“Warrimoo.” The word seems to come from the Aboriginal Ladjiladji people along the border land of New South Wales and Victoria in South Australia, and translating as ‘Eagle’, or ‘Place of Eagles’.
The SS Warrimoo was a passenger steamer, launched in 1892 to serve the Trans-Tasman route between Australia and New Zealand. Later assigned to a Canada-to-Australia passenger route, she would be taken into service as a troop ship with the advent of the Great War, in 1914.
The first Maori detachment destined for the disastrous Gallipoli campaign of 1915 departed Wellington aboard the SS Warrimoo that February, its motto ‘Te Hokowhitu a Tū’ (the seventy twice-told warriors of the war god).
A list of WW1 troop ship departures from New Zealand shows 113 such passages, on which the Warrimoo appears, three times.
The troop ship met its end on May 17, 1918 on a convoy from Tunisia to Marseille. Warrimoo collided with the escorting French warship Catapulte, dislodging the destroyer’s depth charges and blowing out the bottom plates of both vessels. SS Warrimoo and Catapulte went down together with loss of life, yet this is not why the troop ship is remembered.
Nineteen years earlier, the “War to End all Wars” was part of some unknown and unknowable future. A century begun with the Napoleonic Wars and President Thomas Jefferson’s Corps of Discovery, (better known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition), was drawing to a close on the tranquil, moonlit waters of the world’s largest and deepest Ocean.
On this day in 1899, SS Warrimoo plied the waters of the central Pacific, in transit from Vancouver to Brisbane.
It was warm and clear with the approach of midnight, the Warrimoo’s position LAT 00 31′ N and LON 179 30′ W. Captain John Phillips quietly puffed on a cigar as 1st Mate Payton, broke into his reverie. “Know what this means? We’re only a few miles from the intersection of the Equator and the International Date Line“.
Captain Phillips called his navigators to check the position, and then check it again. It was true.
Captain Phillips was too much of an imp, to miss out on the navigational freak of a lifetime. Course was adjusted and speed fine-tuned, bringing the Warrimoo to just the right place and time.
At precisely midnight on December 31, 1899, the steamer passed through that imaginary point where the international dateline, meets the equator.
The bow of the ship was in the Southern Hemisphere, where it was the middle of summer. The stern was still in the Northern Hemisphere, where it was the middle of winter. The date on the starboard side of the ship was January 1, 1900. On the port side, it was still December 31, 1899.
For that one moment in time, the SS Warrimoo was in two different days, two different months, two different years, two different seasons, and two different centuries. All at the same time.
All the best from the Long family to yours, for a healthy and prosperous New Year. May this be the first of many more.
In Mexico as well as Spain and most Latin countries, pranksters practice their craft not on April 1 but on December 28. The custom goes back to the biblical story of King Herod, who is said to have killed all the baby boys in Bethlehem, to rid himself of the future ‘King of the Jews. The “Massacre of the Innocents” is a sad story but the ‘joke’ was on Herod. Mary and Joseph had taken the baby Jesus away, to Egypt.
For two-hundred years now, the citizens of Ibi, Alicante on the Spanish Mediterranean coast have celebrated December 28, with a giant food fight. The practice was suspended for a time following the Spanish Civil War but revived, in 1981. Now, it’s a big tourist attraction, and the event makes a ton of money, for charity.
The Feast of St. Nicholas took hold around the 6th of December. Children and other marginal groups such as old women and slaves could receive gifts, but only by demanding them. The secret giving of gifts appeared sometime around the year 1200.
The unknown genius who published and illustrated 
Turns out that Mary Bateman, the bird’s owner and a serial fraudster, was writing these messages with some kind of “corrosive ink”, maybe an acid, and reinserting them into the poor chicken. The “Yorkshire Witch” met her end on a gibbet, hanged for the poisoned pudding she gave that couple to relieve their chest pain. But I digress.
5,000 years ago, the Mayan civilization of modern-day Mexico and Central America developed a sophisticated calendar, working with a base numerical system of 20.
Historian Michael Gannon writes that the “real first Thanksgiving” in America took place in 1565, when Pedro Menéndez de Avilés landed in modern-day Florida, and “had the Indians fed and then dined himself.” Likely, it was salt-pork stew with garbanzo beans. Yum.
In those days, it was considered poor form for retailers to put up Christmas displays or run Christmas sales, before Thanksgiving. Lew Hahn, General Manager of the Retail Dry Goods Association, was afraid that extra week was going to cut into Christmas sales.
In Plymouth Massachusetts, self-described home of the “first Thanksgiving”, Chairman of the Board of Selectmen James Frasier, “heartily disapproved”.
Rubinstein spent the early ’40s at racetracks in Chicago and California, until being drafted into the Army Air Forces, in 1943. Honorably discharged in 1946, Rubenstein returned to Chicago, before moving to Dallas the following year.
Months later, the nation was stunned at the first Presidential assassination in over a half-century. I was 5½ at the time, I remember it to this day. An hour after the shooting, former marine and American Marxist Lee Harvey Oswald killed Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit, who had stopped him for questioning. Thirty minutes later, Oswald was arrested in a movie theater.
The French knight Hugues de Payens approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1119, with a proposal. He would create a monastic order of warrior knights to protect these pilgrims, to be headquartered in a wing of the recaptured Al Aqsa Mosque, built on the ruins of the Temple of Solomon.
Under pressure from the French King, Pope Clement issued the bull “Pastoralis praeeminentiae” on November 22, instructing Christian monarchs throughout Europe to arrest Templar officials and seize their assets.
While much of “mainstream” science seems to steer clear of the subject, the University of California at Berkeley jumped in with both feet on this day in 1984, founding the SETI Institute for the “sharing [of] knowledge as scientific ambassadors to the public, the press, and the government”.
NBC executives, were thrilled. The AFL was only eight years old in 1968 and as yet unproven compared with the older league, the NFL/AFL merger still two years in the future. 
The “Heidi Bowl” was prime time news the following night, on all three networks. NBC’s Huntley-Brinkley Report aired the last sixty seconds while ABC Evening News anchor Frank Reynolds read excerpts from the movie, with clips of the Raiders’ two touchdowns cut in. CBS Evening News’ Harry Reasoner announced the “result” of the game: “Heidi married the goat-herder“.
Historical Easter Eggs - Today in History 
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