Archive for August, 2012

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The Ballarat War broke out in the simmering goldfields of Victoria

Posted in Australia, Geology, Historical articles, History, Politics on Tuesday, 7 August 2012

This edited article about the Australian Gold Rush originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 760 published on 7th August 1976.

Eureka Hotel, picture, image, illustration

The Australian goldminers’ rebellion broke out at the Eureka Hotel, Ballarat, in Victoria by Clive Uptton

The count-down to catastrophe began with a murder. The Eureka Hotel at Ballarat in the heart of the Victorian goldfields was run by three ex-convicts, James Bentley, his wife, and John Farrell.

Farrell ruled the roost by tough tactics and had managed to get a liquor licence over the heads of far more worthy candidates.

One night, a much-liked Scottish miner, James Scobie, was killed in the hotel. Suspicion at once fell on the two men and they and Bentley’s wife were accused of murder and rapidly found not guilty.

Fury erupted in the goldfields. We know that the miners smarted under corrupt police and, especially, under the infamous Captain Armstrong, and resented the licensing laws that forced them to pay high fees for mining. Worse, they had had to show their certificates continually, this holding up their work. Armstrong had finally been dismissed and left laughing, having made a fortune. But the resentment continued, especially as it was becoming harder to find gold.

The miners – the “diggers” – believed in “mateship” and they hated being ruled by all-powerful authorities in distant Melbourne, where they had no say in the government. Yet it was the diggers who were making Australia boom, and especially the Victorian diggers, who had found even more gold than those in New South Wales.

And now three villains had escaped justice.

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Eric Fernihough – a long-forgotten record-breaking motorcyclist

Posted in Historical articles, Sport, Sporting Heroes on Tuesday, 7 August 2012

This edited article about Eric Fernihough originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 760 published on 7th August 1976.

Motorcyclist, picture, image, illustration

Timing a record-breaking motorcyclist in the Thirties

Eric Fernihough knew that he could be the fastest man on two – or three – wheels. Fastest mile, fastest flying kilometre and the sidecar records were the targets he was aiming at in 1937 when he took his supercharged Brough Superior to the Gyon road, that stretched like a straight ribbon across the Hungarian plain.

Already he had reached 163.82 mph and won the world’s record for the mile. But for the flying kilometre he had to wait for a lull in the powerful winds that blew across the plain.

At last his moment came. Fernihough made two runs over the kilometre, and his average speed of 169.8 mph gave him the record.

For the next hour, he and his mechanics worked hard, fitting a sidecar to the bike. Then he was off again at speeds which sometimes touched 147 mph. His average was 137 mph – and another record was in the bag.

Although he had been taking part in speed contests since he was a young man, Fernihough never forgot the time that he became the world’s fastest motor-cyclist.

In 1910 Captain Scott set sail for Antarctica in the Terra Nova

Posted in Adventure, Exploration, Heroes and Heroines, Historical articles, History, Ships on Tuesday, 7 August 2012

This edited article about Captain Scott originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 760 published on 7th August 1976.

Terra Nova, picture, image, illustration

The Terra Nova in the Antarctic by James E McConnell

Robert Falcon Scott’s ship, the Discovery, is famous, no doubt because she is preserved for all to see alongside the Embankment in London. His other ship, Terra Nova actually has more of a claim to fame because it was in this ship that Scott sailed on one of the most dramatic expeditions of all time.

Scott had already, at the age of 32, as a Royal Navy officer, been placed in command of a Royal Geographical Society expedition to Antarctica at the turn of this century. It had been one of the most important Antarctic journeys ever undertaken. Although the expedition was a success, inasmuch as all concerned had got nearer to the South Pole than anyone else, it was to have a tragic bearing on Scott’s fate, ten years later. The expedition had convinced Scott, an animal-lover, that it was cruel to use dogs to pull the supplies. “Conquest is more nobly and splendidly won without them,” he wrote afterwards. It was a conviction that was to cost him his life.

