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The Modern Era: From 1900-1970

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1971-60,000BC: At Shanidar, a large cave in the Zagros mountains of northeastern Iraq soil samples from a grave of a [Neandertal] man of this time indicated pollen grains from 8 different types of flowers, some of them used for medicinal purposes. When excavated by Ralph Solecki of Columbia University, the remains are found of nine Neandertals, with some evidence of "spirituality". One man has received wounds to head and body meaning he had a withered arm and was blind in one eye. In 1971, Solecki published his book, Shanidar: The First Flower People. (Shreeve, Neandertal)

1969: Nigerian planes bomb and strafe crowded market in village in rebellious Biafra, killing more than 200 people.

1969: Yassar Arafat becomes head of the Palestinian Liberation Army (PLO). It becomes an umbrella organization aspiring to unite and speak for all Palestinians and is controlled by Palestinians in exile.

13 March 1969: US Apollo 9 astronauts splash down, ending a mission with duties including testing of a Lunar Module.

1969: Apollo 12 mission blasts off for the moon.

1969: First women's liberation groups formed in Sydney and Adelaide.

1969: Woodstock Festival - Music and Art Fair, near Bethel, New York. An inspiring watershed for the counter-culture movement world-wide.

1969: In UK, Bishops and Priests of Church of England defeat proposal for "reunification" with Methodist Church.

November 1969: a second anti-Vietnam War Moratorium Day in US. (Protest tactics imitated later in Australia). Soon occurs the My Lai massacre with Lt Calley of about 200 Vietnamese villagers.

In November or late 1969: Remains found of the English ship Tryal wrecked on Western Australian coast in 1622, found near the Monte Bello Islands.

October 1969: Across the US, a Vietnam War Moratorium Day.

September 1969: Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh dies after fighting 50 years for his nation.

Moonwalking: 22 July 1969: Having walked on moon, US astronauts prepare to leave. Armstrong et al.

July 1969: Nixon announces the "Guam Doctrine" re so-called Vietnamization of the war in Vietnam.

8 June 1969: Nixon announces first US withdrawals from Vietnam. Will lead to complete US disengagement.

March 1969: First secret bombing of Cambodia. Ground withdrawal started an irreversible process, for as forces became thinner, speedier withdrawal was necessary.

25 January, 1969: Formal truce negotiations in Paris re Vietnam war.
By 31 Jan., 1969, US forces in Vietnam reach peak of 542,000 men.

January 1969: US President Nixon arrives with Kissinger, and by 1969, Pres Thieu in seat in South Vietnam. Privately, Nixon said he wanted to stop the war, yet he took it to his presidency and prolonged the war, partly by Vietnamizing the war as a way to bring home US troops, but also keep up air support for the war. (Notes from Tuchman, Folly).

1969: "By the year 2000, we will undoubtedly have a sizeable operation on the moon; we will have achieved a manned Mars landing and it's entirely possible we will have flown with men to the outer planets." Wernher von Braun, NASA rocket engineer, 1969.

1968: In US, the CBS current affairs TV program 60 Minutes premieres on TV.

1968: Death of Padre Pio in Italy; his stigmata began from 1918.

1968: US civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King is assassinated.

1968: A famous Vietnam war quote: US troops' remark, "And lo, we will not be afraid in the Valley of Death since we are the meanest sons of bitches in the Valley of Death". See Michael Herr, Dispatches. London. Pan/Picador, 1978., p. 75, a remark attributed to a tall, 20-year-old, blank-eyed, blonde US infantryman from Michigan, with the 26th Marines, whom Herr met 1968 around Khe Sanh, with "Marlene" tattooed on his arm. "Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I shall fear no Evil, because I'm the meanest motherfucker in the Valley..."

1968: US senator Robert F. Kennedy is shot in the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel by a hotel employee Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy dies next day aged 42.

November 1968: Richard M. Nixon elected US president.

4 July 1968: Thousands demonstrate in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Adelaide against US and the war in Vietnam.

4 July, 1968: Mounted police charge crowd of about 1500 anti-Viet demonstrations outside US consulate in Melbourne, over 45 arrested.

6 June 1968: Robert Kennedy is shot three times in US. Six neuro-surgeons were trying to remove a bullet from his brain. Good Samaritan Hospital, Los Angeles.

6 April, 1968: US race relations: Martin Luther King is assassinated.

3 April, 1968: With a US presidential election coming up, Hanoi is contacted re ceasing bombing and beginning talks. This is LBJ's last year of office.

By 1968: Communist-types of the Western World are speaking of "workers control" of workplaces, around the world.

28 February, 1968: Australian Lionel Rose is world champion boxer.

25 February, 1968: 20 Australian soldiers killed and 80 wounded in Operation Coburg following Tet offensive in Vietnam.

February 1968: Influential US newsman Walter Cronkite had visited Vietnam and went against the war and the Tet offensive, with about 1.2 million refugees also. LBJ said that if he'd "lost Walter", he'd lost Middle America. Notes from Tuchman, Folly).

30 January 1968: TV and Vietnam War: Begins Tet offensive, the Vietcong with up to 50 per cent casualty rates, very bloody, and public revulsion arises in US due to TV reportage. Arises the remark, which came from a US army major, "it becomes necessary to destroy the village in order to save it". The Wall St Journal now thinks the Vietnam War is doomed. Westmoreland wanted more troops. Johnson wanted to mobilise another 200,000 men. (Notes from Tuchman, Folly).

1968: Partial skeleton of a young woman found at Lake Mungo in western NSW, dated as 25,000 years old. At Kow Swamp in northern Victoria. Excavations reveal skeletal remains dated to between 9000 and 15,000 years go.

1967: World's first commercial thermonuclear blast takes place in US state of New Mexico to give access to natural gas from deposits underground.

1967: Israel's attack on the USS Liberty kills 34 US sailors

3 February, 1967: The last man to be hanged in Australia is Ronald Ryan, at Pentridge Prison, Melbourne. See Mike Richards, The Hanged Man: The Life and Death of Ronald Ryan. Scribe, 2002.

1967: Beginning of the era of talkback radio in Australia.

18 December 1967: Australian prime minister Harold Holt feared dead. (Drowned on 17 Dec.) at Cheviot Beach off Portsea on the Mornington Peninsula.

29 November 1967: Australia's first satellite successfully launched from Woomera.

October 1967: Massive anti-Vietnam War rally in Washington DC.

9 October 1967: Bolivians and a CIA agent, Felix Rodriguez, shoot revolutionary Che Guevera and then cut off his hands.

17 September 1967: PM Holt announces Australia is to increase its military aid to South Vietnam with another battalion and support groups.

3 September 1967: General Van Thieu is elected president of South Vietnam.

1967: June War (Six-Day War). Israel crushes Egypt, Jordan, Syria; Israel captures the Sinai peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan province from Syria, West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. Approximately 250,000 more Palestinian refugees flee, or are forced, into Jordan. More Palestinians are now under Israeli rule.
5 June 1967: Israel: Six-Day War. Israel launches a pre-emptive strike, conquering the Sinai, Golan Heights, West Bank and Jerusalem.
1967: The six-day war begins between Israel and her Arab neighbours Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

25 April 1967: Soviet cosmonaut dies in space.

17 March 1967: Honeysuckle Creek space tracking station near Canberra opened. Later, a Joint Defence Space Research facility is established at Pine Gap near Alice Springs to become operational in 1969.
By 16 September, 1967, North-West Cape naval communications station officially commissioned. On 29 November, 1967, Australia's first satellite successfully launched from Woomera.

3 February 1967: Ronald Ryan to hang in Melbourne: the last instance of capital punishment in Australia.

18 January 1967: Premier of South Vietnam Marshall Ky visits Aust; many protest demonstrations.

Gregory Pincus, (1903-1967), father of the birth control pill.

1967: The first person frozen by the Cryonics Society of California is a doctor, aged 73, James Bedford.

1967, Archaeological expedition led by Prof. Marinatos of Athens uncovers Minoan remains under volcanic material from the explosion of Santorini/Thera.

1966: A US hydrogen bomb lost from a bomber is recovered in Mediterranean Sea off coast of Spain.

1966: 22 December: Australian commitment to Vietnam is increased to 6300 men, with extra tanks, minesweepers and eight bombers.

1966: 6 December: Canberra, Douglas J. Anthony, aged 36, becomes the youngest man in Australia to achieve the deputy leadership of a major political party in Federal politics.

1966: 7 November: Cape Kennedy, USA: America's Lunar Orbiter-2 blasts off shortly after 9.20am tomorrow (Sydney time in Australia), to seek suitable landing sites on the Moon for US astronauts.

1966: 15 October: Sydney: State and civic leaders of Sydney have agreed upon the slogan "Make Sydney Gay for LBJ" for the welcoming of the US president on Saturday week coming.

1966, 5-6 September: Australian world champion racing driver Jack Brabham makes motor racing history as he becomes the first driver ever to win the world title in a car of his own construction.

1966, 9 August: Birmingham, Alabama: Hundreds of Beatles records are to be pulverised in a giant municipal tree-grinding machine here because of Beatle John Lennon's remark on Christianity, a disc jockey reveals. (Lennon said amongst other things, The Beatles were more popular than Jesus.)

1966, 1 July: Papette, Tahiti: French scientists yesterday began a countdown for their country's first Pacific atom bomb rest. The explosion expected to occur at Mururoa Atoll about 90 miles from Tahiti.

1966: Vatican and Yugoslavia resume diplomatic relations in major move aimed at improving relations between Communist World and Roman Catholicism.

1966: India: Indira Gandhi becomes prime minister of India.

1966: The Chinese Communist Party opens a plenum meeting declaring the start of the Cultural Revolution, which will last ten years.

1966: Gerald Hawkins publishes, Stonehenge Decoded. London, Souvenir Press, 1966.

1966: Origin of US policy on Vietnam on winning the hearts and minds of the people? Clutterbuck, a Britisher, publishing in 1966, and with a foreword by the chief of the staff of the US army, General Templer, on 1952 Malaya, quoting "The answer lies not in pouring troops into the jungle but in the hearts and minds of the people," perhaps following, John Adams, USA, 1818, "The [American] Revolution was affected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the hearts and minds of the people."

1966: Vietnam: Buddhist revolt in Vietnam itself.

By late 1966, LBJ's advisors have turned against the Vietnam War, privately, and one thought it would take the US some 750,000 to a million men and some seven years to win. (Notes from Tuchman, Folly, p. 430).
Hanoi's intransigence seems built on an idea that US would tire first, from cost and/or public dissent about the war.

29 October, 1966: OTC opens first satellite communications earth station at Carnarvon, Western Australia (one is later set up at Moree, NSW).

22 October, 1966: Lyndon Baines Johnston, US president, comes to Melbourne, and sees rowdy anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.

14 September, 1966: Indonesian confrontation ceases.

18 August, 1966: Australian forces in Vietnam inflict heavy losses on large enemy force at Battle of Long Tan.

30 June, 1966: Australian prime minister Holt on visit to US promises support for escalation of Vietnam War = "All the way with LBJ". There is widespread outrage in Australia at such words from Holt.
By April 1966, US has troops of 245,000 and war costs them $2 billion per month.

8 March, 1966: Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt (destined soon to mysteriously drown off Victorian coast), announces trebling of forces to Vietnam.

1965-1970: US involvement in Vietnam is blamed for the surge in illegal heroin being smuggled into the States. To aid U.S. allies, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sets up a charter airline, Air America, to transport raw opium from Burma and Laos. As well, some of the opium would be transported to Marseilles by Corsican gangsters to be refined into heroin and shipped to the U.S via the French connection. The number of heroin addicts in the U.S. reaches an estimated 750,000.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

1965-1973: Vietnam War.

What happened with USA in Vietnam? Senator Edward Kennedy has said, "America lost the war in Vietnam because our troops were trapped in a distant country we did not understand, supporting a government that lacked sufficient legitimacy with its people." (Cited in an article by Ann Davies and Tom Shanker in Sydney Morning Herald, 24 August, 2007)

1965: Byron Bay area, eastern NSW, Australia, a shipwreck, later destroyed by sand-mining. In 1965 is found a huge wooden ship rudder, about 40 feet or 12.2 metres tall. Menzies feels it was a rudder from a Chinese treasure ship, which were 36 feet tall.
(Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition)

1965: Afro-American activist Malcom X is assassinated in New York.

1965: Launch of Early Bird I, the world's first commercial communications satellite, from Cape Kennedy, Florida.

1965, November: Siding Spring observatory established in the Warrumbungle Ranges, NSW. Barker and Mills Cross radio-telescope opens in NSW in Nov. 1965.

1965: Vietnam: The French depart Vietnam.

In Australia's 12 months from March 1965 to March 1966 there were 80 or so demonstrations, vigils, sit-ins, strikes, folk concerts marches, teach-ins, all based on earlier-appearing protest movements/actions in US.

Mid-1965: Indonesia: The Indonesian army fearing a rising communist influence has coup against Sukarno who'd sacked the US rubber plantations and confiscated remaining foreign property. A bloody coup, and successful, which topples Sukarno and re-institutes Indonesian-US friendship. Coup allegedly activated by CIA, etc.

August 1965: Singapore decides to become an independent state, but promises close links with Malaysia and also wants to retain a British base.

July 1965: US drafts more troops, to get strength to 125,000 men by end of 1965; and got to 200,000 men. North Vietnamese regular army has over 400,000 men; US would demoralise these by end of 1966, which did not happen. (LBJ avoided asking Congress for a declaring of war for fear of what Russia or China might do, which in the long run opened a door to further dissent.

July 1965: Australian author Morris West attacks conduct of Vietnam War, a turning point re conservative notice of the conflict.

9 June, 1965: US "fateful decision" to authorise combat support of South Vietnam by US ground forces, and search and destroy missions are entailed.
27 May, 1965: First Battalion, Royal Australian Regt., leaves Sydney in aircraft carrier Sydney for active duty in Vietnam.

May 1965: US pauses its bombing of Vietnam.
Mid-1965, the American university campuses are reacting badly to Vietnam war. Tuchman, Folly, p. 404 writes: "The movement was less a sudden embrace of Asia than an extension of civil rights struggle and the 'Free Speech' and other student radical enthusiasms of the early sixties". US has up to 82,000 troops in Vietnam.

23-29 April, 1965: Australian Government announces commitment of an infantry battalion to supplement US 173rd airborne brigade at Bien Hoa, Vietnam.

8 March, 1965: First US combat troops arrive in South Vietnam, to Da Nang.

2 March 1965: Vietnam War: Begins Operation Rolling Thunder to bomb North Vietnam into submission, supervised directly from White House. Bombing of Vietcong supply trails from Laos.

25 January, 1965: WWII British PM Winston Churchill dies at age 90

January 1965: Indonesia withdraws from UN on election of Malaysia to security council, concentrates troops maybe to invade Malaysia.

1965: Australian Labor Party removes the racist White Australia Policy from its platform.

1965: Second War between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.

1964: Mystery and legends surround mummies from Peru

DNA testing is expected to be the destiny of Peruvian mummies found at Gran Vilaya. Are they the remains of a legendary lost tribe of tall Europeans, or whites, with blonde hair, the Chacapoyas, or, Cloud People?

A story arose in 1964, when an American explorer, Gene Savoy, found a fortress in Chacapoyas land in north-eastern Peru. This fortress was later found to be surrounded by 24,000 round structures. The site was found to pre-date the Incas, to about 800AD.

In the area, Savoy was intrigued by local people who demonstrated an unexpected incidence of tall people with fair hair and blue eyes. Perhaps their ancestors were people of such description as mentioned by Cieza de Leon, writing in 1553? Were these the mysterious people crushed by the Incas in 1480?

The mummies in question have been recently evacuated to remove them from risks posed by grave-robbers. They are about 178cm tall, but their hands are bound over their hands or temples, suggestive of death scenes filled with horror. DNA tests are expected to be completed about the end of 1999.

Researchers mentioned in reports include: Gene Savoy, Andean Explorer's Foundation, Reno, Nevada. Savoy contends that the mummies are the remains of people representing early (but unexplained) South American contact with people originally from Israel, Egypt, India, Phoenicia, while another people named are... Vikings
Sonia Guillen, Peruvian expert on mummies
Adriana Von Hagen, Peruvian historian and archaeologist
John Hemming, author of The Conquest of the Incas, a former director of The Royal Geographical Society.
(Reported 21 November 1998)

1964: Tokyo Olympic Games; first Olympic Games in Asia.

1964: Arab leaders set up Palestine Liberation Organization to unite Palestinian refugees.

1964: British Commonwealth troops move against Indonesian guerrillas in Malaya.

1964: Palestinians form Fatah under Yassar Arafat; the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) is formed in 1967 by George Habash. Jordan becomes the main base for guerrilla actions.

1964: The Palestine Liberation Organization is formed by the Arab League under Egyptian direction. The PLO Charter calls for a united Palestine under Arab control. Only Jews there before 1946 can remain.

10 November, 1964: Australian Prime Minister Menzies announces reintroduction of National Service from July 1965; 20-yr-olds are faced with a national lottery for two-years army service.
By 1966 the Save Our Sons movement and Youth Against Conscription Movements are growing in Australia.

30 October, 1964: Australian troops capture Indonesian guerrillas in Malacca during their first action in Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation.

7 August 1964: The Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which gave "a blank cheque for Executive War", so the US Government did as it pleased. (Tuchman, Folly, pp. 306ff). US Congress provides Pres. Johnson "unlimited powers to repel communist aggression". Later is the US bombing program, Rolling Thunder, in March 1965, supervised directly from White House.

19 July, 1964: 34 Royal Australian Air Force personnel from Sydney to South Vietnam to fly and maintain Caribou aircraft there.

15 June, 1964, The Beatles descend on Melbourne, Australia.

28 May, 1964: Australian army engineers are sent to Sabah, Malaysia.

23 April, 1964: US President Johnson appeals for "more flags" for Vietnam, so by now, ten years pass and many flags have not joined the US in Vietnam since 1954 or so.

April 1964: Indonesian guerrillas land on mainland Malaya but are quickly mopped up.

10-11 February, 1964: Australian naval disaster, with 82 lives lost. 11 February, 1964, night-time collision of HMAS Melbourne and HMAS Voyager off Jervis Bay.

30 January, 1964: After JFK assassinated, a military coup in South Vietnam as General Nguyen Khanh deposes Duon Van Minh.

1964: Tokyo Olympics.

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Early 1964: LBJ determined not to lose in Vietnam. But even if US senators are terrified of a nuclear war, what would China do? What are implications if US withdraws from Vietnam? LBJ decided on an air-strike war with ground support. His election gave him massive electoral support. (Notes from Tuchman, March of Folly, pp. 306ff.)

