Just a few of the many notable anniversaries that fall in 2018.
250th anniversary of James Cook’s first voyage of discovery
Lieutenant (as he was at the time) James Cook left Plymouth in command of HMS Endeavour on 26th August 1768, heading for Tahiti where he was to observe and record the transit of Venus across the Sun. From there, he proceeded to New Zealand, mapping the entire coastline; he then proceeded on to the east coast of Australia and Botany Bay, which he named.
200th anniversary of the birth of Emily Bronte.
Emily Jane Brontë, author of Wuthering Heights (published 1847), was born in Thornton, Bradford, on 30th July 1818. She died in Haworth on 19th December 1848.
200th anniversary of the death of Humphry Repton.
Repton, born in April 1752, was a landscape gardener, who designed around 400 landscapes. He took on the mantle of the country’s most famous landscaper after the death of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown in 1782.
100th anniversary of the formation of the Royal Air Force in 1918
The Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service merged on the 1st April, to create the Royal Air Force.
100th anniversary of the end of World War One.
The ceasefire that ended hostilities was on the 11th November, 1918, although the actual peace treaty was not signed until 1919.
100th anniversary of women getting the vote.
The Representation of the People Act 1918 on 6th February gave women over 30 the vote provided they were, or were married to, a local government elector, or were a property owner. The franchise was also extended to all male resident householders over the age of 21 and restricted elections to a single day.
(see back page of this Journal).
100th anniversary of the outbreak of the flu pandemic.
Albert Gitchell, an Army cook at Fort Riley, Kansas, woke up on March 11, 1918, thinking he had a bad cold. He didn’t. Instead, he was “patient zero” in what remains the deadliest pandemic in human history, the Spanish flu. By the time the flu ran its course in 1919, it had killed between 50 and 100 million people. That was about 2-4 percent of the world’s population at the time. No one is sure where the Spanish Flu originated; or even if Private Gitchell was really the first victim. So why is it called the Spanish Flu? That’s a byproduct of World War I censorship. Countries at war suppressed news about the flu to avoiding alarming their public. Neutral Spain didn’t censor the news, however, creating the mistaken impression that it had been hardest hit. Besides being deadlier than most strains of influenza, the Spanish Flu posed the greatest risk to adults between the ages of twenty and forty.
50th anniversary of the first episode of Dad’s Army
The first episode of Dad’s Army, one of the nation’s favourite BBC TV sitcoms, was broadcast on 31st July 1968. Written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft about the antics and adventures of a fictitious band of Home Guard during the Second World War, Dad’s Army was regular viewing until 1977.
50th anniversary of the introduction of the 2nd class post
The Post Office launched a two-tier postal service on 16th September. For standard letters, a first-class stamp cost 5d for delivery the next day; the slower second-class service cost 4d. Both amounts are roughly equivalent to 0.02p. As of early 2018, the cost of posting a standard letter within the UK is 0.65p for first-class or 0.56p for second, equivalent to 13 shillings and 11 shillings 2½d respectively.