In 1910, Terra Nova set sail for the Antarctic with a large team of physicists, geologists, biologists, zoologists and a chemist aboard. It was midsummer, and they were to sail to the McMurdo Sound and set up a base there, before cruising eastward along the edge of Ross Island shelf to allow a second party to explore the almost unknown King Edward VII Land. Supply dumps were to be placed at intervals along the ice-shelf, thus providing a link between the two parties.

During the winter, preparations would be made for an assault on the Pole.

Motor transport, ponies and dogs would all be used to get the southern party to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. From then on they would be on their own.

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Felicia Hemans immortalised a young boy’s tragic heroism in ‘Casabianca’

Posted in English Literature, Famous battles, Heroes and Heroines, Historical articles, Literature on Tuesday, 7 August 2012

This edited article about Giacomo Casabianca originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 760 published on 7th August 1976.

Casabianca, picture, image, illustration

Giacomo Casabianca, the Captain’s son immortaiseed in Mrs Heman’s famous poem by James E McConnell

The French fleet was attacked in Aboukir Bay, at the mouth of the Nile on the night of 1st August, 1798, by a small British fleet commanded by Horatio Nelson. Nelson gained a great victory but a 10-year-old boy, who died in the battle, gained immortality.

L’Orient, commanded by Captain Casabianca, was one of the first French warships to be attacked. Although his ship was on fire and he was wounded, Casabianca was determined to fight on to the end. He told his son, Giacomo, who was on board, to remain in the shelter of the mainmast until he told him to leave.

Soon, however, Casabianca was dead and the ship was a blazing furnace, but Giacomo remained at his post waiting for the order which never came. He was still standing there when the ship blew up. He was the inspiration for Mrs. Felicia Heman’s poem, ‘The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck’.

The Atlantic Cable enabled nation to talk unto nation

Posted in America, Communications, Historical articles, History, Royalty, Sea, Ships, Technology on Tuesday, 7 August 2012

This edited article about originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 760 published on 7th August 1976.

Great Eastern, picture, image, illustration

The Great Eastern paying out the Atlantic cable

Queen Victoria received an historic telegram on 5th August 1858 from James Buchanan, President of the United States.

It informed the Queen that the submarine cable between Britain and America had been laid across the bed of the Atlantic and that the two countries could now for the first time communicate with each other by electric telegraph.

Unfortunately, the working life of this cable was very short. A second cable, laid in 1865, broke before completion. The next year, another was laid satisfactorily, and the 1865 one was completed. Nation could then talk unto nation.

An unexpected triumph for British infantry at the Battle of Minden

Posted in Famous battles, Historical articles, History, War on Tuesday, 7 August 2012

This edited article about the Battle of Minden originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 760 published on 7th August 1976.

Scrapbook of British Soldier, picture, image, illustration

The Battle of Minden (bottom) by Eric Parker

The Seven Years’ War was at its height in 1759. Britain and her allies, Prussia and Hanover, were fighting France, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Saxony and Spain. In the previous year, six British infantry regiments had been sent to Germany to reinforce the Allied army which was forcing the French towards the Rhine.

The British and an allied force came upon a French army of nearly twice its size near the town of Minden, on the River Weser.

The British regiments were ordered to capture the small village of Hahlen. But the British commander, General Waldegrave, mistook the order to mean a frontal attack on the whole French army. So, on the 1st August, wearing in their hats roses they had plucked that morning, his six regiments marched into battle, through a terrible crossfire from the French guns.

Closing the gaps in their shattered ranks, the British infantry halted in a thin red line to await the cavalry. They waited silently until the galloping French horsemen were ten yards away, then they opened fire with their Brown Bess muskets.

Horses and men crashed in heaps in face of the deadly British fire. Again and again, the French cavalry charged, reformed and charged afresh. But they could make no impression against the infantry and were utterly destroyed.

Did the Czech Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk commit suicide in 1948?

