JANUARY 1 APPROPRIATE
AUSTRALIA Day is celebrated on January 26 each year and that is the date an English sea captain planted a Union Jack flag on “Australian” soil.
The Commonwealth of Australia was formed on January 1, 1901 when the Australian colonies decided to unite into the Commonwealth of Australia and that is why Australia Day should be celebrated on January 1 each year.
John Phillips, Edmonton
661
The Rashidun Caliph Ali, cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, is assassinated while praying in the Great Mosque of Kufa.
1788
The First Fleet arrives at Port Jackson to establish a penal colony, after abandoning a site at Botany Bay.
1798
The first recorded sightings of a lyrebird and a koala by a settler are made by John Price, 19, governor John Hunter’s servant, in the Southern Highlands.
1808
Major George Johnston leads troops of the NSW Corps to arrest Governor William Bligh at Government House. It is later dubbed the “Rum Rebellion”.
1912
James Edward Morgan, 21, blacksmith, of Waverley, is killed by a shark while swimming in the Lane Cove River, above Fig Tree, shortly before 2pm, while his girlfriend watches. He dies just after two men drag him ashore.
1926
Scottish inventor John Logie Baird shows his “televisor”, or television transmitter, to scientists at a laboratory in Frith St, Soho, London, demonstrating with a ventriloquist’s doll.
1938
On the 150th anniversary of white settlement, Aborigines meet in the Australian Hall, Sydney, in a day of mourning and call for land rights, citizenship rights and selfdetermination.
1988
Australia commemorates its bicentenary with a spectacle including a tall ships flotilla. Meanwhile, activist Burnum Burnum raises an Aboriginal flag in Dover to claim England for his people.
2020
Former LA Lakers basketball star Kobe Bryant is killed in a helicopter crash.