1963-1970: World Migration: One million people per year migrate from southern Europe and Turkey to Germany. (Source: 2003, UN, International Organisation for Migration)

1963: US recognises new government of Iraq after a revolt. Fighting still proceeds in provinces of Iraq three days after uprising, as civil-war-fighting still goes on.

1963: The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is established with Marshal Tito as its president for life.

1963: Federation of Malaya is formed, of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo. Some 100,000 help the celebrations by burning a British Embassy.

1963: Dr Hugh Schonfield and his book The Passover Plot, which argues that Jesus stages his own mock crucifixion, and does not die on the cross. Perhaps later arose Dr Morton Smith and his book, Jesus The Magician. (Baigent/Leigh, Messianic Legacy, on revising the story of Jesus Christ)

1963: A new island called Surtsey is created off the Icelandic coast by undersea volcanic eruption.

1963: 6500BC: In 1963 science writer Alexander Marshack completes a book on the rise of civilization, and at Ishango, on headwaters of Nile, Central Africa, Stone Age site, found an inscribed bone, possibly recording "calendar-type information".

November 1963: US grandmother confesses: A New York woman now aged 60, Marion "Mimi" Fahnestock, nee Beardsley, has confessed she had an affair with US President John F. Kennedy when she was a teenage intern with the White House. The affair lasted from June 1962 to November 1963. She has never before discussed the matter. The story was uncovered from archives by US historian Robert Dalleck as he worked on his biography of JFK, An Unfinished Life. (Reported 16 May 2003 as world news)

23 November, 1963: US President John Kennedy assassinated. Replaced by President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ).

People in the US - watchful of their issues

Lost Worlds on 13 March 2002 received this email via free Yahoo email - it is unknown who "we" are or just what the argument here in the US consists of:
Dear Webmaster:
You are inadvertently promoting propaganda when you direct your readers to Kennedy assassination cover-up artist, John McAdams, so we direct your attention to the work of meticulous Kennedy assassination researchers, many of whom have spent their entire lives uncovering the truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy:
http://pages.ivillage.com/justicewell/newfrontier.htm/
We hope you take our advice and take the time to link to competent researchers.
Best Regards, Linda
ps: We never criticize any genuine researcher, but John McAdams attacks the websites of competent and meticulous researchers.
http://www.geocities.com/justicewell/kennedyassassination.htm/
We truly resent the fact that McAdams attacks competent researchers who betray the truth about the Kennedy assassination, and we are responding because we do not appreciate con artists who deliberately slander President Kennedy by deliberately distorting his legacy.
We hope you appreciate the difference because ignorant, insecure people who put others down to feel good about themselves, and we believe that such people do not merit the uncritical publicity you are giving them.

1 November, 1963: In South Vietnam, a successful general coup.
1-2 November 1963, Military coup overthrows President Diem. Diem and his brother Hgo Dinh Diem are assassinated.

25 September, 1963: Australia pledges military assistance to new nation of Malaysia in event of direct or indirect aggression.

September 1963: US secretary of state Dean Rusk declares, "There can be no assured and lasting peace until Communist leaders abandon their goal of world revolution."

9 May, 1963: Australia and US sign agreement allowing US to establish a base at North-West Cape, Western Australia.

8 May, 1963: Vietnam: Buddhist riots in Hue, Vietnam.

April 1963: Indonesia: Sukarno flushed with his success in New Guinea in 1963 decides to try a confrontation with Malaysia, by now a newly-created state. The British to counter him decide to send 50,000 troops to Malaysia, mostly to the borders of Borneo. In April 1963, Indonesian guerrillas begin raiding North Borneo territories. By July 1963, Indonesia is prepared to concede support for Malaysia if UN indicates support in Sabah and Sarawak.

Summer 1963: Vietnam: Buddhist revolt in Vietnam. Riots. Monks set fire to themselves, hundreds of monks arrested. Idea in Washington to dump Diem by some sort of coup. De Gaulle in France proposed a neutralist idea, hoping for Vietnamese nationalist success free of external influences, re a possible negotiated settlement. US only annoyed at De Gaulle's "pomposity" here. The Burmese U Thant later also proposed a "Neutralist" settlement. (Notes from Tuchman, Folly, pp. 306ff.

1962: South African black leader Nelson Mandela pleads not guilty at start of his trial for treason.

About 1962: Siem Reap, Cambodia: The Baphuon Temple, Angkor: In 1972, war and the Khmer Rouge ruined an attempt by French archaeologists to preserve the ancient Baphuon Temple be taking it apart and re-erecting it. All written records were destroyed. Working on this in the 1960s was Jacques Dumarcay. Over time, almost 1000 photographs were taken of the work, which have helped new efforts to rebuild the temple, which was built in the 11th Century as a five-tiered sandstone pyramid which astonished a 13th Century Chinese traveller, Zhou Daguan. When this work began, the temple was too unstable to be repaired, as its neighbours had been. Now, some 200 workers funded by the French government are working to complete the reconstruction. (Reported Sydney Morning Herald 4-5 January 2003)

1962: Carleton Coon publishes his now largely-discredited book, The Origin of Races. He believes that the races of mankind evolve in isolation from each other from Homo erectus.

1962: US military (Test Shot Starfish) bursts a 1.4 megaton hydrogen bomb 400km over the Pacific Ocean and unexpectedly knocks out radio communication and satellite equipment across thousands of kilometres. (The electro-magnetic pulse problem.)

1962: Hundreds of Muslims and European opponents of Ben Bella government in Algeria are arrested.

1962: Burma outlaws opium.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

1962: Vietnam: US advisor numbers leap from 1000 to 11,000 men.

1962: Vietnam situation becomes the first war in which Australia did not fight with the British.

December 1962: Indonesia declares confrontation policy and a revolt in Brunei fails.

25 October, 1962, US and USSR on collision course over Cuban missile base.

15 May, 1962: Thailand of SEATO is afraid of regional ramifications of the fall of Laos.

14 May, 1962, Australia assures Diem in Vietnam that Diem will have full support of Commonwealth of Australia.

10 May, 1962: Australia foreshadows establishment of a US naval communications centre at North-West Cape, Western Australia.

9 May, 1962: Australian external affairs minister Garfield Barwick announces that Australia "if invited" will send a handful of military instructors to South Vietnam. Up to 30 instructors are committed on 24 May.
The DMZ (demilitarized zone) DMZ is already spoken of. There are usually 20 Vietcong dead per week. (Beginning of habit of making body count, a habit which lasts for the duration of the war).

April, 1962: Vietnam: In South Vietnam, the gigantic strategic hamlet program is initiated, aided by a British advisory mission led by former secretary for defense in Malaya, RKG now Sir Robert Thompson. Some 12,000 hamlets are constructed in two years in Vietnam, vs 400 new villages made in Malaya. (Policy: winning the hearts and minds of the people fails in Vietnam).

By 30 March, 1962: US been repeatedly asking Australia to send military personnel to Vietnam. On 31 March, 1962, Diem appealed to heads of 93 non-communist states including Australia for increased military aid and support against North Vietnam as backed by the Communist bloc.
By 1962, Australian troops had been seven years in Malaysian jungles, engaged in counter-insurgency, useful experience.

Space: Mankind enters a new environment, Space! 21 February, 1962: John Glenn goes into space for three orbits and returns (following a successful earlier Russian venture). What sort of things did humanity write due to such a stunning adventure? Looking at the Earth from Space? James Dickey wrote, "Behold/ The blue planet steeped in its dream/Of reality." Biologist Lewis Thomas said, the Earth was "the only exuberant thing" in the cosmos. Archibald McLeish wrote of a paradigm shift in human perceptions, "To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold - brothers who know that they are truly brothers."

February 1962: Vietnam: Historian Tuchman, Folly, p. 373, dates the beginning of the Vietnam War with a full field command with a three-star general established, MACV, Military Assistance Command Vietnam. Americans begin to take casualties; a kind of undeclared war begins. A futile "strategic hamlets" plan meant re-settlement of peasants from ancestral land. (Tuchman, Folly, pp. 306ff, on 1946-1954ff.)

February 1962: Vietnam: Two South Vietnamese pilots try to strafe and assassinate Diem. Relations between the US press and US military sour considerably.

12 January, 1962: Australia reluctantly accepts Indonesian sovereignty over West New Guinea/Irian Jaya.

1961: Below is a set of dates providing an overview of the history/development of Alcoholics Anonymous. The list provides information not usually evident in material promoting the therapeutic work of A. A. (Dates for the work of A. A. in Ireland the UK are not included.)
4 June, 1878, Birth of Dr. Frank Buchman, whose views on spirituality are later to have an influence on the development of what is now known as Alcoholics Anonymous.
1893, Birth of the later missionary and Episcopalian minister, promoter of the Oxford Group program in the north-eastern US, Dr Samuel Shoemaker, whose views on spirituality also are later to have an influence on the development of what is now known as Alcoholics Anonymous.
1908, Dr Frank Buchman has an experience of personal conversion in Keswick, England.
1909, European doctors Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud visit the United States. Freud introduces psychoanalysis to medical men. This however was not Jung's only visit to the US (see for example his later writings on the worldview of Pueblo Indians).
1916, Dr Frank Buchman holds a position as extension lecturer at Hartford Theological Seminary. He resigns this position in 1923.
1918, Dr Frank Buchman has been attempting unsuccessfully to set up a spiritual renewal group at Princeton University.
1918, Dr Frank Buchman in China meets an American missionary, Dr. Samuel Shoemaker, who later adopts some of the principles Buchman espouses for the growth of Christian life.
1919, The beginning of the Prohibition Era in the United States. The issue is: does alcohol contribute to lawlessness? It is found that prohibition only encourages an excessive variety of lawlessness.
1921, Dr Frank Buchman has begun evangelizing at Oxford University, England, and begun what became known as The Oxford Group, the Oxford Movement. The original name, surfacing firstly in China, probably, was First Century Christian Fellowship.
1925, Jung writes, Marriage as a Psychological Relationship.
1926 Jung writes, Spirit and Life.
1927-1931, Jung wrote, The Structure of the Psyche, and Mind and Earth.
1928 Jung wrote, On Psychic Energy, and, Child Development and Education, and, The Significance of the Unconscious in Individual Education, and Mental Diseases and the Psyche. Between 1928-1931, Jung wrote, Analytical Psychology and Weltanschauung. Also, Psychoanalysis and the Cure of Souls. By 1928, he had finished a treatment (1921-1928) of The Therapeutic Value of Abreaction.
1928, Author Tom Driberg meets Dr Frank Buchman. Years later, in 1964, Driberg writes a book on Buchman and his Oxford Movement/Moral Rearmament Movement.
Between 1928 and 1931, Jung writes, The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man.
1929: Jung writes, The Aims of Psychotherapy, The Significance of Constitution and Heredity in Psychology, The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious. and in his Alchemical Studies wrote "Commentary on the `Secret of the Golden Flower'." In 1929 he also wrote on the famous/infamous chemist/alchemist, Paracelsus.
1929, The name, Oxford Group is first used by Buchmanites in South Africa. (One suspects, to invoke the prestige of that university's name in an unsophisticated cultural environment).
In 1930, Jung writes, Complications of American Psychology.
1930 Between 1930-1931, Jung wrote, The Stages of Life. And, Some Aspects of Modern Psychotherapy, and, an introduction to Kranefeldt's "Secret Ways of the Mind".
About 1931, American alcoholic Rowland H. consults Dr Carl Jung in Zurich and is told that a spiritual conversion ought to be part of any useful treatment. Rowland H. is later associated with Bill W. and other co-founders of A. A, as well as with the Oxford Group in the United States. At this time, the Oxford Group was at its height in Europe. In New York, the Oxford Movement is led by Dr. Samuel Shoemaker.
1931: Jung writes, Basic Postulates of Analytical Psychology, and Archaic Man.
1932 Jung wrote, Psychotherapists or the Clergy. Also, Sigmund Freud in His Historical Setting. And, an essay on the Spanish artist, Picasso.
1932-1934, A variety of interchanges occur between Rowland H. Bill W., Edwin "Ebby: T., and various members of the Oxford Group, plus Bill W.'s physician, Dr. William Silkworth.
1933, In the US, the prohibition of the use of alcohol is ended. 1933 Jung writes, The Real and the Surreal.

1934 Jung writes, The Soul and Death, and, The Practical Use of Dream-Analysis, and, The Development of Personality, and A Review of the Complex Theory.

Between 1933 and 1934, Jung writes, The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man.
Between 1934 and 1954, Jung writes, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, A Study of the Process of Individuation. 1934, Jung writes, The State of Psychotherapy Today.
August 1934, Bill W., "Ebby" and others concerned about alcoholism work with Oxford groups, discussing ways to help alcoholics find sobriety.
December, 1934, Bill W. is hospitalized for acute alcoholism and later experiences a spiritual illumination which provided inspiration for later application to the development of A. A. Shortly, due to a visit from "Ebby", Bill. W. was reading William James' book, Varieties of Religious Experience. "Ebby" and Bill W. engage in long discussions of the principles espoused by the Oxford Group. A preoccupation with Oxford Group methods lasts at least till 1937, when A. A. personnel abandoned reliance on the Oxford Group and went their own way with their program successfully adapted for their own purposes. May-10 June, 1935, In Akron, Ohio, discussions are engaged by Bill W. and a local doctor, Dr Bob, on the scientifically-derived views on alcoholism of Bill W.'s own doctor, Dr Silkworth of New York.
Late 1935, After other discussions in New York between Bill W. and other interested parties, the Twelve Steps of A. A. are formulated and published.
In 1935, Jung wrote, Principles of Practical Psychotherapy; What is Psychotherapy?
In 1936, Jung wrote, Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy, and The Concept of the Collective Unconscious. Also, Yoga and the West.
1938, Dr Frank Buchman develops the idea of "moral rearmament" while visiting Germany and later writes Moral Re-Armament. Other books followed on similar themes. Buchmanites in England become suspected of developing links with pro-Nazi elements.
1939, Reporter Elrick Davis writes a piece on A. A. in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
In 1939, A professional becoming interested in A. A. is Dr. E. M. Jellinek, co-founder and former director of the Centre for Alcohol Studies, Yale University, and consultant to the Alcoholism Research Foundation of Alberta, Canada (which was set up in some years before 1953).
1939, Outbreak of World War Two.
1939, The Oxford Group/Moral Rearmament Movement are incorporated as a charity.
In 1939, Jung wrote, On the Psychogenesis of Schizophrenia.
In 1941: an article on A. A. by Jack Alexander in the Saturday Evening Post had caused membership to grow from 2000 to 8000 by the end of 1941. (Bill W., p. 7 of AA Today - 25, writes, AA now had a membership of 250,000, in 8000 groups.
1950, Jung writes, Foreword to the "I Ching".

19 November 1950, Death of Dr Bob.
nd: Dr Marvin Block of Buffalo, New York, is a physician credited with persuading the American Medical Association with defining alcoholism as a disease. (Hanna, Second Chance, p. 29).

1958, Dr Samuel Shoemaker writes an autobiography which heavily qualifies views on the extent to which he ever espouses "Buchmanism", or, what became known as The Oxford Movement, whilst acknowledging the debt he did owe to Buchman. Driberg writes (p. 267) that Shoemaker ceased links with Buchmanites from November 1941, when he advised parishioners that he had "evicted" Buchmanites from their national headquarters, which had been his own parochial mission house.

1959-1961, The BBC produced a black-and-white documentary on Carl Jung, only a short time before Jung died. The documentary has since been widely rebroadcast. (See the introduction to an illustrated volume of Jung's Man and His Symbols). One wonders if Bill. W. had not seen this documentary and was thus inspired to write to Jung on 23 January, 1961? In this documentary, Jung, then an impressive old man, was asked, "Do you believe in God?" Jung answered, "I don't need to believe." (He meant, "I do not need to believe, because I experience.").

Dr Frank Buchman died, August, 1961. Between 1961 and 1968, his Moral Rearmament Movement became entangled in Cold War politics and was widely discredited.

1961, The chief organisers of A. A. were prompted to explain to A. A. members, and also to the public, how A. A. had developed. By this time, Bill. W. is retiring from the leadership of A. A.

1968, Bill W's 33rd anniversary talk given. See his book, The Language of the Heart.
(End of Chronology on Alcoholics Anonymous)

1961: Troops from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states take over defence of Kuwait from British in face of Iraqi threat.

1961-1962: Indonesia: Indonesia's President Suharto covets West New Guinea/Irian Jaya, last part of former Dutch East Indies under colonial Dutch rule. The US is already embroiled in Laos and Vietnam. US has investments in Indonesia, and Indonesia supplies most of the oil for Japan. Finally, the Indonesians got the New Guinean land.

1962: Rwanda and Burundi gain independence from Belgium.

1961: Building of Berlin Wall. Soviets launch first man in space, Yuri Gagarin.

1961: Eighty-five people are killed in nationalist demonstrations in Algiers.

5 December 1961: A turning point, Sir Howard Beale Ambassador for Australia sends a cable that Australia supports Republic of Vietnam and he suggests Australia can supply counter-insurgency training personnel, small arms and ammunition.

22 November 1961: as North Vietnam steps up its efforts, US authorizes more military aid for South Vietnam including helicopters, transport aircraft and strike aircraft. General Duong Van Minh takes over South Vietnam.

1961: Population of Australia reaches 10.5 million.

1961: Vietnam: During 1961 the US military effort in Vietnam was expanding, advisers worked with battalion and company level while civilian advisers worked with provincial governments. US wanting political support of other nations. Intense nationalism of the Vietnamese on both sides.

14 August, 1961: Berlin Wall erected.

29 June, 1961: Australia and US announce joint guided missile research project to be at Woomera, South Australia.

May 1961: Tunku Abdul Rahman proposes formation of Malaysia. Later arises idea for a merger of Malaya and Singapore, though conflict possible over place of British North Borneo with Philippines; Borneo people want a Malaysia link.

18 April, 1961: Cuba invaded by sea by anti-Castro rebels, Bay of Pigs situation.
April 1961: Bay of Pigs fiasco as JFK tries to liberate Cuba from Communists, using CIA and Cuban exiles.

March-Spring 1961: With possible loss of Laos to Communism, the domino theory appeared all too credible.

January 1961: John F. Kennedy assumes US presidency. He viewed USSR as a danger to American security. 20 January, 1961: President Kennedy inaugurated in US.

1961: First evidence arises proving the existence of Pontius Pilate when a slab bearing his name is discovered by an Italian dig at Caesarea in Israel.

September 1960: The Vietnamese Civil War begins officially, when the Communists declare for overthrow of Diem and American imperialist rule.

1960: Launch in Skokie, Illinois, of first commercially-produced oral contraceptive, Enovid 10.

1960: The first communications satellite (non-commercial), is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and placed in orbit.

1960: Malaya: In Malaya 1948-1960 the leader of Malayan Communist Party (MCP) is Chin Peng.

