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.
1918
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As of the start of 1918, the Gregorian calendar was 13 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923. Below, events of World War I have the WWI prefix, january 4 – Finland officially recognized by the Russian SFSR. January 8 – Woodrow Wilson delivers his Fourteen Points speech, january 12 – Finland enacts a Mosaic Confessors law, granting Finnish Jews civil rights. January 15 – The keel of HMS Hermes is laid in Britain, january 18 Russian Constituent Assembly meets. The Historic Concert for the Benefit of Widows and Orphans of Austrian and Hungarian Soldiers at the Konzerthaus, january 19 – Russian Constituent Assembly proclaims Russian Democratic Federative Republic, but is dissolved by Bolshevik government on same day. January 22 – The Ukrainian Peoples Republic declares independence from Bolshevik Russia, january 27 – The Finnish Civil War begins. January –1918 flu pandemic, Spanish flu first observed in Haskell County, February 1 – The Cattaro Mutiny sees Austrian sailors in the Gulf of Cattaro, led by two Czech Socialists, mutiny. February 5 – The SS Tuscania is torpedoed off the Irish coast, it is the first ship carrying American troops to Europe to be torpedoed, February 6 – Womens suffrage in the United Kingdom, Representation of the People Act gives most women over 30 the vote. February 14 – Russia switches from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, February 16 – The Council of Lithuania adopts the Act of Independence of Lithuania, declaring Lithuanias independence from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. February 19 – WWI, Capture of Jericho by the Egyptian Expeditionary Force begins the British occupation of the Jordan Valley, February 19-25 – WWI, The Imperial Russian Navy evacuates Tallinn through thick ice over the Gulf of Finland. February 21 – The last captive Carolina parakeet dies at the Cincinnati Zoo, February 24 Estonia declares its independence from Russia after seven centuries of foreign rule. German forces capture Tallinn on the next day, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia declare their independence from Russia as the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic. March 1 – WWI, German submarine U-19 sinks HMS Calgarian off Rathlin Island, March 3 – WWI, the Central Powers and Bolshevist Russia sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ending Russias involvement in the war. March 6 The Finnish Army Corps of Aviation is founded as a forerunner of the Finnish Air Force to be established on 4 May 1928. The blue swastika is adopted as its symbol as a tribute to the Swedish explorer and aviator Eric von Rosen, von Rosen had painted the Viking symbol on the plane as his personal lucky insignia. March 7 – WWI, Finland forms an alliance with Germany, March 12 – Moscow becomes the capital of Soviet Russia. March 19 – The United States Congress establishes time zones and approves daylight saving time, March 21 – WWI, First Transjordan attack on Amman by units of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force begins with the passage of the Jordan River. March 23 WWI, The giant German cannon, the Paris Gun, in London at the Wood Green Empire, Chung Ling Soo dies during his trick where he is supposed to catch two separate bullets – but one of them perforates his lung