Posted in Communism, Famous crimes, Historical articles, History, Politics on Tuesday, 7 August 2012

This edited article about Jan Masaryk originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 760 published on 7th August 1976.

Neville Chamberlain, picture, image, illustration

Jan Masaryk felt his country had been betrayed by Neville Chamberlain and the British Government during the Munich Crisis, by John Keay

One of the most horrifying forms of assassination, once well known in mid-Europe, is called by the rather ugly name of defenestration. It means simply that the victim is hurled to his death through an open window. And it was a word that leapt back into the minds of the Czechoslovak people when they heard that their popular Foreign Minister, Jan Masaryk, had been found dead beneath the windows of his ministerial apartment in the Czernin Palace, in Prague.

“Jan Masaryk committed suicide during the night,” announced the new Communist cabinet of the Czech government. No one believed it. Masaryk was not a communist and was known to be very concerned about the way the Communists were seizing power in Czechoslovakia. Everyone guessed that he did not fall, but was pushed.

While the Czechs wept openly in the streets for the loss of a much-loved statesman, the Communist government laid out the body for an official lying-in-state and a funeral with full national honours. Filing past the open coffin, the mourners noticed a bunch of snowdrops placed close to Masaryk’s right ear.

Who put them there? The dead man’s secretary announced that they had been set in position to hide the stitching marks after the autopsy. Other people whispered darkly that the flowers concealed a bullet hole.

But the newspapers all over the world in that early spring of 1948 were treating Masaryk’s death as the Czech government hoped they would – as an unfortunate case of suicide. It was not until many years later that all sorts of questions began to be asked – questions which led to the suspicion that assassination was much more likely than suicide.

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Dr Livingstone gave his name to Zambia’s major tourist centre

Posted in Adventure, Africa, Discoveries, Exploration, Famous landmarks, Geography, Historical articles, History, Rivers, Travel on Monday, 6 August 2012

This edited article about Livingstone in Zambia originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 759 published on 31st July 1976.

Dr Livingstone, picture, image, illustration

Dr Livingstone discovers the Victoria Falls by James E McConnell

As your jet heads for Livingstone International Airport, you look down on the dull red flatness of parched scrubland that makes up a good deal of the Zambian countryside. There is a dusty road, and here and there villages of thatched huts that look like toys, with distant forests looming dark on the horizon. To anyone making the trip for the first time it is impossible not to feel awe at the sheer toughness of the Victorian explorers who walked across this enormous wilderness with no idea as to what they might find on the other side.

Suddenly someone points, and there is a curious low cloud, all by itself in an otherwise completely blue sky, and you wonder what has caused a cloud to form so close to the hot, dry land. The answer is that the cloud is always there and is unlikely to go away, because it is one of the best known navigational checkpoints in all Africa, “the smoke that thunders”, the cloud of fine spray that hangs permanently above the place where the Zambesi River drops over a high cliff to make the mighty Victoria Falls.

When Dr. David Livingstone reached this spot in 1855 it seemed to him that falls of such grandeur could only be named after his Queen, and it was inevitable that the city that was to grow up nearby should be named after the explorer himself. Few men have deserved such a distinction more, for Livingstone had to overcome enormous difficulties before he could even start on the work to which he was to devote his life.

He was born in a village in Lanarkshire, Scotland, in 1813, poor, and apparently without a chance of doing more with his life than following his friends into the local cotton mill. But unlike his friends, the young Livingstone had two burning ambitions. Inspired by the work of Robert Moffat in Africa, he wanted to be a missionary, and in order that his work should have a practical as well as a spiritual value he promised himself that somehow he would qualify as a doctor as well.

The chance of anyone of Livingstone’s background becoming a doctor in the first half of the 19th century were remote, but from the age of ten he not only studied during the whole of his spare time but actually managed to continue to read text books while working at his loom in the mill. By the time he was 25 he had educated himself to a point at which he was accepted by the London Missionary Society, and two years later he qualified as a doctor, with the intention of serving in China.