1960: Malayan state of emergency ends, with all Malaya cleared except for Chin Peng and 400 men astride the Thai border.

1959: Hawaii becomes 50th state of the United States.

1959: South Africa: Dies, Daniel Francois Malan, South African politician and creator of the Apartheid Policy.

1959: 12 September, Soviet Union launches Luna 2, the first spacecraft to strike the moon.

1959: 10 August: Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira has died.

April 1959: Communist insurgency increases in Vietnam after a branch of the communist Lao Dong party is formed in South Vietnam.

1958-1959: Kruschev's threats create Berlin Crisis.

1958: The Bigfoot Hoax in California: In 1958 (first sighting) and in 1967 ("photographic evidence of an apelike creature), Californians found they had a big ape living in their forests. Bigfoot folklore grew apace. It was all a hoax perpetrated by Ray Wallace, who died in November 2002 and his family have confessed the absurdities. The 1967 photo of "Bigfoot" was of Ray's wife dressed in a gorilla suit. (Voila Hollywood!) (Reported The Weekend Australian, 14-15 December 2002)

1958: Publication of Vladimir Nabakov's controversial novel, Lolita.

1958, First use of the word software to describe aspects of "automotive "programming" by mathematician and statistician John Tukey, in an article in American Mathematical Monthly. Tukey also invented the term "bit" as short for binary digit. The earlier first use of the term "software" was thought to be 1960.

1958: Russia takes Cuba.

1958: Especially with surrender of two high-ranking communists, the Malayan communist insurgency begins to falter.

1958: In the wake of Suez crisis, the Blue Streak missile program abandoned as being too costly. Britain buys Polaris missile program from US and abandons its own efforts with rocketry.

1958: St Clare of Assisi is nominated as patron saint of television, as by legend she could see and hear distant events.

1957: Britain declares Bahrain an independent Arab state under British protection.

1957: US shocked with launch of Sputnik 1 by Russia. The space race begins.

1957: Vietnam: The army of South Vietnam does not formally exist till 1957.

1957AD-2500BC, Turkey, Following a discovery of a tomb in Turkey, chemical analysis by 1999 reveals what wealthy people dined on. Barbecued lamb or goat, plus spicy stew (olive oil, honey and wine) with lentils. A mixed drink of grape wine, barley beer, mead. At Gordion, capital of the then-powerful Phrygian kingdom. The area is now that of central Turkey, Ankara. A king aged 60-65 was buried in a log coffin in a mound 50 metres high and 300 metres round. See a 1999 issue of the journal, Nature. The tomb was discovered in 1957 by University of Pennsylvania researchers including Dr Rodney Young, and supposedly held King Midas.

1956: Suez War. Britain, France, and Israel attack Egypt. Israel seizes Egypt's Sinai peninsula. US and USSR demand Israeli, French, and British withdrawal. Egypt (and Sinai) are freed.

1956: Hungary: The communists assume power and introduce a reign of terror. The collectivisation of agriculture, the forced development of heavy industry, the rigid central planning, ruined the economy in a few years. As a result of the growing resistance of the Hungarian people, a revolution that broke out on October 23, 1956, toppling the regime headed by Mátyás Rákosi. The government of Imre Nagy announced the beginning of a new, democratic era, and Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. The revolution seemed triumphant: the Soviet troops withdrew and peace returned to the country. On November 4th, however, the Soviet army invaded the country in overwhelming numbers and while Prime Minister Nagy applied in vain for the help of the UN, they crush the uprising. Thousands were arrested, deported or executed. Imre Nagy and other leaders of the revolution applied for asylum at the Yugoslav embassy in Budapest, but are deported to Romania, later brought back to Hungary, and after a show trial, executed in 1958.

1 November 1956: Australian government announces intention to support Anglo-French military action against Egypt to re-take Suez Canal. Egypt breaks diplomatic relations.

16 May 1956: UK explodes more nuclear devices on Australia's Monte Bello Islands. Second blast send a radioactive cloud over Australia.

February 1956: French High Command is dissolved in Vietnam.

1956: Malaya and Britain agree on independence and draft constitution, Malaya is more peaceful and some troops regroup to attack hardest-core Communist areas.

1956: Russia takes Hungary.

1956, Laurette Sejourne conducts research in Mesoamerica on Teotihuacan, Mexico. "The origins of this high culture are a complete mystery."

1956, Laurette Sejourne devised a theory suggesting that the Aztec cult of human sacrifice arose due to a degradation of an ancient system of purely spiritual initiation, linked to views about human immortality, with symbolism versus literalness all "grotesquely misunderstood".

1956: Publication of R. J. C. Atkinson, Stonehenge. London, Hamish Hamilton, 1956.

1955, Death of Albert Einstein.

1955-1962: World Migration: Some 67,000 people per year move from Caribbean, Africa and India to UK. (Source: 2003, UN, International Organisation for Migration)

The 1950s: Invention of Murphy's Law, supposed to be: "if anything can go wrong, it will and at the worst possible time". Credited to US air force Captain Edward A. Murphy, who had the job of designing sensors for use during tests on the effects of variable G-forces on test pilots of the day. One day he found, that his sensors had made no readings, as they'd been installed backwards. So he re-designed them to be fitted only one way. The original Murphy's Law stated: "If there are two or more ways to do something and one of these results in a catastrophe, then someone will do it that way". What Murphy really recommended was that things should be planned or designed to work in one way, as with an ordinary 240-volt wall plug for electricity - it can go into a wall socket only one way. So now you know!

1950's: U.S. efforts to contain the spread of Communism in Asia involves forging alliances with tribes and warlords inhabiting the areas of the Golden Triangle, (an expanse covering Laos, Thailand and Burma), thus providing accessibility and protection along the southeast border of China. In order to maintain their relationship with the warlords while continuing to fund the struggle against communism, the U.S. and France supply the drug warlords and their armies with ammunition, arms and air transport for the production and sale of opium. The result: an explosion in the availability and illegal flow of heroin into the United States and into the hands of drug dealers and addicts.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

22 April 1955: Australia sends an infantry battalion to Malaya plus artillery battery and support, part of British Commonwealth Far East Strategic Reserve, with two RAAF squadrons there since 1950.

March 1955: Singapore becomes self-governing, and is still separate from Federation.

February 1955: French programs failed in South Vietnam and French businessmen withdraw. A coup against Diem in April 1955, but he fended it off with troops loyal to US aid, (It would cost the US $300 million to hold Vietnam.)

1 January 1955: More Australian troops sent to Malaya, first actions in Kedah.

1955, The Mayan scholar Michael D. Coe notices correspondences in matters astronomical between the Cambodian Khmer culture, and Classic Maya. (Date from Hancock and Faiia).

1954: Vietnam: Vietminh defeat French troops at Dien Bien Phu.

1954: Algeria begins its rebellion against French rule.

1954: Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis writes novel The Last Temptation, where Jesus does die on the Cross, but sees himself as married to Mary Magdalene, after whom he has been lusting for some time. (Baigent/Leigh, Messianic Legacy, on revising the story of Jesus Christ)

1954: Algeria begins its rebellion against French rule.

5 October, 1954: Last French troops leave Hanoi.

4 September, 1954: SEATO formed to counter communist expansion in Southeast Asia.

20-21 July, 1954: Vietnam: Geneva Accords partition Vietnam temporarily pending outcome of national elections.

July 1954: Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem becomes premier of South Vietnam under Bao Dai.

1 June, 1954: Vietnam: US agents begin covert operations in Vietnam.

7 May, 1954: Vietnam: French garrison at Dien Bien Phu surrenders.

3 April, 1954: Vladimir Petrov defects from the Soviet embassy in Canberra and seeks political asylum in Australia.

March 1954: Vietnam: Siege of Dien Bien Phu (which falls on 7 May).
Late 1954 arises the US puppet in Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic, recruited from refugees of the post-colonial war, and in next nine years, efforts to create a viable state of South Vietnam fail.

1954: Publication of A. Thom, 'The Solar Observations of Megalithic Man', Journal of the British Astronomical Association, Vol. 64, 1954., pp. 396-404. Follows a long list of further publications by Thom on megalithic methods of measurement.

1954: Runner Roger Bannister breaks the four-minute-mile in May 1954.

1953: France grants independence to Indochinese kingdom of Laos.

1953: DNA discoverers attack religion: The two much-feted discoverers of the structure of DNA in 1953, Dr. Francis Crick (86) and James Watson (74), have used the 50th anniversary of their discovery to attack religion. Both are outspoken atheists. Crick has said that his distaste for religion was one of the motives for his original work. He feels, the God hypothesis is rather discredited. He is reported as saying, "I went into science because of these religious reasons, there's no doubt about that. I asked myself what were the two things that appear inexplicable and are used to support religious beliefs: the difference between living and non-living things, and the phenomenon of consciousness."
He argues that many claims made by specific religions over 2000 years have been proved false. Watson, once a Catholic but disillusioned with the church over issues of the Spanish Civil War, says, "Every time you understand something, religion becomes less likely." (Ironically, the leader of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins, is a devout Christian; he took over in that position from Watson in 1993. Polls in the US indicate that 70-80 per cent of people believe in a personal God.)
(Reported in Sydney Morning Herald, weekend 22-23 March 2003)

1950-1953: Korean War.

1953: Mao Zedong introduces first five-year plan in China.

1953, Albert Einstein becomes an early promoter of view that the Earth may have undergone crustal displacement. (Date from Hancock and Faiia).

March 1953: Stalin dies in Russia.

15 October, 1953: Britain explodes first of two nuclear devices at Emu Field, Woomera, South Australia. Second explosion on 27th.

27 July, 1953: Korean War armistice signed.

29 May, 1953: Everest. In May 1952, Tenzing Norgay Sherpa and a Swiss mountain climber, Raymond Lambert, reach an altitude of 8611 metres, just 237 metres from the summit of Everest. They fall back due to exhaustion and bad weather. A year later, Tenzing (died 1986) returned "to finish the job" with New Zealander, Edmund Hilary, by tracing the route Lambert had taken. Hilary stood atop Everest on 29 May, 1953. Meantime, in 1952 a Swiss expedition to the summit of Everest via the south face had been led by Dr Edouard Wyss-Dunant, the first attempt to scale the south face. Since 1953, more than 1200 people have climbed Everest. Since 1924, 175 have died trying the climb. In 1924, two Britons tried it but disappeared, George Mallory and Sandy Irvine.

15 April, 1953: Australian Atomic Energy Commission established.

1953: Russia: Soviet Union detonates its first hydrogen bomb.

1953, Francis Crick and James Watson identify the molecular structure of DNA.

1952: Allan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. Published first in 1952. (Selling about three million copies)

1952: Cuban scholar Alberto Ruz Lhuillier after years of digging and exploration down a secret stairway finds much more information on the extraordinary White Pyramid of King Pakal, of the Mayans of Central America - including a sarcophagus.

1952: Year the first heart pacemaker is fitted.

November 1952: An Australian army observer unit sent to Malaya during the emergency there.

3 October, 1952: UK explodes its first atom bomb in Monte Bello Islands, Western Australia.

4 August, 1952: First ANZUS council opens at Honolulu.

1 April, 1952: Australia agrees to let its UK and USA allies develop uranium deposits at Radium Hill, South Australia.

1952: Coining of the term, "Third World", by French demographer Alfred Sauvy, thinking of the pre-revolutionary third estate in France as he considered the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Vis-a-vis the capitalist "first world and the communist "second world".

1952: Pope John Paul II on his recent visit to Bulgaria beatified three Bulgarian priests executed by Communists in Sofia in 1952 for "clandestine activities against the state"; Kamen Vitchev, Pavel Djidjov and Josaphat Chichkov. Reported 28 May 2002.

1 September, 1951: Security treaty made, ANZUS, signed in San Francisco. Australia occupation force in Japan to come home.

1951, Beginning of excavation of Qumran regarding Dead Sea Scrolls.

1951: United States and 48 other countries sign peace treaty with Japan in San Francisco.

1951: Year the last woman is hanged in Australia, Jean Lee.

1951, October 15: First synthesis of a steroid leading to The Pill (oral contraceptive), in a small laboratory in Mexico City, with Dr. Carl Djerassi, who was using a commercial testing laboratory in Wisconsin, Endocrine Laboratories Inc., with Dr. Elva G. Shipley.

1951: In 1951, in Tokyo, Japan signs peace treaty re outcome of World War Two. Supposedly settling all questions of any future reparations.

1951: NSW Australia introduces world's first paid sick and long-service leave entitlements for employees.

1951: Reports arise of Easter visits from the Virgin Mary, in a village in southern France near the Spanish border. Some people had visions, others heard voices, some otherwise stable people were disorientated psychologically. The cause was found to be St Anthony's Fire, a problem from flour made of rye and wheat. (Ergotamine poisoning).

Things television will kill: Television is going to be one of the biggest menaces of the future. In the United States, children are refusing to study or eat because taking meals or studying is a waste of good viewing time. So parents are putting in tables with built-in seats in front of the TV set so that their youngsters can fill their stomachs and their eyes at the same time ... Some families are even going to the extreme of screwing down their most comfortable chairs so that they cannot be moved away from the hypnotic screen. (13 January, 1951. From The Sydney Morning Herald, before Australia has TV)

1950: Year that nylon stockings go on sale in the US.

1950: US: Comic strip Peanuts, created by Charles M. Schulz, is first published.

1950: US President Harry Truman announces he has ordered development of hydrogen bomb.

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9 December, 1950: Korean War: Australian troops withdraw from North Korea to South.

1950: Malaya: Terrorist murders of Malayans reaches to 100 per month.

1950: Senator McCarthy in US begins anti-communist witch-hunts.

February 1950: Vietnam: As France creates Assoc. States of Indochina, the Soviet Union and China respond by recognizing Hanoi, ie, Ho Chi Minh's efforts create a legitimate government, the Viet Minh.

25 June, 1950: North Korea as a Soviet client invades South Korea.

2 February, 1950. Arrest in UK of spy, scientist Klaus Fuchs, who has betrayed the secret of the atom bomb to the Soviet Union. In March he is sentenced at London's Old Bailey to 14 years for breaking The Official Secrets Act. He was stripped of his British citizenship, served nine years, and moved to East Germany. He died in 1988. MI5 files on his case were released by Britain's National Archives by 23 May 2003, according to newspaper reports. Fuchs was "a central player" in Enormoz, a Soviet intelligence operation set up to find the secrets of the US' wartime Manhattan Project. Fuchs was first suspected due to the work of a US intelligence operation, Verona, which had cracked Soviet coded messages sent during World War Two.

1950: George Orwell: By 1950 when George Orwell, author of political comment novel, Animal Farm, had died, the CIA bought the film rights from his widow to be able to influence any film made. See book by British journalist, Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. The New Press, 2000.

1950: Year that nylon stockings go on sale in the US.

1949: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation comes into effect on the world stage.

1949: Mao Zedong proclaims People's Republic of China.

1949: Yuli Khariton helps build the first atomic bomb for the Soviet Union.

1 December, 1949: Birth of later Colombian druglord, Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria. See book, Mark Bowden, Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the Richest, Most Powerful Criminal in History. Atlantic Books, 2001.

1949: NATO formed.

1949: The South Vietnamese Army created with French officers and non-coms as auxiliary to French Union forces. (When the French leave in 1965 they left behind a leaderless, defeated, disorganized and a poor administration force.)

1949: China has a Communist government. NATO formed in 1949.

December 1949: Percy Spender, Australian Minister for External Affairs from Dec 1949, was among the first to enunciate what President Eisenhower was to call "the domino process".

October 1949: Communist Chinese victory in China.

September 1949: Russia explodes an atom bomb.

June 1949: Emperor Bao Dai becomes nominal leader of Vietnam under the French.

April 1949: Malaya: Chin Peng's hopes for a popular rising fails. His party withdraws deep into jungle to regroup and is renamed Malayan Races Liberation Army MRLA. Resettlement of 423,000 isolated Chinese squatters into New Villages begins; idea later in Vietnam as Strategic Hamlets program.

February 1949: Malayan Chinese Assoc formed by Tan Cheng Lok, aims to attract villagers from communism after collapse of Koumintang and aided by Chinese commercial community.

January 1949: Output of new trainees in Malaya raises police strength from 9000 to 50,000. Army units arrive from Britain.

1948-1972: Corsican gangsters dominate the US heroin market through their connection with Mafia drug distributors. After refining the raw Turkish opium in Marseilles laboratories, the heroin is made easily available for purchase by junkies on New York City streets.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

The names of the Australians partly responsible for the very important 1948-issued UN Declaration of Human Rights are Australian -delegation leader Herbert Vere Evatt, Colonel Hodgson (diplomat), Allan Watt (diplomat), plus Ralph Harry, A. J. D. Hood, E. J. R. Heyward, G. A. Jodel, William Macnamara.
As complained about (are they all to be forgotten?) in Geoffrey Robertson, The Statute of Liberty: How Australians can take back their rights. Sydney, Australia, Vintage/Random House, 2009. Incidentally, Robertson remarks (pp. 30-31), that it was this declaration, and not Gallipoli [or "Anzac"], that really first put Australia on the international map.

1948: World Health Organisation is founded.

1948: UN first proposes creation of "an international judicial organ for the trial of persons charged with genocide". There was little progress till the 1990s, due to the Cold War, with ugly situations arising in Rwanda, and in the former Yugoslavia/Slobodan Milosevic.

1948: Israeli independence leads to the first Arab-Israeli war. The Jews called it "the war of independence" and the Arabs called it, "the nakba", or, the catastrophe. Later-written histories tend to be nationalist, that is, tending to one-sidedness, self-congratulatory and demonising the enemy. The Jewish state had been proposed by the UN, Britain tried to stymie the plan. Once the new state of Israel had been declared, (from the time of the UN vote to partition the British mandate once that mandate had expired) five Arab states from 15 may 1948 sent armies into Israel to strangle the new state at birth. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled Israel voluntarily or on various sorts of orders from Arab leaders. A ceasefire was declared in January 1949. Israel heroically won its fight for survival and then sought peace. So went some of the Israeli (Zionist) version of the bitter struggle. Long-later, left-wing Israeli writer Benny Morris would produce a book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, suggesting that while Israel had no prior master plan for expulsion, exactly, many Palestinians (up to 700,000) were ejected by the Israeli army. The first wave of Palestinian refugees arose before mid-may, 1948, not after,and Palestinian society inside Israel was harrassed. It was the collapse of Palestinian society which prompted the Arab states to intervene. Israel, some claim, won its battles since the Arabs were too divided to be effective. David Ben-Gurion, a-then Israeli leader, first believe that Israel's secret had been its people's spirit. Later he thought it was due to Arab incompetence. There had been a four-week truce, June-July 1948, during which Israel violated a UN arms embargo and imported heavy arms and ammunition from Eastern Europe in case hostilities should "resume". During periods of fighting, Jews committed numerous atrocities and killed civilians and POWs, more so than Arabs did. (Although by 2004, Morris had become quite right-wing in his pro-Israeli views, that is,anti-Moslem. Information from a review by Avi Shlaim in The Guardian, of Benny Morris, 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War. Yale, 2008, reprinted in Sydney Morning Herald, 12-13 July 2008)

1948: When the state of Israel is one day old, it is attacked by Egyptian planes and invaded from troops from Lebanon and Transjordan. However, in June 1948 (article by Paul McGeough in SMH, w/e 17-18 Jan 2009), one John Troutback said to UK foreign secretary Ernest Bevan, that the US had been responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". See Benny Morris, 1948:The First Arab-Israeli War. Tale, 2008, 524pp.

