Lake Bolac: The Home of Bob the Bunyip

In another place, at another time, and for a specific purpose, I used to compile a list of what had happened 'on this day'. I knew at the time just how ideosyncratic the choice of what to include or not was. Digging through my backup files, I found my list for today and mused about my preoccupations over the years:

January 31st

1606 Winter, Rockwood, Keys, and Guy Fawkes, convicted for their part in the Gunpowder Plot against the English Parliament and King James I, were executed.
1761 Lachlan Macquarie, Ulva, the Scottish Hebrides, Governor of New South Wales, born.
1797 Franz Peter Schubert, Vienna, Austria, composer (Unfinished Symphony) born.
1876 The US Government declares that it will consider all native Americans who do not move to reservations hostile.
1882 Anna Pavlova, St Petersburg Russia, ballerina, choreographer, born.
1882 Peter Smith Dawson, singer, born.
1901 Chekhov's Three Sisters opens at the Moscow Art Theater.
1915 Thomas Merton, Pyrenees-Orientales, France, radical pacifist US priest and Trappist monk, author (The Seven Storey Mountain) born.
1921 Carol Channing, actress (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) born.
1921 Mario Lanza, singer (d.1959) born.
1923 Norman Mailer, author (The Executioner's Song, The Naked and the Dead, An American Dream) born.
1928 Sticky tape first marketed by 3-M Company (Scotch, Durex). (This one tickled Paris's fancy for some reason)
1929 The USSR exiled Leon Trotsky; he found asylum in Mexico.
1935 Kenzaburo Oe, Ehime, Japan, author (The Silent Cry, Personal Matter) born.
1938 Pix magazine was launched in Sydney.
1943 Field Marshal Paulus defied Hitler to surrender the German 6th Army to the Russians at Stalingrad.
1946 Yugoslavia adopts new constitution, becomes a federal republic.
1951 Phil Collins, England, singer, drummer (Genesis: Against All Odds) born. (Daphne's favourite)
1955 RCA demonstrated the first musical synthesizer.
1956 Johnny Rotten [John Lydon] rocker (Sex Pistols: God Save the Queen) born.
1958 James van Allen discovers radiation belt around Earth.
1958 Explorer I, the first US Earth satellite, was launched from Cape Canaveral
1968 Nauru gains independence from Australia.
1968 The Viet Cong's Tet offensive begins.
1983 The wearing of seat belts in cars became compulsory in Britain.
1985 South African President PW Botha offers to free Mandela if he denounces violence.
1990 First McDonalds in Russia opens in Moscow. (Farouk chose this ... duh!)
1994 The Gran Teatro del Liceo in Barcelona burns down.
1994 The Dow Jones hits a record 3,978.36.

I gave a copy to Daphne, Paris and Farouk, and asked them what event was most important in their eyes. You can see which ones they chose. You should have heard the argument: I just kept saying that they were all important to me; that's why they were on my list.

Daphne quickly changed her mind and said they were all important to her too! But, why, then, had I left off Blondie's song, The Tide Is High hitting #1 in 1981? Farouk would only concede that the beginning of the Tet offensive in 1968 might approach the significance of McDonalds opening in Moscow as a "geopolitical event of significance", but seemed a little hostile to the whole idea largely because of the politics of its perpetrators! Paris couldn't see beyond the "most practical invention of the century".

I remembered, then, why I had stopped compiling the lists:

• there's plenty of them around anyway (like the SCOPE Systems list)
  
• nobody can agree what should go in and what shouldn't (to wit - OUR little discussion), and
  
• there is furious disagreement about when things happened:
  • when it started or when it concluded?
    
  • when it happened or when it became known?
    
  • in which timezone?
    
  • by which calendar?

Have a look at Calendar Zone if the theory interests you. I've "got a little list" for most days of the year. Let me know if you want a copy.