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In 1781, Scottish inventor James Watt invented the first reliable steam engine with his business partner Matthew Boulton, after he observed a Newcomen steam engine and improved its inefficient design. These machines became important in the Industrial Revolution as they could be used to drive heavy machinery.
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In 1788 the First Fleet of convicts landed in Australia under Captain Arthur Phillip. The convicts had previously arrived in Botany bay after 8 months at sea, but decided its lands were not good for settlement, then discovering Sydney Harbour. The convicts had to help build infrastructure.
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In 1792 the Prussian forces tried to take back the city of Paris to try and keep the French Monarchy. The advance was halted by 2 small French armies made up of volunteers and veterans.
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Edward Jenner invented a safer method of vaccinating people from smallpox by injecting a child with cowpox, then injecting the child with smallpox later. The child did not catch the deadly disease, proving that Jenner's method worked.
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In 1854, Victorian gold miners in Ballarat grew fed up with the government's laws and oppression, taking part in a public burning of their licences, which they hated as they were extremely expensive. They then built a 1.5m high stockade made from wood and carts, and they barricaded themselves in. Unfortunately, 30 miners died when the police raided it in the dark of the early morning.
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In 1876, Alexander Bell invented the telephone, one of the most important devices in our lives today. He did so by experimenting with transmitting sounds via a vibrating needle in water, which he used to call his assistant.
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In 1889, Henry Parkes made a speech in Tenterfield, a colony in NSW about why Australia should become a Federation. It was the first public appeal for Federation.
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In 1894, South Australian women won the right to vote, becoming the first colony in Australia and on of the first places in the world to allow this. The bill had been debated until past midnight the previous night before the voting was done the next day.
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In 1898 peasants joined forces with a group of religious Chinese Martial artists, who the foreigners called Boxers. They were angry about the Western Influence on China, so they rebelled and killed Chinese Christians and Foreign ministers, before a force of 19,000 foreign soldiers took back Beijing.
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On the 25th of April 1915, a force of brave young men mostly made up of Australian and New Zealand troops landed on the beaches of Gallipoli in an attempted land assault. The attack was part of an attempt to control the sea route from Europe to Russia, which ultimately failed. Unfortunately, the soldiers had little knowledge of the terrain and intelligence on the area, so many soldiers were killed.