1948: Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated in India.

1948: With Britain out, Jews proclaim a Jewish state. Local Palestinians and army units from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon engage in an escalating war to prevent the partition of Palestine, the creation of a Jewish state, and Israeli expansion into the proposed Palestinian area. Israeli units defeat the combined Arab armies. What the UN had designated as the Arab state is split into three parts: some is taken by Israel and incorporated into their new state; the tiny Gaza Strip is held by Egypt and governed by them; the largest remaining component--generally called the West Bank of the Jordan River--is held by Jordan. The UN had proposed that Jerusalem and other holy places become an internationally-governed entity. In the fighting, Jerusalem was divided into Israeli west and Jordanian east. The 1948 defeat was a major humiliation for the Arab world. Within a few years, the governments of Egypt and Syria are swept away in military coups and the king of Jordan is assassinated. Defeat of Arab armies.

1948-1950: Of 1,200,000 Palestinians in the Mandate, 725,000 or more are driven out of their homeland or flee the fighting that accompanied the creation of a Jewish state. Only l60,000 remain in Israel itself. The Israeli government allows only a very few to return after the war is over. By 1950, over one million live in UN-supported refugee camps in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan. The camps become centers of political militancy.

1948: Kashmir's Hindu ruler, Hari Singh, considers independence, then chooses to join India when Pathan tribes, backed by Pakistan, cross the northern border. UN ceasefire divides Kashmir into two, with Pakistan controlling the northern third only. UN resolution on status of Kashmir never arises.

August 1948: Britain withdraws from India.

June 1948: Malaya: MCP orders mobilization and ex-MPAJA men recalled to reform eight regiments of guerrilla army and govt declares state of emergency.

April 1948: Russia imposes the Berlin Blockade. US responds with an airlift.

March 1948: Communist conference in Calcutta decides on armed revolution in s/e Asia. Violence erupts in Malaya.

8 March 1948: The US Supreme Court rules that religious instruction in public schools violates the constitution.

February 1948: Russia absorbs Czechoslovakia. The US re-enacts its draft for military service.

February 1948: British Govt. abandons plan for Malayan Union and proposes a Federation of states instead, plus Penang and Malacca.

1947: Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl's raft Kon Tiki reaches Tuamoto Islands in French Polynesia after sailing from Peru to test theory that Polynesia was settled by South American Indians.

1947: New Mexico: A strange object crashes near Roswell, with the US air force later insisting it was a weather balloon, but eyewitness and other accounts give rise to long-term speculation that it might have been an alien spacecraft. The crash occurred on 7 July. Local farmer Mac Brazel told the local sheriff he had found strange debris strewn across one of his fields. Claims arose of UFOs being confiscated and aliens detained by the air force. On 28 August 1995 was screen on US cable TV a documentary about an alleged autopsy of one of the alien bodies recovered from Roswell. Maker of the documentary was London-based Ray Santelli, who had been approached by a cameraman who had supposedly shot the autopsy footage hand-held-style. Being examined by four pathologists was "a six-fingered small naked humanoid" on an operating table. Kodak was said to have examined the film and said it was made in 1947. Naturally, many aspects of the "original footage" and the examination by the "pathologists" were criticised, and none of its findings were ever released. Yet still today, mention of the very word "Roswell" conjures up images of "aliens".

1947: UN recognises Korea's claim to independence.

1947: India gains independence from Britain.

1947: Japan's new democratic constitution comes into effect.

1947: 7 July: Near Roswell, New Mexico, farmer Mac Brazel finds strange debris across one of his fields. Claims arise of UFOs confiscated and aliens detained by the Air Force. On 28 August, 1995 is screened in the US, a documentary about a so-called autopsy on an alien body. Film by London-based Ray Santelli. Controversy continued.

1945-1947: Burma gains its independence from Britain at the end of World War II. Opium cultivation and trade flourishes in the Shan states.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

1947: Britain decides it cannot bring peace to Palestine and turns the matter over to the UN. In Resolution 181 the UN votes to partition Palestine into Jewish and Palestinian states with an international enclave around Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Arab leaders reject the plan and insist on a united Palestine with a secular government. Fighting begins between Jews and Palestinians. Many Palestinians become refugees.

1947: Indian independence from British colonial rule. Many Muslims break away to live in Pakistan.

1947: Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls near Qumran in Israel, Essene documents surviving from about the time of Jesus, that is 30AD-75AD.

21 July 1947: Australia: Immigration minister Calwell signs an agreement with the International Refugees Organisation for Australia to accept displaced persons from Europe. First acceptances arrived in November 1947, including Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians.

5 February 1947: A long-range weapons establishment at Salisbury, WA with a rocket range at Woomera, South Australia. (Now Weapons Research Establishment).

February 1947: Malaya: Moves in MCP against a Vietnamese, Lai Tek (possibly a triple agent); he disappeared and so did party funds, his fate a mystery. Lai Tek is succeeded in MCP by Chin Peng. The former anti-Japanese army is now to be reactivated as Malayan People's Anti-British Army. Riots of 1948 in Malaya, then Chin Peng decided to mobilize the guerrilla army from jungle camps as anti-British. On 17 June 1948, is declared a state of emergency, the anti-Communist war in Malaya has officially begun.

1947: When British commonwealth is shut out from US atomic secrets, after 1946, and British PM Clement Atlee wanted to develop an independent British atomic bomb, the Australians rushed to open the South Australian desert in 1947, and later, when the US preferred Arizona to an Australian site, Australia offered Maralinga to the use of the British. The 1950s Blue Streak rocket scheme to develop a nuclear delivery system was Anglo-Aust. Tests ceased in the early 1960s.

1947: Malaya's year of strikes, some 300 strikes. In Calcutta was a Moscow-sponsored conference of Asian communist parties and armed struggle was to break out all over Asia, with Mao Tse Tung soon to prevail in China.

1947: Australia: Cloud-seeding experiments by CSIRO near Bathurst, NSW, allegedly the first man-made rain to fall.

1946: UK: William Joyce, the "Lord Haw Haw" who broadcast Nazi propaganda to Britain during WWII, is hanged for treason in London.

1946: Poet Robert Graves publishes his fictional account of the life of Jesus, King Jesus, in which Jesus survives the ordeal of the Cross. (Baigent/Leigh, Messianic Legacy, on revising the story of Jesus Christ)

19 December 1946: the First Indochina War begins when Viet Minh forces under Ho Chi Minh attack French troops in the north.

13 December 1946: UN approves Australian trusteeship of the former mandated territory of New Guinea. 1975, New Guinea given independence from Australia and its own sovereign state.

1946: Malaya: Begins Malayan war against communism as rival communists vs Koumintang gangs work in Chinese community. British Malayan union insults the Muslims, and also offers full citizenship to Indians and Chinese in Malaya. Chinese are 38 per cent of Malayan population, and Koumintang and MCP compete for their allegiance.

1940s, Unearthing of Gnostic Gospels at Nag Hammadi, near Temple of Dendera, Egypt. (Date from Hancock and Faiia, p. 315).

1947, Discovery of Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran; and Nag Hammadi, a cache of Gnostic Gospels.

March 1946: Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain speech" in Missouri, re expansionism of USSR.

1945-1946: Outbreak of Indochina War. UK and Holland trying to find peaceful solutions to post-Imperial problems. US initially deplores outbreak of this war, but does not object to French policy re a re-conquest of Vietnam etc. Gradually, US drops its detachment and became involved in the struggle for Indochina.

1946: From 1946 the Nazca Lines of coastal Peru are mapped by German mathematician, "the lady of the lines", Maria Reiche. The Nazca lines are dated from between 500BC-900AD. Their purpose has not yet been established. See Chariots of the Gods by von Daniken, etc. The Peruvians seem to have been interested in the idea of flight. (Source: James/Thorpe).

In 1946: "Television won't last because people will get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." Darryl Zanuck, co-founder, 20th Century Fox.

1946: ENIAC - the first electronic digital computer, is switched on.

From 1 October 1946: US Soldier admits delivering poison capsule that killed Goering in jail: A former US Army private, Herbert Lee Stivers, later a sheet-metal worker, is a 19-year-old guard assigned to an honour guard escorting Nazi defendants in and out of courtrooms at post-war war crimes trials. Stivers was induced to give "medicine" to a supposedly ailing Goering while trying to impress a pretty girl he had met in the street. The girl introduced him to her "friend" who wanted Goering given the "medicine". Stivers long later said he was used, he would never have wanted to cheat the gallows of Goering's neck. Two weeks after Stivers made his delivery, Goering used it, on 15 October 1946. Mr. Stivers confessed recently in public at the urging of his daughter that he try to ease his conscience on the matter. (Reported 8 Feb 2005)

1946 and later: Sex slaves of World War Two: Some 152 women who were used as sex slaves in Japanese Imperial Army brothels are to be compensated by the government of South Korea. Each will receive about 38 million won (about $41,122). Some of the money has been donated privately, some has come from government coffers. (Reported in world press, 15 April, 1998.)

1945 - 1988 approx: Japanese "comfort women" thus began demanding redress in earnest only in the late 1980s and 1990s. See work of The Comfort Women Problem Resolution Council of South Korea.
A reviewer notes: "Sadism is a recurring theme of the women's stories, along with the blatant abuse of force, as in the following example":
"As I lay there naked on the bed ... he slowly ran the sword over my body ... He played with me like a cat plays with a helpless mouse ... He threw himself on top of me ... he was too strong ... To me, this brutal and inhuman rape was worse than dying... The night was not over yet, there were more Japanese waiting ... this was only the beginning."
"Beyond the damaged hips, the crippled legs, abdominal scars, broken bones, ruptured eardrums and missing teeth, came even more devastating psychological trauma".

Beginning in the late 1980s, advocates for South Korean comfort women have demanded: 1. That the Japanese government admit the forced draft of Korean women as comfort women. 2. That a public apology be made for this. 3. That all barbarities be fully disclosed. 4. That a memorial be raised for the victims. 5. That the survivors or their bereaved families be compensated. 6. That these facts be continuously related in historical education so that such misdeeds are not repeated.
See George Hicks, The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1995. 303 pp. Selected annotated bibliography, index. $25.00 US (cloth), ISBN 0-393-03807-6.

I am Adolf Hitler: This item has us quite mystified. Why have so few people in Australia at least heard of this book by Werner and Lotte Pelz, published in 1969? We hadn't heard of it till 2008 when a neighbour loaned it. I am Adolf Hitler as its text stands could easily have become the basis for the impressive movie released in 2004, Downfall, on Hitler's last days in his Berlin bunker, (directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, with Hitler played by Swiss actor Bruno Ganz). But first we need to know about an old book titled, Hitler's Table Talk, which this webmaster happened to read when in his teens, in the 1960s. Hitler while "governing" Germany had the after-dinner habit of regaling his guests with long and rambling ravings and observations about current affairs, his own views, European history, &c, and various poor souls were employed to note everything he said for posterity. The notes were gathered after 1945 and finally edited into what became a lengthy paperback.
So the question asked by Werner and Lotte Pelz seems to have been, what would Hitler's table talk have been like during his last days in his bunker? Their book, I am Adolf Hitler, purports to be his "last words", "a historic document of incomparable, even sensational importance". And the idea seems to have been that if anyone thought that Hitler was mad, a rendition of his last-ever Table Talk would confirm it. This reader feels that I am Adolf Hitler is of course a work of fiction, and finds that the "editor" of Hitler's last words regards his editing work with a pose of amusing pomposity, not out of place: but that doesn't explain why the book is so little-known in Australia at least.
Werner Pelz apparently was born in Berlin in 1921 to Jewish parents. He went to England in 1939 having seen the rise of Germany's Nazis, and worked at a variety of jobs including journalist (and he came an Anglican clergyman, apparently, and a BBC commentator on religious affairs). His parents died in the Holocaust. In 1964 he was disillusioned with religion and he spent part of 1964 on a kibbutz in Israel. He and his wife Lotte wrote several books and he was a writer for The Guardian newspaper by the 1970s. One imagines that working on I am Adolf Hitler would have been an agonising project, more so if the writers were Jewish. It so happens that Werner Pelz (his obituary online, The Guardian, 2006) became more thoughtful about power in society, Marxism, existentialism, and in 1973 he emigrated to Australia, where he became a lecturer in Sociology at LaTrobe University, Melbourne. He retired in 1986. When he died, The Guardian ran a very respectful obituary. But as an Australian, this reader is mystified, more so as he lived in Melbourne in the 1970s and never heard of Pelz till 2008! Pelz's story seems to make Australia's literary world very hard indeed to understand. Why have Australians so much ignored Pelz? Meanwhile, if anyone had ever wanted to make a movie like Downfall anytime after 1969, the work of Pelz and his wife could easily have been their first port of call. See Werner and Lotte Pelz, I am Adolf Hitler. SCM Press, London, 1969.

1945: Embarrassment for Japanese Prime Minister in 2008. Toward the end of WWII, recently-found documents suggest, hundreds of captured Australian and British troops were put to work as slave labour in mines on the islands of Japan. The mines were run by Aso Mining Company, that is, by Takakichi Aso, father of Prime Minister Taro Aso, who was five years old when the war ended. The relevant documents, now with US National Archives, sent by Aso Mining Company to allied forces in 1946, were tracked down by Japanese MP Yukihisa Fujita, though other records about other uses of captured troops by other Japanese companies are apparently still with Japan's health ministry. Japan has earlier admitted to slave-use of captured Koreans during the period in question, but has not before admitted to use of Caucasians. Amongst the letters are one from Aso Mining to wartime Minister for War, General Sugiyama, asking to use 300 prisoners in mines for 12-hour working says for one year, suggesting they would be suitably fed, clothed and treated decently. Survivors have recalled 15-hour days of forced labour, primitive work conditions, exhausting work, starvation and beatings. (Reported w/e Australian, 20-21 December 2008)

1945: Czech aristocrats want property returned: Claiming they have lost palaces, castles and estates during a 40-year period of dictatorship, Czech aristocrats have lately won a series of legal rulings. Under the Benes Decree issued at the end of WWII, millions of Germans, Austrians and Hungarians lost their property and were expelled. One of today's aristocratic fighters is Franz Ulrich Kinsky, aged 67, heir to an 800-year-old dynasty of Bohemian nobles. He has 150 claims outstanding for restitution, including the rococo Kinsky Palace of Prague's Old Town Square and a cultural gem of Czechoslovakia. Meantime, a national legal view is that according to Czech legislation, Czech nobility does not exist. (Reported 3 January 2004)

1945: Myth of the Bermuda Triangle: The myth seems to begin after 5 December 1945 when five Avenger Torpedo Bombers take off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for a routine run of bombing training, at 2.10pm in perfectly clear weather. The myth goes, the pilots become increasingly panicked, and radio for help, the last such call made at 7.04pm. By 7.20pm a Martin Mariner rescue plane is sent to investigate, and it too disappears without trace, as ships before have, including nuclear submarine USS Scorpion. Did the Mary Celeste, found drifting and abandoned in 1872, also strike trouble in The Bermuda Triangle? The area, much-used by evidently unaffected pleasure-craft, is one million square kilometres, bounded by Bermuda Islands, Puerto Rico and Miami in Florida. The Gulf Stream flows through it rather turbulently, and it is north of an area where many Atlantic hurricanes begin. The undersea landscape is very varied, and up to 9000m deep. The legend is given a boost in February 1864 when Vincent H. Gaddis has an article in Argosy: Magazine of Masterpiece Fiction. In 1974, Charles Berlitz published the best-selling book, The Bermuda Triangle. Back to 1945, the Avenger pilots were all trainees, either a storm blew up or they ran out of fuel. The Martin Mariner happened to explode about 23 minutes after take-off. Rather different to problems arising from Bermuda Triangle problems due to power crystals from Atlantis, aliens hidden under the waters, violent vortices from other dimensions, and humans using anti-gravity machines. But the myth persists, as myths do. (From an article by Dr. Karl S. Kruszlnicki in Good Weekend, Sydney Morning Herald, weekend of 3 November 2001)

1945: Thomas B. Allen et al, Codename Downfall: The Secret Plan to Invade Japan. nd? (US invasion of Japan was planned for 1 November 1945, involving 5 million men, half the US military, many British troops and a division of Australians.) See also, John Ray Skates, The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb. nd? Richard Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. nd?

1945: Japan abandoned about 700,000 chemical weapons in Japan at the end of war, at Samukawa, where a former factory run by Imperial Navy was located, south-east of Tokyo (as reported 15 February 2003 in Australia). One Japanese unit using such weapons was Imperial Army Unit 731 operating in Manchuria, which also conducted "experiments" on frostbite and other problems. Japan is now funding a clean-up of such abandoned weapons. About 250,000 Chinese died after Japan in China conducted experiments on biological warfare alone. The problems at Samukawa seem to be old bottles of mustard gas.

1945: Japan was working on its own atomic bomb program to the end of World War II, newly-uncovered documents say: The evidence is in a 23-page dossier now in the hands of the Riken science research institute in Tokyo where the original research was conducted. Blueprints of the project were ordered to be destroyed on 14 August, 1945, the day before Japan surrendered. But a scientist-in-charge gave the papers to a junior chemist, Kazuo Kuroda, who in 1949 went to work in the US, but kept secret his knowledge of the program till about 2002. (Reported 5 August 2002)

1945: Norwegian Vicklun Quisling is sentenced to death in Norway for collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War Two.

1945: What was the world's greatest mass suicide? It was said that the time of the horror of finding out about the Jim Jones massacre in Guiana, that the former greatest mass suicide had been at Mesada, about 70AD, when the Jews there avoided the Romans. However, it now would seem that the greatest mass suicide in history was in 1945 when the Americans took Okinawa, when "thousands of Japanese, women and children included, blew themselves up with hand grenades, leapt off cliffs or died in Kamikaze attacks."
Cited p. 48 of Good Weekend, Sydney Morning Herald, 17 June, 1995, article by Ben Hills, on Hiroshima, upcoming 50th anniversary of atomic bombing.

