History, anything goes, including pictures

[RnR]

13 may 1787 – The First Fleet leaves Portsmouth, England, for New South Wales, with the intention of establishing the first European settlement in Australia.

The First Fleet is the name given to the 11 ships that left England on 13 May 1787 to found the penal colony that became the first European settlement in Australia. From England, the Fleet sailed southwest to Rio de Janeiro, then east to Cape Town and via the Great Southern Ocean to Botany Bay, taking 250 to 252 days from departure to final arrival.

The First Fleet leaving Portsmouth on 13 May 1787.

The Fleet consisted of two Royal Navy vessels HMS Sirius and HMS Supply, three store ships and six convict transports, carrying between 1,000 and 1,500 convicts, marines, seamen, civil officers and free people. The majority were British, but there were also African, American and French convicts on board. The convicts had committed a variety of crimes, including theft, perjury, fraud, assault, and robbery, for which they had variously been sentenced to penal transportation for 7 years, 14 years, or the term of their natural life.

Ropes, crockery, agricultural equipment and a miscellany of other stores were needed. Items transported included tools, agricultural implements, seeds, spirits, medical supplies, bandages, surgical instruments, handcuffs, leg irons and a prefabricated wooden frame for the colony's first Government House. The party had to rely on its own provisions to survive until it could make use of local materials, assuming suitable supplies existed, and grow its own food and raise livestock.

First Fleet in Sydney Cove after arrival on the morning of 27 January 1788. Marine artist Frank Allen.

According to the first census of 1788 as reported by Governor Phillip to Lord Sydney, the white population of the colony was 1,030 and the colony also consisted of 7 horses, 29 sheep, 74 swine, 6 rabbits, and 7 cattle.

 

[mellowyellow]

Wounded Canadian soldiers present a nurse with a dog brought out of the trenches with them, October 1916.

Notice the Japanese soldier in the group? He’s a Japanese Canadian, they are all Canadians in this pic. They're wearing a mix of the brit 5-button tunic, and Canadian 7-button tunic.

British-Japanese alliance was still quite strong at the time, which required Japan and Britain to aid each other's war efforts. Japan famously upheld this agreement by sending several dozen medical staff to the allies, but there was also other military cooperation about which less is written -- for example, the IJN had a destroyer squadron that was based out of Malta, as part of the British war effort. Quite likely the Asian man is a Japanese officer in some sort of exchange program with the British Army.

Source: Reddit

Crazy how the Japanese were our allies in WW1 and enemies in WW2.

 

[hawkdon]

View attachment 164835
Wounded Canadian soldiers present a nurse with a dog brought out of the trenches with them, October 1916.

Notice the Japanese soldier in the group? He’s a Japanese Canadian, they are all Canadians in this pic. They're wearing a mix of the brit 5-button tunic, and Canadian 7-button tunic.

British-Japanese alliance was still quite strong at the time, which required Japan and Britain to aid each other's war efforts. Japan famously upheld this agreement by sending several dozen medical staff to the allies, but there was also other military cooperation about which less is written -- for example, the IJN had a destroyer squadron that was based out of Malta, as part of the British war effort. Quite likely the Asian man is a Japanese officer in some sort of exchange program with the British Army.

Source: Reddit

Crazy how the Japanese were our allies in WW1 and enemies in WW2.

What I noticed is how clean that nurse looks!!!

 

[RnR]

14 May 1796 – Edward Jenner administers the first smallpox inoculation.

Edward Jenner, FRS (1749 – 1823) was an English physician and scientist who was the pioneer of smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine. The terms "vaccine" and "vaccination" are derived from Variolae vaccinae (smallpox of the cow), the term devised by Jenner to denote cowpox.

Jenner is often called "the father of immunology", and his work is said to have "saved more lives than the work of any other human".

Dr Jenner performing his first vaccination on James Phipps, a boy of age 8. 14 May 1796.

On 14 May 1796, Jenner tested his hypothesis by inoculating James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy who was the son of Jenner's gardener. He scraped pus from cowpox blisters on the hands of Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid who had caught cowpox from a cow called Blossom, whose hide now hangs on the wall of the St George's medical school library in Tooting.

Phipps was the 17th case described in Jenner's first paper on vaccination. Jenner inoculated Phipps in both arms that day, subsequently producing in Phipps a fever and some uneasiness, but no full-blown infection. The boy was later challenged with variolous material and again showed no sign of infection.

In Jenner’s time, smallpox killed around 10 percent of the population, with the number as high as 20 percent in towns and cities where infection spread more easily.

 

[mellowyellow]

Douglas MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito, September 27, 1945

 

[RnR]

View attachment 164990
Douglas MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito, September 27, 1945

The surrender of Imperial Japan was announced by Japanese Emperor Hirohito on August 15 and formally signed on September 2, 1945, bringing the hostilities of World War II to a close.

