Australia had resulted in the need to conduct controlled burnoffs. Volunteer firefighter David Tree approached the koala with a bottle of water, from which the animal drank. This was unusual, given that koalas rarely drink water. A mobile phone video of the event was broadcast worldwide, creating an instant celebrity in the koala.

Sam was subsequently taken to the Southern Ash Wildlife Centre in Rawson where she was treated for second-degree burns. She was rehabilitated, and lived there happily for several months after being placed with a young male koala named Bob, who had been rescued from the Victorian bushfires. However, like many wild koalas, Sam was stricken with the disease chlamydia, and had to be euthanased on 6 August 2009 when it was discovered her condition was inoperable. Sam's body was subsequently preserved and moved to the Melbourne Museum as a symbol of the bushfires.

Cheers - John