1945: Malaya: In Perak Province Malaya, the Malaysian Communist Party secretary is Chin Peng, later the leader of the Communist Malayan insurgency against British. One Lai Tek is an agent for the Japanese.

1945-1946: After WWII, Britain occupies Vietnam briefly before the French return.

1945: World Zionist Conference calls for Jewish state in Palestine. The said state later arises.

1945: United States drops atomic bombs on Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A remark? "I am become death, shatterer of worlds." - Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904-1967) (citing from the Bhagavad Gita, after witnessing the world's first nuclear explosion)

1945: History is not bunk after all where Ford is concerned: Reacting to long-standing criticism to effect that Henry Ford admired Adolf Hitler and was anti-Semitic, Ford Motor Company has produced a 144-page report commenting on claims that it profited from dealings with the Nazi war machine during World War Two. Ford in the US has long denied that it maintained control over a subsidiary in Germany, Ford-Werke in Cologne - which subsidiary may have used forced or slave labour. Ford describes its re-examination of matters in Nazi Germany as "exhaustive and uncompromising". The report is titled, Research Findings about Ford-Werke under the Nazi Regime, and Ford's chief of staff, John Rintamaki, said the report had uncovered no new information leading Ford (US) to modify its view that it had lost effective control of Ford-Werke under the Nazi regime, although Ford US had "a controlling stake". The German plant used about 2000 forced/slave labourers, about 45 per cent of its total work force. Ford US will however now make further appropriate donations to groups concerned about the issues. Before 1939, Henry Ford had accepted from Hitler, The Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest honour Germany could confer on a foreigner. Forde-Werke manufactured military trucks and track-drive armoured personnel carriers. The new report suggests that Nazi policy was to force some manufacturers to use forced/slave labour provided by the Nazi-German government. (Reported in Australia 8 December 2001)

1945: Australia plays leading role in helping to form /establish the United Nations. (But re Australian involvement in the Second Gulf War of 2003, just check this - Quote: The United Nations was intended to prevent wars but since it was formed there have been 250 [wars] that have not been put down... (Item found on BBC website on 20-3-2003 at about 4am Aust EST)

December 1945: Malaya: MPAJA disbands, guerrillas with weapons, rewarded if turning them in. But they retain large dumps of other weapons and supplies in jungle and keeps organisation of "old comrades" intact.

1 October, 1945: General war demobilization begins in Australia. Australian casualties in WWII, 33,826 killed, 180,864 wounded.

22 September 1945: French troops return to Vietnam after WWII to re-assert French rule.

1945: Did Hitler hate homosexuals?: Historians for decades have wondered about the sex-life of Adolf Hitler. Now, claims arise from Professor Lothar Machtan, in Modern History at Bremen University, that he was a homosexual. (See new book, Hitler's Secret: The Double Life of a Dictator. Germany, 2001. Hitler is said to have had homosexual liaisons in his youth. In Vienna, Hitler's closest friend was August Kubizek. During WWI, Hitler is said to have had a soldier-lover, Ernst Schmidt. So later, did Hitler fear being blackmailed?
Reported by The Sunday Times by 8 October 2001.

1939-1945: World War II. Holocaust kills almost six million Jews. Many survivors look to Palestine for refuge.

1935-1945: Question: Why is it that one never reads in a history book on the continued funding, or not, of universities in Germany and France during WWII? When presumably, Germany at least needed a regular supply and maths, engineering and chemistry graduates?

1945 - 17 November 2001: Vienna, The personal seal of Nazi security chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner has been found in an alpine lake. He threw it away to try to hide his identity, but his girlfriend turned him in. He was hanged at Nuremburg for war crimes.

1945: The US has now belatedly recognised the role of 29 and then up to 400 code-talking Navajo Indians who during World War Two used their own ("vast and indecipherable") language (which has no alphabet) to develop a code unknown to the Japanese or other enemies, used only by the US marines. It is now said that without use of this code, the US Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima. See the new movie, Windtalkers, with Nicholas Cage and Christian Salter due for release in the US in November 2001.

1945: To the end of World War Two, Hitler's own doctor thought that Hitler was criminally insane. (Is a second opinion actually needed here?) World TV news reports, 28 April 2000.

1945, The term "bug" is invented to describe something in hardware (later in software) which might interfere with efficient computer operation. The term was coined by Grace Hopper, later a US admiral. A website on her work is available from a US naval vessel.

2 September 1945: General Macarthur accepts Japanese surrender on board USS Missouri, in Tokyo Bay. Later is a requirement for Japanese emperor to relinquish his status as a deity.

1945: Britain during World War Two had funded resistance movements across Europe, but Churchill had refused to fund any movement connected with future French president Charles de Gaulle, as indicated in secret papers released in Britain by 9 February 2002.

August 1945: Japanese surrender forestalls British landings to Malaya, MPAJA gains control from Japanese in some areas.

1945: Author Arthur C. Clarke invents a scheme to use satellites to relay radio signals, at about 37,000 kilometres.

1945: Use of first atomic bomb on Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, closing World War Two.

1945 and previous: Eva Braun spoke rarely about her lover, Adolf Hitler. Eva had a cousin, with present-day pseudonym Elizabeth Winkler, who has not spoken of Eva Braun for fifty years. Winkler's mother and Eva's mother were sisters. Winkler lived in the Munich mansion which Hitler had bought for Eva. In 1944, Winkler stayed with Eva at Hitler's high retreat, Berghof. Winkler married in 1953, but her children did not discover their relationship to the family of Hitler's lover until the late 1980s, when Winkler's husband died. Winkler still finds it impossible to believe that Eva actually loved Hitler.
(Reported 8 January, 2000)

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1945, Death of US psychic Edgar Cayce, born 1877.

15 August 1945: VJ Day, Japan surrenders, forestalling British landings to Malaya. MPAJA gains control from Japanese in some areas.

6 August 1945: Atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and on the 9th, at Nagasaki.

May 1945: Australian forces land on Borneo, later landing in New Guinea.

25 April 1945: H. V. Evatt and F. M. Forde represent Australia at the 50-nation United Nations Conference on International Organisations in San Francisco. Evatt later a UN leader.

February 1945: Collapse of US-Soviet unity after Yalta conference, largely over issue of Poland. Churchill remarks on the Russian "Iron Curtain". USSR could not be argued back to its 1939 boundaries.

After February 1945: US diplomat in Russia, George F. Kennan, writes a brief: "The Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is the traditional and instinctive sense of insecurity ... Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively archaic in form, fragile and artificial in its psychological foundation, unable to stand comparison or contact with political systems of Western countries. For this reason they have always feared foreign penetration, feared direct contact between the Western world and their own, feared what would happen if Russians learned the truth about the world without or if foreigners learned the truth about the world within." Kennan's views in the "Mr X" article in Foreign Affairs, July 1947. (From Norman E. Graebner, (Ed.), The Cold War, A Conflict of Ideology and Power. Ed 2. Lexington, Mass., DC Haeth and Co., 1976.)

1945: Author Arthur C. Clarke invents a scheme to use satellites to relay radio signals, at about 37,000 kilometres.

1945: US began to add fluoride to drinking water to aid public dental health.

1945: Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Scrolls in Egypt in 1945.

1944-1947: Jewish-British War. Jewish groups in Palestine try to expel Britain. Mainstream Jewish fighters under David Ben Gurion are called Hagana. They later become the Israeli army. Two separate military groups (Irgun Zvai Leumi led by Menachem Begin and Lehi or the Stern Gang led by Yitzhak Shamir) resort to assassination and bombings. Many British soldiers and Arab civilians are killed.

15 December 1944: By 17 December 2001 arises theory that US bandleader Glenn Miller was a victim of friendly fire, or, friendly bomb jettisoning. On 15th December, Miller left a south-east England base for Paris in a single-engine Noorduym Norseman aircraft, never to be seen again. Now, filmmakers have claimed that a fleet of 139 returning British Lancasters were returning from an aborted mission to Germany and dumped their bombs into the English Channel - and onto Miller's plane. One of the Lancaster navigators, Fred Shaw, saw the accident.

1944: Massacre in Poland: Nazi troops crush the two-month-old Warsaw Uprising, during which 250,000 people are killed.

23 November 1944: Australian forces replace Americans at Bougainville.

13 October 1944: Liberal party of Australia founded at a conference of 18 anti-labor organisations. Formally constituted in December 1944.

1944: Stalin deports thousands of Chechens to Siberia and Kazakhhstan, on suspicion of collaborating with the enemy. (In 1957 is established Chechen-Ingush republic and many of those deported return home.)

11 September 1944: War-time brown-out restrictions lifted in Australia.

5 August 1944: Japanese prisoners at Cowra NSW stage mass escape, 234 killed and 108 wounded. Four guards killed and 108 wounded.
1944: At POW camp at Cowra, New South Wales, more than 1000 Japanese unsuccessfully escape. Some 234 are killed and 108 wounded.

24 April 1944: Australian forces re-occupy Madang.

March 1944: Britain: "Hellish Nell" Duncan is tried at the Old Bailey, London, under the Witchcraft Act of 1735. Winston Churchill called it "obsolete tomfoolery". Duncan claimed she was not a witch, but a spiritual medium.
See Malcolm Gaskill, Hellish Nell: Last of Britain's Witches. Fourth Estate, 2002, 402pp.

1943: Death of the Serbian-American inventor, Nikola Tesla, some of whose ideas may have been behind the invention of electric light and radio (?).

1943: Jacques Costeau and Emile Gagnan invent SCUBA diving gear - Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.

1943: Soviet army crosses Dneiper River north of Kiev as Germans retreat.

1943: The Computer Age begins with a machine called Colossus, housed in Britain, invented by Tommy Flowers.

1943: Malaya: British Force 136 with Col. John Davis joins MPAJA to train guerillas and organise supply of weapons, ammunition, etc. by parachute and submarine. Chin Peng operates since Tek's disappearance.

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1943: Greek Island of Cephalonia, German Wermacht officers and men massacre by machine gun up to 6000 Italian troops after September 1943 and the fall of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and Italy switched to the Allied side. A case on this matter is being reopened in Germany by November 2001. The massacre led Louis de Bernieres to write a novel, Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

1943: The term "the whole 9 yards" comes from WWII US fighter pilots in the Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards."

11 June 1943: Sealed road completed between Darwin-Alice Springs.

2 May 1943: The Japan make 54th attack on Darwin with level-bombers and Zeroes. What transpired about unskilled use of Spitfires was subjected to blanket censorship.
17 March 1943: Macarthur referred to the "Brisbane Line" plan as he reviewed his plans for Australia. Claiming that Australian plans before his arrival envisaged northern Australia in the hands of the Japanese.

13 March 1943: A plot to kill German leader Adolf Hitler fails when a bomb planted by German officers on his plane fails to detonate.

3 March 1943: Battle of Bismark Sea foils Japan attempts to reinforce New Guinea bases.

1943: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, IBM president, 1943. (A 2003 finding is that he never said this in fact.)

1943: Malaya: British Force 136 with Col. John Davis joins MPAJA to train guerrillas and organise supply of weapons, ammunition, etc.

1942: Japan's invasions of Burma and Andaman Islands begin to threaten west coast of India.

1942: US bomber's strike Italy's mainland for first time in WWII and in 1944 - British troops, aided by Greeks, fight in streets of Athens.

1942: France: Vichy government official Pierre Laval publicly says that "the hour of liberation for France is the hour when Germany wins the war".

1942: Australia not at risk of invasion by Japan in World War Two: Japan did not intend to invade Australia by March 1942 or later, as thought by General Douglas Macarthur, US President Franklin Roosevelt or Churchill, but threats of invasion were played up by Australian prime minister John Curtin, according to new research by Dr. Peter Stanley, principal historian at Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Any actual attacks on Australia were diversionary tactics, Stanley concludes. (Reported 1 June 2002)

1942: Japanese submarines visit Sydney, Australia.

26 November 1942: "Battle of Brisbane" riot between Australian and US troops.

September 1942: Malaya: 90 leading Malayan communists massacred by Japanese in Batu caves, but Lai Tek escapes.

August 1942: Malaya: Most of MCP central committee arrested by Japanese in Singapore.

26 August 1942: Japanese forces repulsed from Milne Bay.

27 July 1942: Australian women's land army established

25 July 1942: Townsville has first of its three raids by Japanese.

21 July 1942: Japanese troops advance to Kokoda, New Guinea.

31 May 1942: Three midget Japanese submarines appear in Sydney Harbour. One sunk by depth charges, one tangles in boom nets and blown up by crew, third apparently escapes after torpedoing a naval depot ship.

8 May 1942: See Noel Crusz, The Cocos Island Mutiny. Fremantle Arts Centre, 2000-2001, 248pp. (A rare case of mutiny, on the night of 8 May, 1942 on an atoll in the Indian Ocean. Cocos Island also Keeling Islands)

7 May 1942: Battle of Coral Sea rages, forces Japan invasion fleet to turn back, and abandon effort to take Port Moresby.

Mid-April 1942: Japanese bombed fuel dumps at Darwin (as though conceding they were no longer interested in an outright invasion.)

18 April 1942: Macarthur takes up post as supreme commander of South-West Pacific Area, with HQ in Melbourne. Gen Sir Thomas Blamey in command of allied land forces.

28 March 1942: Sydney receives its first shipload of US servicemen. North of Northern Territory placed under military control.

17 March 1942: General Douglas Macarthur arrives in Australia from Philippines: Australia to be a holdfast redoubt.

8 March 1942: Australian forces in Java surrender to Japan.

3 March 1942: Japanese planes attack Broome WA, some 70 deaths. Later attack Whyndham.

March 1942: Looting in Darwin, which later made it difficult for compensations to be made.

2 March 1942: Australia declares war on Thailand.

2 March 1942: Broome finds a Japanese plane on reconnaissance over it.

February 1942: Fall of Singapore.

23 February 1942: Main Australian force on Timor surrenders to Japan.

19 February 1942: Darwin bombed by Japanese. A fortnight later, Broome bombed. ($4 million worth of damage there).

19 February 1942: Japanese Bombing: Darwin becomes the "Pearl Harbour" of Australia as 188 Japanese warplanes rained death on the city. "An episode long buried in shame an secrecy" writes Australian journalist Paul Toohey in The Weekend Australian, 17-18- February, 2001.

17 February 1942: Australian PM Curtin cables London for recall of the AIF 6th and 7th Divisions, from Middle East to Australia.

15 February 1942: Singapore falls to Japan, more than 15,000 Australians mainly of 8th Division imprisoned. General Gordon Bennett escapes.

15 February, 1942: The Fall of Singapore to the Japanese, who took more than 120,0000 prisoners.
See Alan Warren, Singapore 1942: Britain's Greatest Defeat. Hambledon, 2001-2002, 370pp.

14 February 1942: Ships move from Darwin with nearly 2000 men for Timor, to reinforce Koepang.

8 February 1942: Japanese attack Singapore. Quite soon after December 7 Japan attacked Philippines and Malaya.

23 January, 1942: Rabaul New Guinea falls to Japan.

14 January, 1942: Australian troops engage Japanese for first time in Malaya.

11 January, 1942: Japan landed in Borneo and the Celebes, which brought Australia into range of Japanese air-bombers.

4 January, 1942: Rabaul in New Guinea bombed by Japan.

1942: Japanese submarines shell Newcastle and Sydney.

1941-1942: Japanese overrun much of South-East Asia.

19 December 1941: Adolf Hitler dismisses his chief of staff and takes personal command of German army after military setbacks.

7 December, 1941: Japan bombs US navy ships at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii.

24 December 1941: US General Macarthur leaves Manila in Philippines.

December 1941: Japanese invade Malaya.

19 November 1941: A German raider destroys Australian naval ship, HMAS Sydney, and its crew of 645. At Christmas Island in February 1942 was washed ashore the body of an Australian now known as Christmas Island's Unknown Sailor. His remains were being exhumed by Australian navy in August 2001.

1941: IRA link to Nazi Germany?: British secret service files from MI5 now suggest that the IRA plotted to link-up with Nazis to invade Northern Ireland during World War Two. The Irish government ruined the plan by arresting German spy Dr Hermann Goetz, who had once met then-leader of the IRA in Dublin, Stephen Hayes. Goetz later lived in various IRA safe houses till his arrest in November 1941.
(Reported 20 October 2001)

December 1941: 200 Malayan Communists are trained by British as stay-behind-guerrillas, later named as anti-Japanese army.

22 December, 1941: First US servicemen arrived to Aust to Brisbane. (Australian historian Marilyn Lake's view is that an army of foreign men in a country, sexualizes the female population.)

11 December 1941: Darwin, Australia, hears first air raid sirens.

8 December 1941: Australian PM Curtin declares war on Japan after Japanese attacks in Malaya, Thailand, Pearl Harbour, Singapore and Guam. Also declares war on Finland, Hungary and Romania.

Sunday 7 December 1941: Japan attacks US at Pearl Harbour.

December 1941: Japanese invade Malaya.

10 July, 1941: Allegations that up to 1600 Jews were massacred by their neighbours in Polish village of Jedwabne, north-east of Warsaw. See book by Jan Gross, Neighbours.

1941- June 2001: Lost Worlds is proud and pleased to record that McDowell, an Australian adventurer, has located, photographed and visited the hulk of the fearsome German battleship, Bismark, sunk in 1941 off the coast of Ireland. (Australian national TV, 23 June 2001).

8 June, 1941: Allied forces including Australian AIF 7th Division invade Syria.

June 1941: Russia joins Western Alliance on invasion by Germany.

June 1941: Malaya: MCP Lai Tek offers to co-operate with British in Singapore.

31 May 1941: Britain and Australian troops evacuated from Crete, but three battalions of 6th Division are left behind and taken prisoner.

10 April, 1941: North Africa: Siege of Tobruk in progress.

1890s to 1940: Average surface-air temperatures increase by about 0.25 °C. Some scientist see the American Dust Bowl as a sign of the Greenhouse Effect at work. (Greenhouse Timeline)

1940 to 1970: Worldwide cooling of 0.2 °C. Scientific interest in greenhouse effect wanes. Some climatologists predict a new ice age. (Greenhouse Timeline)

1940: The name Jeep comes from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle, GP.

Early 1940's: During World War II, opium trade routes are blocked and the flow of opium from India and Persia is cut off. Fearful of losing their opium monopoly, the French encourage Hong farmers to expand their opium production.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

1940: A short history of medicine
I have a headache...
2000 B.C. - Here, eat this root.
1000 A.D. - That root is heathen. Here, say this prayer.
1850 A.D. - That prayer is superstition. Here, drink this potion.
1940 A.D. - That potion is snake oil. Here, swallow this pill.
1985 A.D. - That pill is ineffective. Here, take this antibiotic.
2000 A.D. - That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root.

