ON THIS DAY
1600
The East India Co, formed for the exploitation of trade with East and South East Asia and India, is incorporated by English royal charter.
1788
On the governor’s orders, an Aboriginal man is captured at Manly Cove, roped by the neck and taken to Sydney by boat. Other men throw spears, firesticks and stones but the British open fire with muskets before escaping. At first he is called Manly and then by his real name Arabanoo. For three months he is locked up at night in a hut.
1838
Five Sisters of Charity from St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin arrive in Sydney. They would set up St Vincent’s Hospital here.
1879
Thomas Alva Edison (pictured) gives the first public demonstration of his electric light bulb, at his Menlo Park laboratory in New Jersey.
1920
Prime minister W.M. Hughes removes Walter Burley Griffin as director of construction at Canberra after disagreements over his supervisory role. Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney Griffin had won the competition to design the national capital.
1929
Antarctic explorer Douglas Mawson’s pilots, Stuart Campbell and Eric Douglas, first sight distant MacRobertson Land.
1934
A shark kills Richard Soden, 19, as he leads in a swimming race up the Georges River near Milperra Bridge. The shark bites his left leg. Upstream, within an hour, at Kentucky near today’s Bankstown Airport, teenager Beryl Morrin loses both arms but survives a shark attack.
1964
Donald Campbell’s Bluebird breaks the world water speed record. The Briton hits an average 444.6km/h on Western Australia’s Lake Dumbleyung.