Gday...

1877  -             Charles Stewart Rolls, one of the founders of the Rolls-Royce Ltd automobile company, is born.

Charles Stewart Rolls was born in Berkeley Square, London, on 27 August 1877. In 1902 he became a motor dealer and on 4 May 1904 met up with engineer Sir Frederick Henry Royce. Royce had started an electrical and mechanical business in 1884 and made his first car, a "Royce", in his Manchester factory in 1904. In 1906, Rolls merged his firm with that of engineer Royce to become a co-founder of the Rolls-Royce car manufacturing firm.

Rolls was also a pioneer aviator and was the second person in Britain to be licensed to fly by the Royal Aero Club. In 1910, he became the first man to fly across the English Channel and back nonstop. On 12 July 1910, he also became the first British pilot to die in a flying accident when the tail of his Wright Flyer broke off near Bournemouth.

1894  -             Paddlesteamer, the "Rodney", is burnt by unionist shearers in protest at it being used as a strike breaker.

During the 19th century, shearers in Australia endured meagre wages and poor working conditions. This led to the formation of the Australian Shearers Union which, by 1890, had tens of thousands of members. January to May 1891 saw the Great Shearers' Strike, marked by violent and destructive clashes between shearers and troopers. The end of the strike in May 1891 was not the end of industrial action.

Falling overseas wool prices in 1894 forced the proposal by the Pastoralists Association to cut the shearing rate by 12.5%. A new strike began. The "Rodney" was a large paddlesteamer, built at Echuca in 1875. The 32 metre vessel, one of the finest, most powerful steamers on the river, was vital to the transport of goods and passengers along the Murray-Darling River system.

On 28 August 1894, the Rodney was transporting non-union labour upstream to the shearing shed at Tolarno Station on the Darling River. It was also hauling a barge carrying goods and supplies for the stations enroute. As it reached a woodpile two miles above Moorara Station, it was boarded by 150 striking shearers who removed the passnegers, then proceeded to soak the Rodney in kerosene and set it alight. The paddlesteamer was irreparably damaged after being burnt to the waterline.

Today, the remains of the Rodney can still be seen, lying low down in the riverbed near Polia Station, about 40 kilometres north of the town of Pooncarie, 107 kilometres south of Menindee and around 100 kilometres north of Wentworth. The site remains of historical significance, an indication of the ferocity of the shearers' dispute. In 1994, the destruction of this noble vessel was commemorated in an event which attracted over 700 people from the sparsely-populated surrounds.

1941  -             Party dissension causes Robert Menzies to resign as Prime Minister.

Robert Gordon Menzies was born in the Victorian town of Jeparit on 20 December 1894. In 1928 he entered politics after being elected to Victorias Legislative Council for East Yarra. After six years in Victorian state politics as Attorney-General and Minister for Railways (192834), he was elected to federal parliament as member for Kooyong. On April 18, 1939, he was elected leader of the United Australia Party following the death of Joseph Lyons eleven days earlier, and became Prime Minister on 26 April 1939.

On 28 August 1941, party dissension led Menzies to resign as Prime Minister. However, after forming the Liberal Party of Australia from the remnants of the UAP in 1944, Menzies regrouped to become Prime Minister for the second time on 19 December 1949 when the new Liberal Party, in coalition with the Country Party, beat Labor. He then remained as Prime Minister for another 16 years, a record which has not been broken in Australian politics. He retired in 1966, and died in 1978.

1963  -             Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I have a dream" speech.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. He became a Baptist minister, and African American civil rights activist. In his fight for civil rights, he organised and led marches for desegregation, fair hiring, the right of African Americans to vote, and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted later into United States law with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Prior to this, King delivered a powerful speech outlining his dream for racial harmony. He spoke of his dream for freedom before a 250,000-strong crowd of civil rights protesters at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Perhaps the most famous segment of his speech included the words, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by their character."

Martin Luther King's life was tragically cut short when he was shot in the neck by a rifle bullet in Memphis, Tennessee, on 4 April 1968. James Earl Ray was convicted of his murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison. But while King's life was taken from him prematurely, his legacy lives on in the equal rights now enjoyed by millions of African-Americans in the USA.

Cheers - John