1940: 24 August 2002: That extraordinary woman, Leni Riefenstahl, German film-maker during the Nazi era, is now in trouble again over mysteries remaining about 120 gypsies from concentration camps who appeared as extras in her 1940 film, Tiefland - what happened to them later? A prosecutor's office in Frankfurt has announced on her centenary that the German gypsy organisation, Rom, has made complaints. Riefenstahl has said none of her extras were killed, and that she had seen them after the war, while in Germany, denying Holocaust circumstances is a crime. (Riefenstahl also made the movies Triumph Of The Will in 1934 and Olympia on the Berlin Olympics in 1936 - using money provided by Hitler. She confesses that as a young woman she was naively swept up by Hitler's "enormous, hypnotic power").

1940: In Western World, use of diaphragms, condoms and pessaries becoming more common.

1940: US National Republican Convention is first election in history to be televised. A makeshift newsroom was built in an NBC auditorium.

December 1940: Severe drought over most of Australia.

1940: 12 September, Four teenagers follow their dog as it disappears down a hole near Lascaux, France. They discover a 17,000 year old set of drawings, now known as the Lascaux Cave Paintings.

6 September, 1940: Prison ship Dunera arrives Sydney with over 2000 German and Austrian internees from Britain. On treatment of Jews are amongst them, see Cyril Pearl's book, Dunera.

11 June 1940: Australia declares war on Italy following Italy's declaration of war against Britain and France.

15 June 1940: Communist and fascist parties in Australia are declared illegal under National Security Act.

1940: May, See John Lukacs, Five Days in London: May 1940. Scribe Publications, 2001, 236pp.

1939: With Igor Sikorsky's model VS-300, the first successful helicopter flight.

27 February 1939: Britain and France recognise General Francisco Franco's government in Spain.

September 1939: War declared, Britain versus Germany over issue of invasion of Poland.

3 September, 1939: Following Britain's declaration of war, next day 4 September was FIRST allied shot in the war, fired from Fort Nepean, Port Phillip Bay. at an escaping German ship.

1937-1938: Conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine.

(From Vincent Brome, Jung: Man and Myth. London. Macmillan. 1978)... Between 1935 and 1938, psychotherapist Dr Carl Jung travelled to London. One day, wishing to check some material, Jung visited the Reading Room at the British Museum. He did not know he needed a reader's ticket. "Who are you?" an attendant asked him. He replied, "I am a Swiss Doctor,... My name is Jung." The evidently well-read attendant asked, "Not Freud, Jung and Adler?" "Oh no, just Jung," the doctor answered. He was allowed entrance.

1938: Superman appears for the first time in comic books in US, fighting for truth, justice and "the idealised American way".

1938: Ireland: Gaelic scholar Douglas Hyde is inaugurated as the first president of the Irish Republic.

September 1938: Signing of the Munich agreement.

1938-1939: Australian and UK policy is to direct a battle fleet based at Singapore to deny Japan access to India and Australia.

1938: Laszlo Biro introduces the first ballpoint pen.

1938, Switzerland: Historians by December 1999 say that Switzerland due to anti-Semitism from 1938, and in 1942, introduced discriminatory measures against Jewish refugees. The measures were based on cultural, political and social views, not views on race.
Item, The Weekend Australian, 11-12 December, 1999.

1938: Nylon toothbrushes first sold in US by Dupont in September 1938.

13 March 1938: Death of famed US defence lawyer Clarence Darrow in Chicago.

1937-1945: Undeclared war breaks out between China and Japan.

1937: US aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappear during their attempt to cross the Pacific.

13 December 1937: Japanese troops invade Nanking in China and proceed to massacre about 300,000 people. (Chinese estimates).

1936: General strike in Syria; French grant Syria home rule.

1936: Margaret Mitchell's epic romantic novel of the US' deep south is published, Gone With The Wind, later made into a celebrated film.

1936: Pilot Amy Johnson arrives in Croydon, England, after a record-breaking flight return flight from South Africa, taking four days, 16 hours.

1936: Author Dale Carnegie publishes his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, erroneously claiming that "most people only use 15 per cent of their brains".

25 June 1936: Japan bans import of Australian wool, wheat, and flour in retaliation for trade diversion policy.

1936: Chinese warlord Chang Hsueh-liang, intervenes to stop Chaing Kai-shek's final push against the Red Army. He dies in Hawaii aged 100 by 17 October 2001.

July 1936: Outbreak of Spanish Civil War. Germany and Italy assist the right-wing General Franco, Spanish Republicans helped by the USSR.

June 1936: Workmen for a new railway near Baghdad find an ancient tomb (Parthian period, 250BC-250AD) which seems to contain the casing of "an electric battery", comprised of a copper tube with one closed end, an iron rod, and some asphalt as a seal. Examined in 1938 by German archaeologist Wilhelm Konig. (Source: James/Thorpe).

May 1936: Formation of Australian Council for Civil Liberties.

1936: Britain and France pledge to support Poland if it is invaded.

March 1936: Germany marches into the Rhineland.

1936: "A rocket will never be able to leave the earth's atmosphere." Declared by The New York Times, 1936.

1936-1939: Palestinian nationalist uprising against Britain. Britain proposes partition of Palestine and expulsion of 250,000 Palestinians.

1936: New revelation on Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII, abdicated, of England. She was at the height of the constitutional crisis willing to give up her liaison with him. He was unprepared for this and continued his plan to abdicate. (Reported 3 March, 2000)

1930: First Round Table Conference between British government and Indian parties.

1930: Italian couturier Elsa Schiaparelli launches a style renovation by placing visible zips on clothing, on the pockets of a beach jacket.

1937: 1930: Italian couturier Elsa Schiaparelli launches a brand new colour, Shocking Pink. Coco Chanel used to call Elsa, “that Italian artist who makes clothes”. See Dilus Blum's book, Shocking! The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaarelli.

1930s: World Migration: Some 70,000 refugees from Nazi Germany move to the UK. (Source: 2003, UN, International Organisation for Migration)

1935: War! (This item arises from a February 2014 Linked-In History Discussion Group forum.) The inane question, more suitable for sports fans than military or other historians, was: "Who do you think is the No. 1 general in American history?" As though wars are comparable and are conducted on an organised sports field like baseball or cricket. (The person who started this inane discussion finally found at the end of it that he had found the worst, not the best; Westmoreland in Vietnam.) Most respondees were US citizens and sombrely listed their fave military men. One snarky American reckoned the No. 1 US general is General Electric. Then arrived the below ...
"If you count as general who best served our country, I would like to nominate former Quaker and two-time Medal of Honour recipient Marine Corps Major-General Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940, see his wikipedia page). He went on a national speaking tour and published a small book (War is a Racket, 1935) on his thirty-three years as a Marine in campaigns that had nothing to do with freedom or protecting the United States but everything to do with enriching corporate America. He went so far as to compare himself as a Marine Corps officer to Al Capone, calling Capone comparative small potatoes as a criminal and thug. (In defense of Big Al, let me point out that he never excused his crimes as patriotism.) Butler, despite being a Republican, also exposed discussions of overthrowing the Roosevelt administration to replace it with a Fascist military dictatorship (known as the Business Plot). If he exaggerated the details, he did so to guarantee that this scheme received the public alarm that it deserved."
By Robert Davis. The editor meanwhile recalls the American joke that war is just God's way of teaching Americans about geography.

1935: Government of India Act passed; provinces of British India granted autonomy and self-government from 1937.

1935: Communist Party of Australia is an established force in trade unions, with union secretaryships active, eg., of metal-working unions.

1935: Founding in England of Penguin Books, the first paperback publisher. Revolutionizing the reading habits of million of people.

1930's: The majority of illegal heroin smuggled into the U.S. comes from China and is refined in Shanghai and Tietsin.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

1935: October: Major world crisis with Italy finally taking Abyssinia.
15 November 1935, Australia imposes trade sanctions against Italy after Italy's invasion of Abyssinia. (Ethiopia).

1934: First US Federal prisoners arrive at island prison Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.

1934: Communists go on Long March through China, led by Mao Zedong and Zhu De.

1933: Carole Seymour-Jones, Painted Shadow. nd? (Eliot "anti-Semitic and a cruel husband"? View of marriage 1915-1933 of noted poet T. S. Eliot (The Wasteland, etc). and his first wife Vivienne; something of a demolition job on the poet. See also the 1984 play on Eliot by Michael Hastings, Tom and Viv).

1933: Adolf Hitler elected Chancellor of Germany.

1933: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt launches The New Deal, a package of economic reforms to end the Great Depression.

1933-1930, Coining of the term ESP for Extra-Sensory Perception by Dr Joseph B. Rhine, of the Dept. Sociology, Duke University, North Carolina, USA.

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1932: Absolute rule of Thai king ends; he agrees to new constitution.

19 May 1932: Sydney Harbour Bridge to be officially opened by Premier Lang, but New Guard member, right-winger, F. E. de Groot cuts the ribbon ahead of him.

1932: US researcher Professor C. G. King of Pittsburgh isolates Vitamin C for the first time after five years of research.

1931: Japanese occupy Chinese province of Manchuria.

28 January 1931: An All-for-Australia League is launched at a meeting in Sydney.

1930-1431: Memorial stone (only rediscovered in 1930) erected by Admiral Zheng He at Ch'ang Lo on banks of Yangtze River estuary, before his last voyage begun in late 1431. Reading: "The countries beyond the horizon and at the ends of the earth have all become subjects and to the most western or the most northern of the northern countries, however far away they may be." In 1930, scholar of medieval China J. J. L. Duyvendak translates Zheng He's inscription stone left at Chiang-su. The mention of visits to three thousand countries is not believed, and is contracted to thirty countries.
(Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition)

1930: UK: British House of Commons gives women over 21 the right to vote.

1930: Australia is linked to Britain by telephone for the first time.

1930-1431: Memorial stone (only rediscovered in 1930) erected by Admiral Zheng He at Ch'ang Lo on banks of Yangtze River estuary, before his last voyage begun in late 1431. Reading: "The countries beyond the horizon and at the ends of the earth have all become subjects and to the most western or the most northern of the northern countries, however far away they may be." In 1930, scholar of medieval China J. J. L. Duyvendak translates Zheng He's inscription stone left at Chiang-su. The mention of visits to three thousand countries is not believed, and is contracted to thirty countries.
(Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition)

1930: A US astronomer discovers Pluto. Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh reviews some photographic plates of stars taken a month previous and discovers a planet now called Pluto, (which might have been named Constance).

October 1930: The Imperial Conference set for London.

September 1931: Opening of Japanese offensive in Manchuria. League of Nations helpless to do anything.

1930: A communist conference in Singapore is attended by Ho Chi Minh, then in exile from Vietnam, based in Hong Kong, directed not by China but by Russian Communist Party's Far Eastern Bureau in Shanghai, of which bureau Western Intelligence was aware. Ho Chi Minh arrested later in Hong Kong and imprisoned till 1932.

1929, Beginning of the world's Great Depression.

1929: Lateran Treaty in Italy between Pope and Mussolini sets up the Vatican with a secure, independent domain, resembling a state.

1929: Expulsion of Leon Trotsky from Soviet Union.

1928: Australian Gallipoli veteran, Constable Murray, and a vigilante party shoot 70 Aboriginals around the area of Coniston in Northern Territory.

1928: Japanese troops murder military ruler of Manchuria.

1928: Penicillin is discovered by Alexander Fleming.

1928: The first all-talking feature film, The Lights of New York, premieres in New York.

1928: A South Seas Communist Party arises in Singapore, the Malayan Communist Party began in 1930.

1928-1930: The New Guard movement in post-war eastern Australia, as various social problems inspired the radical right as well as radical left. In 1928-1930 were brawls between police and workers, New Guard led by Eric Campbell, to combat "communism-socialism and Langism", for ex-army officers from Sydney's North Shore. to oppose working class radicalism. The New Guard grew with a fascistic sense of "social and moral reform", had up to 100,000 members, and finally died of its own dissensions.
By Feb. 1931, the Guard had become more militant. Prominent were eight Sydney businessmen, five of them ex-AIF, led by Eric Campbell, aiming at "assisting police" to maintain law and order; while the police worried that if the new-guard became para-military in NSW, disorder would result. New Guards and Communists attacked each other at Sydney political meetings. A large rally at Sydney Town Hall in July 1931 revealed size of New Guard's following. The New Guard's best work was defeating a bushfire at Cobar. It faded in 1933, many resentful for Campbell's dictatorial style. See the novel Kangaroo by D. H. Lawrence for impressions of the views of the movement. Note: On 19 May, 1932, when Sydney Harbour Bridge was to be officially opened by Premier Lang, New Guard member F. E. de Groot cuts the ribbon ahead of him.

1928: The Archangel Gabriel is named the patron saint of telecommunications. Gabriel is said to have advised Mary the mother of Jesus that she would bear a son; and also to have dictated the verses of the Koran to Mohammed.

1928, The forward-thinking Hermann Potocnik (alias Hermann Noordung), a Croation army artillery expert and engineering consultant, draws an idea for a geostationary space station, termed "The Habitat Wheel". NASA has distributed copies of the drawing. See Potocnik's book, Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums: Der Raketen Motor. Published in Berlin by Carl Schmidt and Company; (The Problem of Space Flying) now available from NASA in English. Also about now (1929), a series of articles on The Problems of Space Flying published in the US. Potocnik corresponded with the German rocket scientist Hermann Oberth, who invented liquid-fuel rockets and "virtually launched the idea of space flight". Oberth in 1923 wrote an essay: "The Rocket into Interplanetary Space". Werner von Braun took some ideas here in 1929 as a schoolboy writing on space travel. Later US interests in space flight were stimulated by Willy Ley's book, Rockets: The Future of Space Travel Beyond the Stratosphere. (Viking). Arthur C. Clarke, today's guru, wrote an October 1945 article in Wireless World, citing his debt to Potocnik's ideas. In 1911 and 1926, a Russian school teacher, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky wrote on geostationary orbits.

Emmeline Pankhurst, (1858-1928), activist for women's rights and suffrage.

1928: Turkey is declared a secular state.

1927: Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek establishes government at Nanking; Communists challenge his rule.

1927: The Jazz Singer, first talking picture made.
In 1927, "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" Question from H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers movie studio. (Answer: Everybody, actually!)

1926: Year television is born.

1920s: British novelist and poet D. H. Lawrence used a personal dilemma for a plot as he to wrote his famous and much-banned book, Lady Chatterley´s Lover. The basic plot was based on the following real life situation. In the 1920s, Lawrence and his German wife Frieda lived at Villa Mirenda, Florence, Italy. Lawrence had tuberculosis, which meant he was unable to have sex. His wife took a lover, an Italian infantry army officer named Angelo Ravagli. Discoverer of this affair is Prof., John Worthen, a Lawrence expert from Nottingham University, UK, who had lately read Frieda´s previously unread letters. Which were to her mother, Anna von Richtofen, a cousin of ´The Red Baron´, famed German air force ace of World War One, Baron von Richtofen. Worthen has lately published a new biography of Lawrence. (Report in Sydney Morning Herald, 1 March 2005.

1926: John Logie Baird demonstrates television - a year later, talking pictures begin.

1926, Abolition of custom of harem-keeping in Turkey, as outlawed by Kemal Ataturk.

1920s: World Migration: Three million Spanish, Portuguese and Italians go to Brazil and Argentina. (Source: 2003, UN, International Organisation for Migration)

1925: The Royal Australian Airforce is formed.

1925: World's first television broadcast, from Selfridge's retail store at 400 Oxford Street, London. (Selfridge was a self-made Chicago millionaire arriving in London in 1909 to establish an American-style super-store - and he stunned all London.)

1925: The Klu Klux Klan stages a massive rally in Washington, USA, with 40,000 robed klansmen marching down Pennsylvania Avenue.

1925: In the wake of the first US federal ban on opium, a thriving black market opens up in New York's Chinatown.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

Died circa 1925, Percy Harrison Fawcett, in the jungles of Brazil while looking for lost cities of the rainforest. Later arose legends of white men from his expedition living in the jungle.

1925, First use of word "sexy", regarded as an English expression in a French magazine.

1925, 19 July, Adolf Hitler publishes first volume of his manifesto, Mein Kampf.

1925: Year in which scientists find out how to make insulin for the treatment of diabetes.

1924-1926: Hitler is writing parts of his book, Mein Kampf at his "home" in Obersalzberg, Bavaria. 1(925: Publication in Germany of book by Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (My Struggle).)

1924: Chinese nationalist party, Kuomintang, holds first national congress.

1924: First specimen of Australopithecus is found by Professor Raymond Dart at TAUNG in South Africa.

1924: British Egyptologist Howard Carter finds sarcophagus of Tutankhamun in Valley of the Kings near Luxor.

1923: Japan: Great Kanto Earthquake shakes Tokyo, killing more than 142,000 people.

1923: Mustafa Kemal becomes president of new republic, Turkey.

1923: The U.S. Treasury Department's Narcotics Division (the first federal drug agency) bans all legal narcotics sales. With the prohibition of legal venues to purchase heroin, addicts are forced to buy from illegal street dealers.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

23 November 1923: Regular radio broadcasts begin in Australia.

In 1923: "There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom." said Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize physicist, 1923.

In the early 1920s, "there were about 600 car-maker wannabes in the US", who were outclassed by Henry Ford and the Model T. As Claimed in June 2000 in an Australian newspaper in respect of the massive recent failures of dot.coms and Internet start-ups of all kinds.

1922-1948: Britain rules Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq under League of Nations Mandates. France controls Syria and Lebanon.

1922: Britain, France and Italy warn Greece against attempted occupation of Palestine.

Old Environmentalism, 1922: From The Washington Post, 2 November 1922. The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable. (From an item page 2, 2 November, 1922, as reported by AP and published in The Washington Post - over 90 years ago.)

1922: Kids today and what's new?: American expert on etiquette Emily Post wonders why her peers are worried about the younger generation and their disappearing manners - they are ruder, shallower and wearing more revealing clothes than their parents did. Post observes that older people generally feel that the younger generation is on the road to perdition. (As remembered by an Australian magazine columnist in 2003!)

1922: New Greek-Turkish war, after changes of circumstances at end of WWI, re Greece-Smyrna: 1922: Kemal Ataturk, Turkish nationalist leader and founder of modern Turkey, who captured the Greek hold-out Smyrna in Sept 1922. His troops slaughtered the Greek and Armenian population, and burnt the Greek and Armenian part of the city. The fall of Smyrna saw the "ethnic cleansing" of most of the ancient Greek population of Turkey (there was also a large "ethnic cleansing" of Muslims from Greek territory). The Turkish drive stopped at the sea (today, Greece controls as far as the islands just off Turkey's coast). Europeans that supported the Greeks had to flee. Many other European merchants, banks and companies pulled out during this period.

