1.
Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
2.
1904
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As of the start of 1904, the Gregorian calendar was 13 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923. January 7 – The distress signal CQD is established, only to be replaced 2 years later by SOS, january 12 – Henry Ford sets a new automobile land speed record of 91.37 mph. January 16 – The first large-scale bodybuilding competition in America takes place at Madison Square Garden in New York City, january 18 – The Herero Rebellion in German South-West Africa begins. January 23 – The Ålesund Fire destroys most buildings in the town of Ålesund, Norway, february 7 – The Great Baltimore Fire in Baltimore, Maryland, destroys over 1,500 buildings in 30 hours. February 8–9 – Battle of Port Arthur, A surprise Japanese naval attack on Port Arthur in Manchuria starts the Russo-Japanese War, february 10 – Roger Casement publishes his account of Belgian atrocities in the Congo. February 17 – Puccinis opera Madama Butterfly, with a theme of Japan–United States relations. On May 28 a revised version opens in Brescia to huge success, february 23 – For $10 million, the United States gains control of the Panama Canal Zone. February 28 – Sport Lisboa e Benfica is founded in Portugal, march 3 – Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany becomes the first person to make a political recording of a document, using Thomas Edisons cylinder. March 4 – Russo-Japanese War, Russian troops in Korea retreat toward Manchuria, march 26 –80,000 demonstrators gather in Hyde Park, London, to protest against the importation of Chinese labourers to South Africa by the British government. March 31 – British expedition to Tibet – Battle of Guru, April 8 The Entente Cordiale is signed between the UK and France. Longacre Square in Midtown Manhattan is renamed Times Square after The New York Times, aleister Crowley begins writing Liber Al vel Legis, better known as The Book of the Law, a text central to Thelema. He completes this task on April 10, April 19 – The Great Toronto Fire destroys much of that citys downtown, but there are no fatalities. April 27 – The Australian Labor Party becomes the first such party to gain national government, April 30 – The Louisiana Purchase Exposition Worlds Fair opens in St. Louis, Missouri. May 4 United States Army engineers begin work on the Panama Canal, German football club FC Schalke 04 is established. May 5 Pitching against the Philadelphia Athletics, Cy Young of the Boston Americans throws the first perfect game in the era of baseball. British expedition to Tibet, Hundreds of Tibetans attack the British camp at Changlo and, for a while, hold the advantage before being defeated by superior weapons and losing at least 200 men. May 9 – Great Western Railway of England 3700 Class 3440 City of Truro becomes the first railway locomotive to exceed 100 mph. May 15– The Russian minelayer Amur lays a minefield about 15 miles off Port Arthur and sinks Japans battleships Hatsuse,15,000 tons, with 496 crew, may 21 – The International Federation of Association Football, FIFA, is established