Japanese foreign affairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Japanese Instrument of Surrender aboard the USS Missouri as General Richard K. Sutherland watches, September 2, 1945.

MacArthur arrived in Tokyo on August 30, and immediately decreed several laws: No Allied personnel were to assault Japanese people. No Allied personnel were to eat the scarce Japanese food. At MacArthur's insistence, Emperor Hirohito remained on the imperial throne. The wartime cabinet was replaced with a cabinet acceptable to the Allies and committed to implementing the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, which among other things called for the country to become a parliamentary democracy.

 

[RnR]

15 May 1536 – Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, stands trial in London on charges of treason, adultery and incest; she is condemned to death by a specially-selected jury.

Anne Boleyn (circa 1501 – 19 May 1536) was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard, and was educated in the Netherlands and France, largely as a maid of honour to Queen Claude of France. Anne returned to England in early 1522, to marry her Irish cousin James Butler, 9th Earl of Ormond; the marriage plans were broken off, and instead she secured a post at court as maid of honour to Henry VIII's wife, Catherine of Aragon.

In February or March 1526, Henry VIII began his pursuit of Anne. She resisted his attempts to seduce her, refusing to become his mistress, which her sister Mary had been. Henry and Anne formally married on 25 January 1533, after a secret wedding on 14 November 1532. On 23 May 1533, newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declared Henry and Catherine's marriage null and void; five days later, he declared Henry and Anne's marriage valid. Anne was crowned Queen of England on 1 June 1533. On 7 September, she gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth I. Henry was disappointed to have a daughter rather than a son but hoped a son would follow and professed to love Elizabeth. Anne subsequently had three miscarriages, and by March 1536, Henry was courting Jane Seymour. In order to marry Jane Seymour, Henry had to find reasons to end the marriage to Anne.

Late Elizabethan portrait, possibly derived from a lost original of 1533–36. An early-20th-century painting of Anne Boleyn, depicting her deer hunting with King Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn in the Tower by Edouard Cibot.

Henry had Anne investigated for high treason in April 1536. On 2 May she was arrested and sent to the Tower of London, where she was tried before a jury of peers – which included Henry Percy, her former betrothed, and her own uncle, Thomas Howard – and found guilty on 15 May 1536. She was beheaded four days later.

 

[RnR]

15 May 1718 – James Puckle, a London lawyer, patents the world's first machine gun.

James Puckle (1667–1724) was an English inventor, lawyer and writer from London chiefly remembered for his invention of the Defence Gun, better known as the Puckle gun, a multi-shot gun mounted on a stand capable of firing up to nine rounds per minute.

The Puckle gun is one of the first weapons referred to as a machine gun.

On 15 May 1718, Puckle patented his new invention, the Defence Gun — a tripod-mounted, single-barrelled flintlock weapon fitted with a multishot revolving cylinder, designed for shipboard use to prevent boarding. The barrel was 3 feet long with a bore of 1.25 inches and a pre-loaded cylinder which held 6-11 charges and could fire 63 shots in seven minutes—this at a time when the standard soldier's musket could at best be loaded and fired five times per minute.

 

[RnR]

16 May 1929 – The first Academy Awards ceremony takes place in Hollywood.

The first Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, honoured the best films of 1927 and 1928 and took place on 16 May 1929 at a private dinner held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

Academy president Douglas Fairbanks hosted the show. Tickets cost $5.00, 270 people attended the event and the presentation ceremony only lasted 15 minutes. Douglas Fairbanks presents Janet Gaynor with the first Academy Award for Best Actress, for her work in Seventh Heaven.

The Academy Awards were not called Oscars until later. One of the earliest mentions of the term Oscar dates to a Time magazine article about the 6th Academy Awards in 1934. Walt Disney also thanked the Academy for his “Oscar” as early as 1932. The statuette officially received the name “Oscar” from the Academy in 1939.

 

[RnR]

16 May 2002 – Alec Campbell, the last ANZAC veteran of the Gallipoli campaign dies.

Alec Campbell, the final surviving participant of the Gallipoli campaign, died of pneumonia on 16 May 2002, aged 103. Alec Campbell was born on 26 February 1899, in Launceston. Alec was a student at Scotch College when World War One started in 1914. The following year, when Alec was working as a clerk, he falsified his age up to 18 years and five months in order to be an eligible age to enlist on 2 July 1915.

Private Campbell arrived at Gallipoli in October 1915 with the 15th Battalion and remained there through to the evacuation. During his time at Gallipoli, Private Campbell dodged bullets and saw mates shot as he carried water, ran messages and stood sentry.

Commemorative stamps. Alec Campbell at age 16. Alec Campbell during WW1.