1915-1922: Turkish history -
http://uk.dir.yahoo.com/regional/countries/armenia/arts_and_humanities/humanities/history/by_time_period/20th_century/armenian_genocide/
Turkish genocide of the Armenians in 1915:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Regional/Asia/Armenia/Society_and_Culture/Genocide/
The movie: http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Movies/Titles/A/Ararat/
http://members.tripod.com/humphrys2/world.html#power.kills/, on Rudolph J. Rummel

1922: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP5.HTM/ - on Statistics of Turkey's Democide:
http://www.freedomsnest.com/rummel_turkey.html/

1922: Turkey: Destruction at Smyrna - This website lists:
http://www.kultur.gov.tr/english/yeni/izmir/development.html/ the scale of the destruction of 1922, but glosses over who exactly caused it. The official line, if any, seems to be that...:
http://www.kultur.gov.tr/english/yeni/izmir/from.html/
the Greeks and Armenians burnt their own homes for some reason.

1922: Queensland abolishes the death penalty, the first state of Australia to do so.

1922: UK, England begins domestic radio service, later the BBC.

1922: Not until now is the Indus Civilization known.

1922: G. Marconi in Essex, UK, began Britain's first regular broadcasting transmissions.

1921: First use of the word "robot", in a play, RUR, by Czech writer Karel Capek, from robota, meaning work.

1921: First Indian parliament meets.

1921: Publication by Hagar of The Zodiacal Temples of Uxmal. (Date from Hancock and Faiia). Consideration of Mayan city of Uxmal.

1921: Revolutionaries meet in secret in Shanghai and establish Communist Party of China.

1920: Palestine becomes British mandate territory.

1920: Indian leader Gandhi launches peaceful non-cooperation movement against British rule.

1920: First commercial radio broadcast in US and women also gain the right to vote in US.

1920: Russia: Admiral Alexander Koltchak is executed by Soviet Communists.

1920: Prince of Wales visits Australia as a gesture of appreciation for WWI efforts, though he came as a "missionary of Empire".

10 January 1920: League of Nations organised with Australia as an original member.

1920: By 1920, in Australia, heart disease and stroke replace infectious diseases as major causes of death.

1919: British troops massacre over 300 Indian civilians at Amritsar.

1919: Hungary: On August 1, 1919, the short-lived first communist regime of Hungary is overthrown.

1919: Assassination of Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata.

1919: India: At Amritsar, British troops shoot nearly 380 of Ghandi's followers.

1918-1919: Spanish Influenza kills 60 million people worldwide, the causes still not properly understood.

1918: Emir Faisal proclaims Syrian state; becomes king in 1920.

1918: Could the devastating flu epidemic of 1918 (30 million deaths worldwide) have originated in burning manure??? (Can you find the webpages on this? -Ed)

1918: Scientists at Australian National University have suggested that the trigger for the deadly influenza (Spanish flu) outbreak which killed 20-40 million people might have been result of a genetic mixing of pig and human influenza viruses. It was the worst disease outbreak known to history, with most of the dead aged between 20-40, in their prime. Commenting are Dr. Mark Gibbs, Mr John Armstrong and Professor Adrian Gibbs. The research has been published in the journal, Science. (Reported in Sydney Morning Herald, 8-9 September, 2001)

1918: Hungary: On 31 October, 1918, the masses, wearing asters on their caps, marched through the streets of Budapest and occupied the strategic points in the capital. Archduke Joseph, named , homo regius by the king, appointed Károlyi Prime Minister. On 16 November, 1918, Hungary is proclaimed a republic.

11 November 1918: Peace in Europe, a day of great rejoicing, Armistice Day.

October 1918: Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, First to Damascus: The Story of the Australian Light Horse and Lawrence of Arabia. Kangaroo Press, 2002, 221pp. ((Real author name, Jill Robertson-Hamilton, daughter of one of the Australian troopers. October 1918, Australians capture Damascus, an event described by Field Marshal Earl Wavell as "the greatest exploit in the history of horsed cavalry" - a book scotching the legend that Lawrence of Arabia arrived first, as indicated in the movie starring Peter O'Toole)

Forgotten spot at Sierra Leone: Oct-Nov 1918: Twenty two Australian soldiers now buried in a Freetown cemetery, following action as reinforcements, plus some men with Capt. C Christiansen in Sep. 1917. Possibly dead of an influenza epidemic on British ships. The great influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 killed about 20 million people, more than WWI did.

31 August 1918: (Lockhart, Reilly, p. 103) Dora Kaplan, a Social-Revolutionary, fired two bullets at point blank range at Lenin as he was leaving a meeting in Moscow. It was a miracle he was not killed outright.

1918: June forward: Germany has continued transmitting huge sums, forty million gold marks, both to the Bolsheviks and to their various rivals. (The Bolsheviks were banking on a German collapse.)

1917: Balfour Declaration promises homeland for Jews in Palestine.

31 October 1917: Palestine: The Charge of Beersheba. Partly a bayonet charge. Involving about 800 of the 4th Australian Light Horse Brigade charging across six kilometres of open and unprotected slope. Later painted by George Lambert, a famous work, The Charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba. Still regarded as perhaps the world's last great cavalry charge. (Although Polish cavalry confronted Germans at the outbreak of WWII.) A German officer at Beersheba said he could not believe the charge could have been pressed home; he added that he thought the victorious Australians were madmen. Later there occurred a massacre of civilians by the Australians, after the Armistice of November 1918. Men of the Anzac Mounted Division, formed by the Ist and @nd Australian Light Horse Brigade and the New Zealand Mounted Brigade, were camped near a Jewish settlement of Richon le Zion (near the Mediterranean), under the com and of General Sir Edmund Allenby. Near Richon was an Arab village named Surafend, and the Australians accused Arabs from there of stealing from them. Something happened on the night of 9 December, 1918. A young New Zealander named Lawry was robbed, woke and confronted the thief, who shot him through the chest; he died half an hour later. Lowry said his attacker was a Bedouin. It was found that the attacker's footprints seemed to go to Surafend. The ANZACs desired revenge. Australian reports seem to indicate that the New Zealanders took the most savage revenge. During the day they organised for an attack and that night, with Australians in sympathy, marched on the village. There they separated out the women and children and then attacked the men, then demolished the village. ANZACs then burned a neighbouring nomad camp. Later inquiries were held, of a rather farcical nature. Allenby upbraided the men as a bunch of murders, although reports differ on any disciplinary actions taken. The incidents were later written up briefly in a war history by Gullet. (Article by Paul Daley, One Bloody Secret, adapted from his 2009 book, Beersheba: A Journey Through Australia's Forgotten War, Melbourne University Press, in Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend, 25 July 2009)

1917: British troops capture Baghdad and Jerusalem.

1917-1925: Sun Yat-sen struggles for leadership of Chinese republic.

1917: Balfour Declaration. In exchange for war support, Britain promises Jews a "national home" in Palestine (without prejudice to the "civil and religious rights" of the non-Jewish population).

1917 Jerusalem recaptured by Allies, World War I following an Australian capture of Beersheba.

25 October 1917: Russia: Around 6.30am, the Winter Palace is occupied "practically painlessly". German Govt. is still feeding money to the Bolsheviks to keep Russia out of the war. By 8 November, Lenin's policy was to make peace with Germany.

25 October 1917: The Civil War in Russia 1918-1919, published in 1919, was published on Lenin's orders. Lenin declared that "on October 25, 1917, civil war in Russia was a fact".
Others, Soviet historians, saw June 18, 1918 as the start of full-scale civil war. (Note: With Russian history, dates may differ by up to 13 days due to use of the Russian vs the European calendar).

1917: Early September: (Lockhart, Reilly, p. 83). Lenin, in Finland, moved swiftly and secretly into the Russian capital.

4 September: 1917: Trotsky released from gaol.

1917: A 100-year-old US riot only now being talked about

By James Jeffrey, Houston, Texas, on BBC Headlines 26-11-2017.
It's almost 100 years since 19 African-American soldiers were executed following a violent mutiny in Texas. Why is the US only now coming to terms with what happened?
For decades, no name appeared above the grave of Corporal Jesse Moore, only the number seven. The figure corresponded to noose number seven which was used to hang him and another 12 African-American soldiers beside the Salado Creek of San Antonio in December 1917.
The executions followed the rainy August night when more than 100 armed soldiers marched into the city of Houston and during a two-hour riot killed 16 whites, including five policemen. The resulting court martial staged in three parts was the largest in US military history. A total of 118 enlisted black soldiers were indicted, with 110 found guilty, 19 hanged and 63 receiving life sentences.
"They were denied due process guaranteed by the Constitution and died horrible deaths," says Angela Holder, Moore's great-niece and a history professor at Houston Community College. "They were represented by one lawyer and didn't even have a chance to appeal." In the spring of 1917, Moore and his unit, the 3rd Battalion of the predominantly black 24th United States Infantry had been dispatched to Houston to guard the construction site of a new camp following the United States declaring war on Germany.
"They sent these soldiers into the most hostile environment imaginable," says Charles Anderson, a relative of Sergeant William Nesbit, another of the hanged soldiers. "There was Jim Crow law [which denied black people equal rights], racist cops, racist civilians, laws against them being treated fairly in the street cars, while the workers building the camp hated [the soldiers'] presence."
Tensions continued to grow during the troops' time guarding Camp Logan until the Houston police arrested a black soldier for interfering with the arrest of a black woman. When one of the battalion's military police went to inquire about the arrested soldier, an argument ensued, resulting in the military policeman fleeing the police station amid shots, before being arrested too. Although he was later released, a rumour reached Camp Logan that he had been killed, coupled with talk of a white mob approaching the camp - there was none - resulting in soldiers grabbing rifles and heading into downtown Houston.
"It was dark and there was a big rain storm during the riot," says Jason Holt, nephew of Private Thomas Hawkins who was hung. "At the trial not one civilian could identify a soldier firing shots that killed people." Seven mutineers agreed to testify against the others in exchange for clemency. Mr Holt has a 100-year-old letter written by Private Hawkins to his mother the night before his execution, telling her not to be upset about him taking his "seat in heaven", and of his innocence. Letter by Private Hawkins, dated 11 December, 1917 Courtesy of Jason Holt

Dear Mother & Father,
When this letter reaches you I will be beyond the veil of sorrow I will be in heaven with the angels. Mother don't worry over your son because it is heavens gain look not upon my body as one that must fill a watery grave but one that is asleep it in Jesus. [sic] I fear not death. Did not Jesus ask death 'Where art thy sting' Don't regret my seat in heaven by mourning over me. I now can imagine seeing my dear Grandmother and Grandfather and the dear girl Miss Bessie Henderson that I once love in this world standing at the river of Jordan beckoning to me to come and O! Mother should they be sensitive of my coming don't you think that they are anxious for tomorrow morning to come when I will come unto them.
I am sentence to be hanged for the trouble that happen in Houston Texas altho I am not guilty of the crime that I am accused of but Mother it is God's will that I go now and in this way and Mother I am going to look for you and the family if possible I will meet you at the river. Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden and I will give the rest, Bless his holy name. This is the happiest day I met with since Jesus spoke peace to my soul in Brookstone church from my promise to God I have strayed away but I am with him now. Send Mr Harris a copy of this letter. I am your son,
TC Hawkins, Fort Sam Houston, Tex
PS. Show this to Reverend Shaw - Reverend Shaw, I am with Jesus and I will look for you in that great morning.
"The men did not have a fair trial," says Sandra Hajtman, a lawyer and great-granddaughter of one of the policemen killed. "I have no doubt about the likelihood the men executed had nothing to do with the deaths." Soon after the executions, the US Army changed its uniform code of military justice to prevent executions without a meaningful appeal.
"The soldiers were 100% wrong for rioting, but I don't blame them," says Jules James, the great-nephew of Captain Bartlett James, one of the battalion's white officers who managed to restrain a larger number of soldiers from leaving camp. "The unit had 60 years of excellent service, was full of experienced veterans but couldn't endure seven weeks of Houston."
A majority of the soldiers were raised in the South and were familiar with segregation. But as army servicemen they expected fair treatment. Houston police and public officials, however, viewed the presence of the black soldiers as a threat to racial harmony.
Many Houstonians were concerned that if the black soldiers were shown the same respects as white soldiers, black residents might come to expect similar treatment. "This was a problem created by community policing in a hostile environment," says Paul Matthews, founder of Houston's Buffalo Soldiers National Museum, which examines the role of African-American soldiers during US military history. "It's up to people now to decide whether there are lessons relevant to the present."
In Houston - a rapidly growing city - knowledge about the riot varies, and most newcomers know nothing about an event that is rarely discussed. "The business community, just as in other American cities with a story of racial trouble, preferred that it be forgotten.
"It's not the sort of thing that builds tourism, after all," says Mike Vance with the Heritage Society of Houston. "But I most strongly disagree with any notion there was a decided attempt to not talk about it or any citywide memory lapse about it."
"The city leaders might not trumpet it, but it remains part of the collective memory of the population", Mr Vance explains. "I think that is true of things as recent as the race riots of the 1960s in places like Detroit and Philadelphia and even the Rodney King riots in LA."
Despite the tragedy, relatives of the soldiers recall growing up hearing their fates discussed by families, noting there was no shame attached. "What happened at Camp Logan is a complex narrative to navigate," says Lila Rakoczy, programme co-ordinator of military sites and oral history programmes at the Texas Historical Commission. "There was no public acknowledgment of it for a long time, but now there is more willingness to talk about it." The centennial of US entry into World War One has probably brought a heightened awareness of such events and emboldened people to address a sensitive subject, Ms Rakoczy notes.
This year Ms Holder helped lobby for gravestones from the Veterans Association for unmarked graves in a Houston cemetery of two soldiers killed during the riot. She says she also wants to obtain posthumous pardons for the hung soldiers. "We tried during the Obama presidency and were on the list but missed out," she says. "Perhaps we can approach a Texas politician or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] to help."
Moore and those executed with him only received headstones after authorities became concerned that flood waters from the creek might unearth the bodies. So the executed soldiers were re-interred in San Antonio's Fort Sam Houston cemetery in 1937, says Ms Holder. Meanwhile, as the 100th anniversary of the day of execution approaches, other relatives are left wondering what might have been if their relatives had gone to Europe with the other 350,000-plus African-Americans who served in WW1.
"Instead of a noose around my ancestor's neck they may have been hanging a medal," Mr Anderson says.
"The military should never have sent a coloured unit to guard that camp."(Ends)

1917: Lawyers in France have lodged an effort to clear the name of so-called spy Mata Hari, claiming she was not a spy but a victim of a state conspiracy. (Reported 17 October 2001 in world press)

1917, 25 July: The Dutch spy known as Mata Hari, Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, sentenced to death for spying for Germany during World War One.

1917: About 4 July: (Carmichael, J., on Trotsky, pp. 169-170)): The Right-wing elements in the Russian capital are stimulated by some news. The patriotic (ie, right wing) press had published documents to the effect that Lenin had been subsidised (to the tune of about 666 million US, two thousand million deutschmarks, thirty five million pounds) by the German General Staff - for the maintenance of a huge daily press throughout the country for propaganda purposes. Helphand was perhaps the principal channel for the money. The German intent being the immobilisation of the eastern front, which involved crippling the Russian Government, etc. (Later, Lenin in a letter to New Life, specifically denied any complicity with the Germans, or with Furtstenberg and Kozlovsky.)
By August 1917: By August, the Bolsheviks had 41 newspapers and journals, 21 in Russian, the rest in minority languages. Newspapers came out at the rate of one and a half million per week, or 320,000 per day, often distributed for nothing.

3 June 1917: From early June, June 3 for three weeks, the first All -Russian Congress of the Soviets was in session.

10 May 1917, Lenin and Trotsky meet.

5 May 1917: Petrograd Soviet met to consider inclusion of socialist ministers in provisional government. Cries of "Trotsky. We want comrade Trotsky" soon rang out.

4 May 1917: Trotsky met by a delegation of internationalists from Petrograd, including Uritsky, from the Bolshevik central committee. Mensheviks sent no one to greet him. At the Finland Station, to an excited crowd, Trotsky called for a second, socialist revolution.

24 April 1917: All-Russian conference of the Bolsheviks. The party adopted the slogan, "All Power To The Soviets".

14 April 1917: Conference of the Petrograd Bolsheviks, Lenin proposed that the party work for the transfer of all power to the Soviets. Kamenev against this and he defeated.

13 April 1917: Lenin on a stopover in Stockholm refused to meet Helphand personally. Radek spent most of the day with him to act, apparently, as go-between, and Helphand spent most of April 13 with him. Lenin spent much money on the Bolshevik Press.

8 April 1917: Day after Lenin's theses appeared in Pravda, Kamenev in an editorial note repudiated them on the grounds that they assumed the end of the bourgeois democratic revolution.
4 April 1917: Lenin at the Tauride Palace to a meeting of Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and independents.

3 April 1917: (Segal p. 129) Lenin arrives in Petrograd. His followers had set out to provide an impressive reception, the whole square in the Finland Station was filled with welcomers, mainly soldiers lined the platform, which was decorated with banners and triumphal arches in red and gold.

16 March 1917: (Lockhart, Reilly, p. 82): The Czar abdicates. The body of Rasputin, who had been murdered a few months before is dug up and burnt.

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March 1917: Revolution in Russia, Lenin etc.

1917: Hungary: The 1917 February revolution in Russia has a great impact in Hungary. A wave of anti-war strikes sweep over the country. New left-wing trends made themselves felt within the working-class movement, including the left-wing opposition within the Social Democratic Party, which strongly attacks the opportunism of party leadership. The revolutionary socialist group of university students, the Galilei Circle, started organizing anti-militarist resistance in alliance with the trade union workers.

About 28 February 1917: In three days the 400-year-old Romanov dynasty collapses. Whilst there is no new government, Czar Nicholas is at liberty, his authority still recognised in many parts of the country.

January 1917: Lenin in his Zurich exile, trumpeted his faith in socialism to a young audience, sadly concluded, "We of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution". Soon he was to be told, "There is a revolution in Russia"". And Lenin could scarcely believe it. He rushed with Krupskaya to the lakeside for newspapers, and read telegraphed reports. He wanted mightily to find a way back to Russia. Might he pose as a neutral Swede? He met with other revolutionaries in Switzerland. Martov suggested the sealed train idea. Which appeared, with the help of Parvus (ie, Helphand).

13 May 1917, Appearance of The Virgin Mary at Fatima, Portugal. Three secrets are mentioned (kept by the Vatican) which have never been divulged in full till year 2000.

Early 1917: the German Govt secretly plans to send revolutionary Lenin into Russia to reduce the Russian war effort.

1917: King George V orders British royal family to dispense with German titles and surnames, and to adopt the surname Windsor.

?1917: Arises the famous case in England of fairies being photographed by two girls aged 10 and sixteen, the photographs convincing the author and Theosophist, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in days when "spirit photography" was not uncommon.

