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Period: to
Australia and Modern World 1918-present
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Wall St Crash
The Wall St Crash had a very large outcome on the whole world. The crash and the great depression occuring fairly close together in time was in no way a coincidence. In some way the Wall St Crash could have kicked off the Great depression. -
Anschluss between Germany & Austria
Union with Germany had been a dream of Austrian Social Democrats since 1919. The rise of Adolf Hitler and his authoritarian rule made such a proposition less attractive, though, which was an ironic twist, since a union between the two nations was also a dream of Hitler's, a native Austrian. Despite the fact that Hitler did not have the full approval of Austrian Social Democrats, the rise of a pro-Nazi right-wing party within Austria in the mid-1930s paved the way for Hitler to make his move -
Pearl Harbour
December seventh, 1941: the surprise was complete. The attacking planes came in two waves; the first hit its target at 7:53 AM, the second at 8:55. By 9:55 it was all over. By 1:00 PM the carriers that launched the planes from 274 miles off the coast of Oahu were heading back to Japan. Poster commemorating the attack, 1942
Behind them they left chaos, 2,403 dead, 188 destroyed planes and a crippled Pacific Fleet that included 8 damaged or destroyed battleships. In one stroke the Japanese ac -
Nagasaki Atomic Bombing
Following prolonged strategic bombing of Japan during World War II, the United States conducted the second combat use of a nuclear weapon (following the attack on Hiroshima 3 days earlier). A B-29 bomber dropped a single Mk-II "Fat Man" atomic bomb over Nagasaki, estimated population 240,000. The Mk-II was an implosion design nuclear gravity bomb using plutonium. The primary target city, Kokura, had been covered by clouds, as was Nagasaki (the secondary target) when the bomber arrived. The bomb -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest the world ever came to nuclear war. The United States armed forces were at their highest state of readiness ever and Soviet field commanders in Cuba were prepared to use battlefield nuclear weapons to defend the island if it was invaded. Luckily, thanks to the bravery of two men, President John F. Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev, war was averted. In 1962, the Soviet Union was desperately behind the United States in the arms race. Soviet missiles w -
1967 Referendum
On 27 May 1967 a Federal referendum was held. The first question, referred to as the 'nexus question' was an attempt to alter the balance of numbers in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The second question was to determine whether two references in the Australian Constitution, which discriminated against Aboriginal people, should be removed. This fact sheet addresses the second question.The referendum of 27 May 1967 approved two amendments to the Australian constitution relating to In -
Rise of the computers
In 1822, Charles Babbage purposed and began developing the Difference Engine, considered to be the first automatic computing engine that was capable of computing several sets of numbers and making a hard copies of the results. Unfortunately, because of funding he was never able to complete a full-scale functional version of this machine. In June of 1991, the London Science Museum completed the Difference Engine No 2 for the bicentennial year of Babbage's birth and later completed the printing me -
Campaign to save Lake Pedder
On September 8, 1972, Brenda Hean and Max Price, members of the Lake Pedder Action Group, waved goodbye to friends and relatives as their Tiger Moth plane taxied down the airstrip just outside Hobart. Their mission was to fly to Canberra and skywrite the message "Save Lake Pedder" to the federal government in an effort to stop the flooding of the lake. They have been missing ever since. -
9/11 terrorist attack
The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th, or 9/11)[nb 1] were a series of four coordinated suicide attacks upon the United States in New York City and the Washington, D.C. areas on September 11, 2001. On that Tuesday morning, 19 terrorists from the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger jets. The hijackers intentionally flew two of those planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, into the North and South towers of the W -
Save Franklin/Gordon river campaign
From the early 1960s, Australian conservationists became concerned about plans for dams on the rivers and lakes of Tasmania’s south-west wilderness. The first great confrontation occurred in the mid-1960s when Tasmania’s major development agency, the Hydro Electric Commission (HEC) announced, despite previous denials, a scheme to flood Lake Pedder.