While Private Campbell was lucky not to be hit by the shelling, shrapnel and snipers, he did sustain a lifelong injury. A falling soldier's rifle hit him in the head which destroyed a facial nerve in Alec Campbell’s cheek. In time, this would paralyse the muscles in the right side of his face and lead to Bell’s Palsy. After the evacuation from Gallipoli, Private Campbell became very ill and was discharged in August 1916. “Flu would knock him out of the war and plague his health for the rest of his life.”

A State Funeral was held in his honour in Hobart, at which the then “Governor-General Peter Hollingworth described Alec’s passing as ‘an occasion for Australians to pause and reflect on the passing of the generation that gave us our identity and character as a nation’.”

 

[mellowyellow]

Freddie Mercury, with his mother

 

[Lewkat]

 

[mellowyellow]

Sean Connery pictured with wrestler Chopper Howlett in the fifties. He had developed an interest in body building and even took part in the 1950 Mr Universe competition, coming third overall.

I wonder if they used steroids back then.

 

[RnR]

View attachment 165361
Sean Connery pictured with wrestler Chopper Howlett in the fifties. He had developed an interest in body building and even took part in the 1950 Mr Universe competition, coming third overall.

I wonder if they used steroids back then.

What is the history of anabolic steroid use?
Testosterone was first synthesised in Germany in 1935 and was used medically to treat depression. Professional athletes began misusing anabolic steroids during the 1954 Olympics, when Russian weightlifters were given testosterone. In the 1980s, anabolic steroid use began to extend into the general population, and young men began using these substances, sometimes to enhance athletic performance but in most cases to improve personal appearance.

 

[RnR]

17 May 1792 – The New York Stock Exchange is formed under the Buttonwood Agreement, signed by 24 stockbrokers outside of 68 Wall Street New York under a buttonwood tree.

On 17 May 1792 twenty four brokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement which set a floor commission rate charged to clients and bound the signers to give preference to the other signers in securities sales. The earliest securities traded were mostly governmental securities such as War Bonds from the Revolutionary War and First Bank of the United States stock.

Depiction of the brokers under the buttonwood tree. Tontine Coffee House, New York City, circa 1820.

In 1793 The Tontine Coffee House, in Wall Street, was dedicated as the New Yorkers exchange. Before the construction of the Tontine Coffee House the brokers of the Buttonwood Agreement and others did trade at the Merchant's Coffee House just across the road. The Tontine Coffee House was built by a group of brokers to serve as a meeting place for trade and correspondence. Several locations were used between 1817 and 1865, when the present location at 11 Wall Street was adopted.

The New York Stock Exchange is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalisation of its listed companies at US$30.1 trillion as of February 2018. The NYSE trading floor is composed of 21 trading rooms. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978.

 

[RnR]

17 May 1875 – Aristides wins the first Kentucky Derby.

The Kentucky Derby is a horse race that is held annually on the first Saturday in May at Louisville, Kentucky in the United States. In 1872, Col. Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr., grandson of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition, travelled to England, visiting Epsom in Surrey where The Derby had been running annually since 1780. From there, Clark went on to Paris, France, where in 1863, a group of racing enthusiasts had formed the French Jockey Club and had organised the Grand Prix de Paris at Longchamp, which at the time was the greatest race in France.

Returning home to Kentucky, Clark organised the Louisville Jockey Club for the purpose of raising money to build quality racing facilities just outside the city. The track would soon become known as Churchill Downs, named for John and Henry Churchill, who provided the land for the racetrack.

Churchill Downs in 1901. Aristides, 1877 drawing by C. Lloyd. year-old horses contested the first Derby at Churchill Downs. Under jockey Oliver Lewis, a colt named Aristides.

On May 17, 1875, in front of an estimated crowd of 10,000 people, a field of 15 three-year-old horses contested the first Derby at Churchill Downs. Under jockey Oliver Lewis, a colt named Aristides, who was trained by future Hall of Famer Ansel Williamson, won the inaugural Derby. Later that year, Lewis rode Aristides to a second-place finish in the Belmont Stakes.

 

[RnR]

17 May 1902 – Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais discovers the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient mechanical analog computer.

The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient mechanical calculator. It is also described as the first analogue computer. Found housed in a wooden box, the device is a complex clockwork mechanism composed of at least 30 meshing bronze gears. Its remains were found as one lump, later separated in three main fragments, which are now divided into 82 separate fragments after conservation works. Four of these fragments contain gears, while inscriptions are found on many others.

This mechanism is the most complex device known in Antiquity. Main fragments of the Antikythera mechanism at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. A reconstructed model of the Antikythera mechanism.

After years of research using detailed imaging scanning of the artefact and models, it was found that the device could be use to show the motions of the sun, the moon and probably some of the planets. This makes it possible to use the device as a calendar and to calculate future eclipses. There were three big dials, and three small ones. Used as a calendar the main functions were:
• A solar calendar showing days and months, as well as the babylonian zodiac
• A Lunisolar calendar showing the months
• A calendar, showing Eclipse cycles, of past and future eclipses of the sun and the moon
• A calendar, showing the years in which there would be panhelllenic games or Olympics.