1917, Hawaii, Death of Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii's last sovereign (1838-1917).

1916: Evolutionist Hrdlicka begins to try to prove that Neandertals are direct ancestors of modern humanity. At the time, the Piltdown Man Hoax in Britain was muddying the waters of discussion of such topics.

1916: Beginning of Arab revolt against Ottoman Turks in Hijaz.

1916: Hussein proclaims himself King of the Arabs.

13 December 1916: About 9000 Austro-Hungarian troops are killed in an avalanche in the Alps.

1916: Sykes-Picot Accords. Secret British-French agreement to divide the postwar Middle East between them.

1916: Mexico: A US force of 12,000 soldiers led by General John Pershing is ordered to Mexico to capture revolutionary leader Pancho Villa.

After July 1916: Australian radicals began to form anti-conscription groups. The trade union movement in NSW and VIC in Sept. 1916 declared against any form of conscription, and unionists warn of a general strike if conscription is introduced.

28 October 1916: A referendum in Australia on conscription, and anti-conscription won narrowly (voting in Australia not yet compulsory!!), 2,247,590 voting and NO won by 72,476 votes only.

1916: WWI: The 10-month Battle of Verdun, and a huge loss of life, with 543,000 French and 434,000 German troops killed.

1916: Anglo-Irish novelist George Moore publishes his fictionalised account of the life of Jesus, The Brook Kerith, where Jesus is seen as surviving the Crucifixion. (Baigent/Leigh, Messianic Legacy, on revising the story of Jesus Christ)

1916: Arab revolt against Turkish rule. (See career of T. E. Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia", and his book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

1916: Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, Irish soldier, statesman and conqueror of Sudan, is lost at sea when his ship strikes a mine off the Orkney Islands.

1915-1916: Hussein-McMahon correspondence. Britain promises to create an Arab kingdom in exchange for war support.

1915: In Western Australia, appointment of English-born public servant, O. A. Neville, as Chief Protector of Aborigines. (He appears as a figure in the film released in Australia in February 2002, Rabbit-Proof Fence (from director Philip Noyce), on the return home of three Aboriginal girls taken from their families into white custody.) Prior to Neville's appointment was the activity of WA Chief Protector, Henry Prinsep (circa 1899). In 1904 the Queensland Chief Protector of Aborigines was Walter Roth "father of the policy of the removal of half-caste children from their Aboriginal family groups". In Western Australia also operated, circa 1908, former pastoralist and parliamentarian, "travelling protector", James Isdell, and a chief protector, Charles Gale.

1915: Danish women win voting rights.

June 1915: A wave of fervour in Australia as 12,500 men volunteer, twice the April intake. By November 1915, Australia was counted as having 60,000 men fit and of military age, govt. asked them if they are willing to enlist. By mid-1916, Australia thought it needed 128,000 men and was 47,000 short, before the Somme battle of July 1916, with huge casualties. Recruiting ran at 6000 men per month.

1915: One estimate is that about one million troops were sent to Gallipoli.

1915: Outrageous massacre: The Turkish Government massacres up to 1.5 million Christian Armenians as the Ottoman Empire dies. The Turkish leader of the day was Enver Pasha. Judged as one of the greatest crimes against humanity of the Twentieth Century; not surprisingly, later much admired by Adolf Hitler.

18-19 December 1915: Gallipoli: Allied withdrawal on nights, a spectacular success.

April 1915: Gallipoli: The ships carrying Australian troops are escorted in by Japanese cruisers.

1915: First expression of Theory of Continental Drift (plate tectonics) by German meteorologist, Alfred Wegener. But little supportive evidence is found till the 1960s.

1914: 17 December: The passage of Harrison Narcotics Act which aims to curb drug (especially cocaine but also heroin) abuse and addiction in US. It requires doctors, pharmacists and others who prescribed narcotics to register and pay a tax.

1914-1917: Shackleton makes his famous expedition to the Antarctic.

1914: Hungary: Following the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, most politicians and military commanders of the Monarchy favour war against Serbia. Count István Tisza, the Hungarian Prime Minister, was at first opposed to the idea of declaring war. He considered the timing inopportunate and the proposed annexation of Serbia undesirable, as it would have increased Slav population of the Monarchy and weakened the Hungarian ruling classes. He was, however, persuaded by Austrian pressure to dispatch the unacceptable ultimatum to Serbia, worded as to provoke a war. Posters bearing the signature of Francis Joseph appeared on the streets of Budapest declaring the war: "I have considered everything, I have thought over everything..."
(From a website)

1914: First use of the term, birth control. In June 1914 in a US publication, a term devised by women's rights activist Margaret Sanger and her friends.

August 1914: Australia is at war. (World War I)

4 August 1914: Britain declares war on Germany, which has just invaded Poland. The issue became civilization-against-barbarism.

October 1914: Turkey comes into WWI on Germany's side, and so threatened the east bank of the Suez Canal and on their common border with Russia.

1914: Of an Australian population of over four million (4.6 million?), 800,000 been born in the UK. A vast majority had at least one British grandparent (the "crimson thread of kinship", and without the British connection the Australian economy would have foundered. About 331,000 Australian troops went overseas, 215,000 became casualties, 60,000 were killed. There was a 65% chance of becoming a casualty. Australia's voluntary enlistment rate was 7.5 per cent. Women spent 50 million hours knitting socks etc., and raised 16 million pounds for patriotic funds. Some 97% of Australia's population had ancestors in UK or Ireland; about 80% were English or Scots. Since 83% were born in Australia, 17% were recent migrants. Many of the early-enlisting were just off the boat, and possibly genuinely saw themselves as going to confront the enemies of "Home".
(Source: From an article by Carl Bridge in Quadrant.) But on views-of-the-day on social Darwinism, eugenics and racial purity, also the nature-nurture debate, see Paul Crook, 'War's Genetic Disaster? The First World War Debate over the Eugenics of Warfare, War and Society, Vol. 8, No. 1, May 1990., pp. 47ff.

1913: The Royal Australian Navy is formed.

1913: Psychoanalysis: The famous split between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung over the role of libido versus individuation in human life.

1913: China recognizes Outer Mongolia as independent.

1913: Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore, awarded Nobel Prize for Literature.

1912: Rutherford applies cloud-chamber to particle physics.

1912: The drug Ecstasy is first synthesized by pharmaceutical company Merck, but not used as a psychoactive agent till 1953, when the US Govt. tested it on animals. Then US chemist Alex Shulgin reworked it as what became a recreational drug (MDMA) in 1976.

1912: Bill Hart wins the first air race held in Australia, from Sydney to Parramatta, defeating American A. B. "Wizard" Stone.

1912: Chinese republic is proclaimed in Tibet.

1911-1912: Chinese rebellion against Manchus; republic is established, Sun Yat-sen first president, but warlords gain power.

1912-1926: Taisho period in Japan.

1912: Japan builds its first dreadnought battleship.

1911: September: World's first aerial bombing campaign is conducted in Libya by Italians, some years before the outbreak of World War One. An airman named Giulio Gavotti dropped four grenades on the Ottoman enemy outside Tripoli, though he did little damage. His action was observed by staff officer Major Giulio Douhet, who ten years later wrote a book, The Command of the Air, suggesting that the terror unleashed by mass bombing of civilian targets would help shorten wars.

1911: First powered aircraft flight in Western Australia made by Joseph Hammond at Perth, in a Bristol Boxkite.

1911: Port Fairy, Victoria: So-called finding by William J. James of remains of a wrecked Dutch ship. (A mystery now being looked into by one of Lost Worlds' emailers.)

1910: After 150 years of failed attempts to rid their country of opium, the Chinese are finally successful in convincing the British to dismantle the India-China opium trade.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

1910-1945: Japan's brutal annexation of Korean Peninsula. One colonial imposition was with Koreans being forced to take Japanese names and to speak Japanese.

1910: Invention of sliced bread by German housewife Bertha Paatsch. Her original-design bread slicer is still used today in bakeries and supermarkets.

1910: Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin) is aged 40 and living with his wife Nadya in exile in Paris. This year he meets a woman (born 1874, now aged 36) who becomes a long-term lover, Inessa Armand, destined to become "a player" in the Russian Revolution.
See Michael Pearson, Inessa: Lenin's Mistress. 2001, Duckworth.

1910: Historian Sir Clements Markham, scholar of the Incas of Peru. Comments on the mystery of Lake Titicaca and nearby ruins of a great city. Mystery still unsolved. (Date from Hancock and Faiia, p. 270).

8 March 1910: Britain: The Royal Aero Club issues the first British pilot's licence to J. T. C. Moore Brabazon, and a Frenchwoman receives a pilot's licence on the same day.

1905: China: Abolition of Confucian-style exams in China, a shattering of traditionalism.

1905: Japan presses Korea to sign a treaty whereby Japan "protects" Korea.

1905: Japanese navy fights and defeats Russian fleet in Tsushima Strait.

1909-1914: Adolf Hitler's period in Vienna as a failed painter. He once said he painted about 1000 pieces. A US government report once put the figure at 3000 pieces. In 1935 Hitler ordered the Nazi Party to find his works, then he put them in underground bunkers, later to be found by the US Army. See Charles Bracelen, Hitler: The Path to Power; and Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny.

1909: Luxury sea liner Waratah sailing from Australia to England sinks off South Africa and is never found and her problems never identified. She was Scottish built-and said to be unsinkable (as with Titanic). Salvage attempts will be made from April 2004.

1909: 1 February: The International Opium Commission convenes in Shanghai. Heading the U.S. delegation are Dr. Hamilton Wright and Episcopal Bishop Henry Brent. Both would try to convince the international delegation of the immoral and evil effects of opium.

1909: The first federal drug prohibition passes in the U.S. outlawing the importation of opium. It was passed in preparation for the Shanghai Conference, at which the US presses for legislation aimed at suppressing the sale of opium to China.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

1908: An asteroid 50km wide flattens 2000 sq. km of Siberian forest.

1908: Death of Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi and of the Guangxu emperor.

1908: Year the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) is established in US.

In 1908: Australian businessman, William K. D'Arcy, a solicitor in Rockhampton, Queensland, finds the first oil in the Middle East.

1907: Censorship in Australia: Charles Tait's hour-long film on bushranger Ned Kelly (hanged in Melbourne in 1888), The Story of the Kelly Gang, released in 1906, is banned in the outlaw's home area, around Benalla and Wangaratta, Victoria. Government authorities feared rioting, disorder, while some relatives or friends of the Kelly family feared their names might be harmed by reminders of family scandal. In 1912, Victorian government banned the film throughout the state. Australian film historians see Tait's film as the world's first cinematic feature.
Also from 1907 arose a spate of films on other bushrangers, with (1907), Robbery Under Arms, (here, bushranger Captain Starlight); (1910) Thunderbolt (bushranger Fred Ward from the New England area of NSW); (1911) Ben Hall And His Gang. A rather poor film production of 1934, When The Kellys Rode, by Southwell, was banned in NSW for about ten years, till 1948.

1906: China and England finally enact a treaty restricting the Sino-Indian opium trade. Several physicians experiment with treatments for heroin addiction. Dr. Alexander Lambert and Charles B. Towns tout their popular cure as the most "advanced, effective and compassionate cure" for heroin addiction. The cure consisted of a 7-day regimen, which included a five-day purge of heroin from the addict's system with doses of belladonna delirium. U.S. Congress passes the Pure Food and Drug Act requiring contents labeling on patent medicines by pharmaceutical companies. As a result, the availability of opiates and opiate consumers significantly declines.

1906: World's first feature film (?), The Story of the Kelly Gang, premieres at the Athenaeum Hall, Melbourne. (Ned Kelly being Australia's most famous bushranger, or outlaw, of the nineteenth century).

1906: The year in which "SOS" (save our souls?) is adopted at a Berlin Radio Conference as an international distress signal.

1906: US historian Henry Adams (1838-1918) predicts that before 1950 there would be used, "explosives of cosmic force".

1906: Alphabets, 1500BC: In 1906 Sir William Flinders Petrie discovers an unknown script in the Sinai Desert, "Proto-Sinaitic texts, a possible missing link between the Semitic alphabet of the Levantine people, and Egyptian hieroglyphics. But Semitic efforts go back to 1700BC. The 1500BC specimen was an Egyptianized version from a Sinai copper mine. (James/Thorpe) The maritime Phoenicians using the phonemic principle broke language down into 29 characters, as an accounting device as well as a sound recorder for vowels and consonants. (In Prof Cyrus Gordon's theory) and this all based on the lunar year, of 30-day months. Based then on an ancient lunar calendar. (James/Thorpe). The Gordon theory was followed up by Orientalist Hugh Moran, using a Chinese lunar zodiac, with 28 constellations, devoted to agriculture. This zodiac invented by Sumerians and used in India and Burma, various parts of Asia.

1905: Invention of electric toaster by George Schneider.

1905: Death of Thomas Barnardo, British pioneering social worker who founded more than 90 homes for destitute children.

1905: Sigmund Freud publishes his theory of sexuality.

1905: Albert Einstein publishes his Special Theory of Relativity.

1905: 5 September, Ending of Russo-Japanese War.

1905: Japanese navy defeats Russia. Japanese prompted to build up their navy to beat US and UK naval presences in Pacific.

1905: US Congress bans opium.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

1904: More to come

1903: British viceroy of India (Lord Curzon) sends an expedition into Tibet.

November 1903: Boer War ends.

1903: Wright Brothers make their first flight (in a "heavier-than-air machine".)

1902-1925: Prolonged campaign by Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud, brother of King Feisal, leaders of the Saud tribe, to bring the scattered tribes of Arabia under his rule.

1902: Anglo-Japanese Alliance agreed.

1902: Series of commercial treaties between China and Britain, United States, and Japan.

1902: Ibn Saud captures Riyadh, beginning the creation of Saudi Arabia.

1902: Mt Pelee on the Caribbean Island of Martinique erupts, wiping out the city of St Pierre and killing all but two of its 30,000 residents.

1902: The original Aswan Dam, built by the British to control the Nile floods, is completed.

1902: Discovery of a bog at Trundholm, Denmark, an elaborate sculpture of a wagon-of-the-sun, circa 1500BC, decorated with gold-leaf. It is made of all-imported metals, image of a disc of the sun being pulled across the sky, with obvious knowledge of use of the wheel.

1902: Year in which English scientists/physiologists William Bayliss and Ernest Starling first find that the effect of hormones in animals is blood-borne - and actually found a hormone. Starling coins the word hormone in 1905, from the Greek for "arouse or excite". By 1913, a pharmaceutical company, Ciba, is marketing an ovarian extract supplement.

1902: Australian Commonwealth Light Horse sails for Boer War in South Africa, joining earlier colonial units for that conflict.

1902: Women gain the right to vote in Australia (in the US in 1920 - in the UK in 1928).

12 December 1901: Guglielmo Marconi performs the amazing feat of bridging the Atlantic Ocean by wireless signal.

1901: First year in which Nobel Prizes are awarded. (For more, netsurf to the Nobel Prize Internet Archive)

1901: East Timor: Birthdate of East Timor's "greatest clan", with the birth in Portugal of patriarch Manuel Viegas Carrascalao, in the tiny village of Sao Bras de Alportel, Algarve region (a very poor region at the time).

1901: In Britain is patented a vacuum cleaner by a bridge engineer, Hubert Cecil Booth, a machine built on a horse-drawn cart with a long hose to be carried into a building.

1901: By September is found "one of the most important discoveries in history of science", an ancient Greek computer, discovered in a shipwreck of first-century BC on island of Antikythera. By 1951, Prof. Derek de Solla of Yale University was interested in this object, using x-rays. (Source: James/Thorpe).

1900: Boxer rebellion in China.

1900: Russia annexes Manchuria.

1900: Neville Howe is first Australian awarded the Victoria Cross in the Boer War.

1900: Sigmund Freud publishes his book, The Interpretation of Dreams.

1900: Tonga becomes a British protectorate.

October 1900: New South Wales' Aboriginal wild man Jimmy Governor hanged. (See movie, (The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith.)

9 July 1900: Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, passed by British Parliament, receives royal assent.

1900: World's first movie is Australian (as claimed): Made in Melbourne by Salvation Army, on Christian martyrs. Titled Soldiers of the Cross. Audiences tend to faint at graphic presentations. (Centenary reported on Australian TV on 13 September 2000)

1899: US Patents Commissioner Charles H. Duell declares that "Everything that can be invented has been invented."

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Stop Press: For late entries

15 August 1961: East German workers start to build Berlin Wall.

15 August 1962: Netherlands and Indonesia resolve their dispute re West New Guinea Irian Jaya).

15 August 1965: Crowd of 55,600 attend Beatles concert at Shea Stadium New York, making world records for a concert attendance and revenue for a pop concert.

15 August 1965: Fifty years after the end of World War II in Pacific, Japan issues its first clear-cut apology for its country's wartime actions.

Nazi Nuclear? A book now published in Italy tells us that controversy may rise yet again on the topic, how close did German's Nazis come to manufacturing a nuclear device toward the end of World War Two? The author is 88-year-old Luigi, Romersa, one of the last-known witnesses to an “experimental detonation of a rudimentary weapon on an island in the Baltic in 1944”. In Germany of late, an independent author, Rainer Karlsch, has been met with hostility for presenting evidence that the Nazis “had got much further than previously believed”. On 12 October 1944, Romersa as a 27-year-old war correspondent, went to an island named Rugen to watch the detonation of what was called “a disintegration bomb”. Part of the aftermath was “a mushroom cloud”. But when he wrote of this after the war, Romersa was called mad. Meantime, Karlsch and his associate, US scholar Mark Walker, have shown that Russian archives can demonstrate that one German scientist lodged a patent claim for a plutonium bomb as early as 1941. (Reported 1-2 October 2005)

1968: United States and Cambodia agree on policy to keep Cambodia from becoming embroiled in Vietnam War.

1970: Breakaway Biafra surrenders, ending 32-month-old Nigerian civil war. Biafra leader General Odumegwu Ojukwu flees with family.

1976: Death of British author Dame Agatha Christie, the creator of detective Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot.

1932: USA: The baby boy Charles A. Jnr. of US aviation hero Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh is kidnapped and murdered. From his home at Hopewell, New Jersey, on Tuesday, 1 March 1932, between 8-10pm. So went the story. By 2004 appears a man who claims he is that missing boy. (Story by Pope Brock in The Weekend Australian Magazine, 22-23 January 2005)

1995: Australia: “Spray-on skin”, or “Cell Spray”, is invented, developed and commercialised by Clinical Cell Culture, a company operated by Australians Dr. Wood (Western Australia) and Dr. Stoner from 1999. This innovation now assists about 30,000 burns victims a year around the world.

1925: Ends the "Monkey Trial" in Dayton, Tennessee, with teacher John Scopes convicted of violating state law for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution. His conviction is later overturned.

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