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The mysterious abdication of Queen Christina of Sweden

Posted in Historical articles, History, Mystery, Royalty, War on Monday, 6 August 2012

This edited article about Queen Christina originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 759 published on 31st July 1976.

Queen Christina, picture, image, illustration

Descartes discussing philosophy with Queen Christina of Sweden by J Planella

Since the earliest days in man’s history, the reigns of many monarchs have met an abrupt end. Some monarchs have been killed in battle, many have been assassinated, and many more have had their thrones forcibly taken from them. Only a very few have abdicated of their own accord. Those that cast aside their crowns voluntarily sometimes were old men, weary of power, wishing only to live in peace, free from troubles.

But the story of Queen Christina of Sweden who laid aside her sceptre and descended from her throne in the year 1654, is altogether different.

This remarkable young woman, whose abdication was to astound the world, was born in 1626, the only child of Gustavus Adolphus, one of Sweden’s greatest kings.

Known as ‘The Lion Of The North’, because of his brilliant military skill and for the part he was to play in the war that would ravage Germany for thirty years. Gustavus Adolphus was killed at the battle of Lutzen at the age of thirty eight.

The Thirty Years’ War has sometimes been described as a war of religion; and it is true that at its beginning it was a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics; a struggle between northern Protestant Germany, on the one hand, and southern, Catholic Germany led by Austria on the other.

But the series of tragic, drawn-out episodes that would devastate central Europe was really caused by the petty jealousies of rival German princes. Gustavus of Sweden intervened on the side of the Protestants, and led his army into battle against Austria.

Before he left Sweden, however, he presented Christina, his four-year-old daughter, to his country as his successor. He left instructions, too, for her to be given the education usually accorded a man; an education fit for a European monarch.

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‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ – the Olympic motto which motivates champions

Posted in Ancient History, Historical articles, History, Sport, Sporting Heroes on Monday, 6 August 2012

This edited article about the Olympic Games originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 759 published on 31st July 1976.

Olympic Torch-bearer, picture, image, illustration

An Olympic torch-bearer

His name was Milo of Croton. A wrestler, his feats of strength are scattered through the pages of Olympic history, including his great party piece of being able to hold a pomegranate in his clinched fist and defy anyone to take it from him. No one, it seems, ever succeeded, and when he opened his hand the fruit was undamaged.

The modern Olympic motto, Citius, Altius, Fortius (‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’) has inspired many outstanding feats of strength and endurance.

There are many who can justly claim the title “Iron men of the Games”. Take the decathlon men who must master 10 different events over two days; the super-heavy weight-lifters who lift the equivalent of a washing machine, a gas oven and a fridge above their heads during their three-lift programme; the field events giants who must produce in six attempts their very best or they have failed; the boxers whose fate is in the hands of judges, not a stopwatch or tape.

Each demands months of tough training and often a lot of pain. Some men have thrived on training, like the Flying Finn, Paavo Nurmi, one of the stars of the 1924 Games in Paris. Nurmi dominated distance running for 16 years and set over two dozen world records between the wars with an even, precision pace which wore his rivals into the ground.

In the Paris Games, Nurmi enjoyed an amazing week of triumph by qualifying for and winning the 5,000 metres and 1,500 metres, even though both finals were held on the same day within an hour of each other. As if that was not enough, he lined up for the 10,000 metres cross-country race (an event which has now been dropped) on the fifth day of the competition.

Despite an extraordinary heatwave, Nurmi cruised on, never showing any sign of fatigue, to win his third gold medal by a clear minute. A day later he was back in action again in the team race – and collected another gold.

Twenty-five years later, at the 1952 Games in Helsinki, Nurmi, then a balding 55-year-old, rounded off his athletics career by carrying the Olympic torch into the stadium. These were the Games that were to give us another two men of iron – Emil Zatopek, with a unique treble in the three longest athletic events, and Bob Mathias, who was to become the only man to win the decathlon at successive Games.

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