ON THIS DAY – 7th September
1790 – Governor Arthur Phillip was speared in the shoulder while speaking with a group of Indigenous Australians, due to a misunderstanding. Acting as interpreter, Bennelong prevented the situation from escalating and the Aboriginals left in peace.
1795 – HMS Reliance arrived in Sydney. Among the ship's passengers and crew were Bennelong returning from a visit to England, the surgeon and explorer George Bass, and midshipman Matthew Flinders.
1800 – Joseph Holt was arrested on suspicion of raising an Irish insurrection.
1815 – Australian explorer John McDouall Stuart was born.
1825 – Major Edmund Lockyer arrived in Brisbane to explore the upper reaches of the Brisbane River.
1902 – In Australia, the whole nation observed a 'day of humiliation' and prays for rain, as a terrible drought killed livestock and threatened crops. Rain began to appear on 10 September.
1917 – Birth of John Cornforth, Australian chemist, Nobel Prize laureate. Sir John Warcup Cornforth Jr., AC, CBE, FRS, FAA (7 September 1917 – 8 December 2013) was an Australian–British chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1975 for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalysed reactions, becoming the only Nobel laureate born in New South Wales. Cornforth investigated enzymes that catalyse changes in organic compounds, the substrates, by taking the place of hydrogen atoms in a substrate's chains and rings. In his syntheses and descriptions of the structure of various terpenes, olefins, and steroids, Cornforth determined specifically which cluster of hydrogen atoms in a substrate were replaced by an enzyme to effect a given change in the substrate, allowing him to detail the biosynthesis of cholesterol. For this work, he won a share of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1975, alongside co-recipient Vladimir Prelog, and was knighted in 1977.
1936 – The last known thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) died at Hobart Zoo.
1996 – National Threatened Species Day was first held; the date was chosen in memory of the last Thylacine.
1997 – Pat Rafter won the US Open, defeating Britain's Greg Rusedski 6-3, 6-2, 4-6, 7–5 to claim Australia's first grand slam tournament title since Pat Cash won Wimbledon in 1987.
Pictured:
John McDouall Stuart 1865 (Wiki) – Bottom Left
Edmund Lockyer in the uniform of Captain of the Sydney Volunteer Rifle Corps (Wiki) – Bottom Middle
1975 Press Photo Professor John Warcum Cornforth (Wiki) – Bottom Right
Thylacinus cynocephalus. John Gould's lithographic plate from ‘The Mammals of Australia’ Vol. I Plate 54, 1863 – Top
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