ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include why you shouldn't salt a leech that's sucking your blood, the mathematics of where to park your car, the physics behind why barns are painted red, and the history of penicillin.
Scots, wha hae - Happy Burns Day! Here's a bio of Scotland's "prince of poets" Robert Burns, plus Braveheart, Burns Supper instructions,and lots of haggis.
ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and include kite-drawn carriages from 1822, the history of the master bathroom, milking scorpions by hand, and a Bill of Mortality showing the deaths in London for the week of Aug 15 - 22, 1665.
We're built, as a nation, on the grounds of a concentration camp. It's like saying, "OK, here's Auschwitz. Here's where we'll start our country.
~ Peter Carey (b.1943) (of Australia, City Limits, London, 1 April 1988)
An interesting change of heart in these next two quotes:
I have been disappointed in all my experiences of Australia, except as to its wickedness; for it is far more wicked than I have conceived it possible for any place to be, or than it is possible for me to describe to you in England.
~ Henry Parkes (wiki) (1815-1896) (letter, 1 May 1840, later published in An Emigrant's Home Letters)
With our splendid harbor, our beautifully situated city, our vast territories, all our varied and inexhaustible natural wealth, if we don't convert our colony into a great and prosperous nation, it will be a miracle of error for which we shall have to answer as for a gigantic sin.
~ Parkes* (speech, Melbourne, 16 March 1867)
In the weltering hell of the Moorooroo plain
The Yatala Wangary withers and dies,
And the Worrow Wanilla, demented with pain,
To the Woolgoolga woodlands despairingly flies ...
~ Mark Twain (1835-1910) (Following the Equator, Ch. 36, "A Sweltering Din - Australia", stanza. 7**)
Governor Arthur Phillip hoists the British flag
over the new colony at Sydney in 1788.
Today is Australia Day (wiki), the anniversary of the date in 1788 when Captain Arthur Phillip led a fleet of convict ships into Sydney Cove and initiated the establishment of New South Wales, Australia, as a penal colony.*** By the mid-19th century, free immigration had replaced the transportation of convicts in populating the country, and a half dozen other colonies were established there, leading to a final federation as the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. British involvement in Australian affairs was formally abolished in 1986, and in many ways, the modern nation more resembles the United States than any other in the world.
* N.B. Australian statesman Henry Parkes was instrumental in welding the independent colonies of that sub-continent into a single nation.
** Twain's poem, of which this is only one of about ten stanzas, was written in 1897 and is based entirely on real Australian place names.
*** It was the independence of the United States that forced the English to find an alternative destination for the "transportation" of criminals.
Here's a brief video on Australia Day:
Australia's well-known, but unofficial, national song:
ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and include 18th Century cudgelling matches, Scots, the birthday of Scotland's "prince of poets" Robert Burns, an airship disaster worse than the Hindenburg (the USS Akron), and video of a dog intimidating a pair of much larger lions.
For geology buffs, this bit of history on the formation of the continents from Live Science:
Geologists matching rocks from opposite sides of the globe have found that part of Australia was once attached to North America 1.7 billion years ago.
Researchers from Curtin University in Australia examined rocks from the Georgetown region of northern Queensland. The rocks — sandstone sedimentary rocks that formed in a shallow sea — had signatures that were unknown in Australia but strongly resembled rocks that can be seen in present-day Canada.
The researchers, who described their findings online Jan. 17 in the journal Geology, concluded that the Georgetown area broke away from North America 1.7 billion years ago. Then, 100 million years later, this landmass collided with what is now northern Australia, at the Mount Isa region
This diagram shows the Georgetown terrane, in green, joining Australia around 1.6 billion years ago during the formation of the supercontinent Nuna. (Credit) Zoomable image here.
Australia never enacted full Prohibition (wiki) as the United States did, but there were campaigns against alcohol consumption there, as well as here. These photographs, dated between 1863 and 1868, are believed to be propaganda from a New South Wales temperance group. They coincide with the 1866 “Drunkard’s Punishment Bill”*, suggesting there was a bit of a local alcoholism problem. The photographer, Charles Percy Pickering, was commissioned by the NSW government.
Decades after these photos were taken, the Australian temperance movement seemingly scored a victory when mandatory early closures were enacted for pubs and hotel bars as an austerity measure during World War I. This backfired, however; the early closing times created the “six o’clock swill,” as people dashed from work to bars and drank as heavily and quickly as possible, ending up like the model in these photos before the sun was down.
The following is the Bill introduced by Mr. Martin and passed by the Legislative Assembly:-
Clause 1. "Any person who shall be found drunk in any highway, street, or public place, shall be liable, on conviction, as hereunder mentioned, to a fine or penalty not exceeding twenty shillings.
Clause 2. "Any person who shall be found drunk and disorderly in any highway, street, road, or public place, shall be liable, on conviction, as hereunder mentioned, to a fine or penalty not exceeding forty shillings.
Clause 3. "It shall be lawful for any constable to apprehend and confine in any watchhouse, until he can be taken before a Justice of the Peace, to be dealt with as hereunder mentioned, any person whom he may find drunk, or drunk and disorderly, in any highway, street, road, or public place.
Clause 4. "It shall be lawful for any Justice of the Peace, before whom any person shall be taken as aforesaid, and charged without any formal information, with a breach of either the first two sections of this act, to enquire into and adjudicate upon such charge in a summary way, and, on conviction, to direct that such person shall pay such fine or penalty as is hereinbefore provided, and, in default of immediate payment, to commit such person to any gaol or house of correction for any period not exceeding seven days, with or without hard labour.
Clause 5. "This act may be cited for all purposes as the 'Drunkards' Punishment Act of 1866."
Unwanted former pet goldfish that have grown to the size of footballs are travelling hundreds of kilometres through Western Australian waterways, new research has found.
Weighing up to 1.9kg, the goldfish enter river systems after being dumped from aquariums into catchment lakes.
Once established they are difficult to eradicate and damage Australian ecosystems, Murdoch University researchers have found.
ICYMI, Wednesday's links are here, and include a Romanian cave sealed for 5.5 million years (it's full of strange creatures who evolved separately), the Shakespeare fanatic who introduced the Bard’s birds to America (32 starlings in the 1890s to over 200 million now), the couch-potato gene, and, for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fans, a celebration of Towel Day.
Witnesses said it took hours for the snake to take the crocodile down.
A group of Australians were having breakfast near a lake in Mount Isa over the weekend when they witnessed an unexpected event: an epic battle between a snake and crocodile.
‘‘[The crocodile] was fighting at the start, so it was trying to keep its head out of water and survive,” Corlis said of the event, calling it “unbelievable.”