The artefact was discovered on 17 May 1902 by archaeologist Valerios Stais, among wreckage retrieved from a wreck by sponge divers off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera. The instrument is believed to have been designed and constructed by Greek scientists and has been variously dated to about 87 BC, or between 150 and 100 BC, or to 205 BC, or within a generation before the date of the shipwreck which occurred in about 60 B.C.

 

[mellowyellow]

The Soviet union finally withdrawing it's troops from Afghanistan after almost a decade of fighting in February 1989



All those lives lost, and for what?

 

[mellowyellow]

Queen consort Anne Boleyn is found guilty of high treason, adultery and incest on May 15, 1536, in a sham trial to get husband King Henry VIII out of a marriage he didn't like.

She was beheaded four days later. Henry VIII would marry his next wife, Jane Seymour, the next day.

 

[RnR]

18 May ... International Museum Day

The Capitoline Museums, a group of art and archaeological museums in Piazza del Campidoglio, on top of the Capitoline Hill in Rome, Italy in a plan conceived by Michelangelo in 1536 and executed over a period of more than 400 years.

While some of the oldest public museums in the world opened in Italy during the Renaissance, the majority of these significant museums in the world opened during the 18th century:

• the Capitoline Museums, the oldest public collection of art in the world, began in 1471 when Pope Sixtus IV donated a group of important ancient sculptures to the people of Rome,
• the Vatican Museums, the second oldest museum in the world, traces its origins to the public displayed sculptural collection begun in 1506 by Pope Julius II,
• the Royal Armouries in the Tower of London is the oldest museum in the United Kingdom. It opened to the public in 1660, though there had been paying privileged visitors to the armouries displays from 1592. Today the museum has three sites including its new headquarters in Leeds.

 

[RnR]

18 May 1980 – Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington, United States, killing 57 people and causing $3 billion in damage.

On May 18, 1980, a major volcanic eruption occurred at Mount St. Helens, a volcano located in Skamania County, in the State of Washington. It has often been declared as the most disastrous volcanic eruption in U.S. history. The eruption was preceded by a two-month series of earthquakes and steam-venting episodes, caused by an injection of magma at shallow depth below the volcano that created a large bulge and a fracture system on the mountain's north slope.

An earthquake at 8:32:17 am on Sunday, 18 May 1980, caused the entire weakened north face to slide away, creating the largest landslide ever recorded. An eruption column rose 80,000 feet into the atmosphere and deposited ash in 11 U.S. states. At the same time, snow, ice and several entire glaciers on the volcano melted, forming a series of large volcanic mudslides that reached as far as the Columbia River, nearly 50 miles to the southwest.

 

[mellowyellow]

Judy Garland (bottom right) and her sisters in 1935:
The Gumm Sisters changed their name to Garland when appearing at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1934. By 1935, Frances had shed her nickname “Baby” and chose the more adult-sounding Judy

 

[Pappy]

In 1900, an American hotelier named George Boldt was determined to build a fairytale castle for his beloved wife Louise. But in 1904, he suddenly ordered his workers to drop their tools — because Louise had unexpectedly died at age 31.

Heartbroken, Boldt never returned to the palace to complete the construction and it was left to rot for nearly seven decades. While the castle was eventually renovated for visitors, no one has ever lived in it and it remains unoccupied to this day.

Go inside this opulent New York palace — and the tragic story behind it: https://bit.ly/3eHKnLi

 

[mellowyellow]

In 1900, an American hotelier named George Boldt was determined to build a fairytale castle for his beloved wife Louise. But in 1904, he suddenly ordered his workers to drop their tools — because Louise had unexpectedly died at age 31.

Heartbroken, Boldt never returned to the palace to complete the construction and it was left to rot for nearly seven decades. While the castle was eventually renovated for visitors, no one has ever lived in it and it remains unoccupied to this day.

Go inside this opulent New York palace — and the tragic story behind it: https://bit.ly/3eHKnLiView attachment 165792

Fascinating, thanks Pappy

 

[RnR]

In 1900, an American hotelier named George Boldt was determined to build a fairytale castle for his beloved wife Louise. But in 1904, he suddenly ordered his workers to drop their tools — because Louise had unexpectedly died at age 31.

Heartbroken, Boldt never returned to the palace to complete the construction and it was left to rot for nearly seven decades. While the castle was eventually renovated for visitors, no one has ever lived in it and it remains unoccupied to this day.

Go inside this opulent New York palace — and the tragic story behind it: https://bit.ly/3eHKnLiView attachment 165792

Really interesting, thanks Pappy. Boldt Castle is now maintained by the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority as a tourist attraction. The TIBA has done a marvellous job of restoring it IMO.