1999East Timor votes for independence
East Timor, the eastern half of the island of Timor, was a Portuguese colony for four centuries. When Portugal withdrew in 1975 the territory declared independence, but within days Indonesia invaded and later annexed it. Over the next two decades a long resistance, and the famine and killings that followed the invasion, cost the lives of perhaps a quarter of the population, while the United Nations never recognised Indonesian rule.
After the fall of President Suharto in 1998, his successor B. J. Habibie agreed to let the East Timorese choose between wide autonomy within Indonesia and independence. On 30 August 1999, in a ballot organised by the UN, almost 99 per cent of registered voters turned out despite months of intimidation by pro-Indonesian militias. When the result was announced on 4 September, 78.5 per cent had rejected autonomy. Militias backed by parts of the Indonesian army then killed hundreds of people and burned much of the territory, until an international force led by Australia restored order. After a period of UN administration, East Timor became independent in May 2002.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: United Nations: Security Council’s work in 1999, question of East Timor ↗
1835Settlers from the schooner Enterprize found Melbourne
In the 1830s graziers in Van Diemen’s Land, today’s Tasmania, were looking across Bass Strait for new pasture. In June 1835 John Batman sailed to Port Phillip and claimed to have bought a vast tract of land from Kulin elders, a ‘treaty’ the colonial government soon declared void. At the same time John Pascoe Fawkner, a Launceston innkeeper and newspaperman, bought the schooner Enterprize and sent a party of settlers across the strait.
Fawkner, held back by his debts, stayed behind, but his party sailed up the Yarra River and on 30 August 1835 moored the Enterprize by the bank near where the Customs House now stands and came ashore to build huts and plant crops. Batman’s men arrived soon afterwards, and the two men’s supporters argued for years over who had founded the city. The settlement grew fast on the wool trade, was named Melbourne in 1837 after the British prime minister, and after the gold rushes of the 1850s became one of the richest cities in the world.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: eMelbourne, The Encyclopedia of Melbourne (University of Melbourne): Foundation and early history ↗
1922Turkish forces win the decisive battle at Dumlupınar
After the Ottoman defeat in the First World War, Greek troops landed at Smyrna (İzmir) in 1919 and pushed deep into western Anatolia, while the Allies imposed the harsh Treaty of Sèvres on the sultan’s government. A nationalist movement led by Mustafa Kemal, based in Ankara, refused to accept it. In 1921 his forces halted the Greek advance on the Sakarya River, and through the following year they rebuilt their strength for a counter-attack.
The Great Offensive opened on 26 August 1922, when Turkish forces broke through the Greek lines near Afyonkarahisar. On 30 August, in what Turks call the Battle of the Commander-in-Chief, they surrounded and destroyed much of the main Greek army near Dumlupınar. The rest fell back to the coast, and on 9 September Turkish troops entered İzmir. The victory led to the Treaty of Lausanne and the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, and 30 August is still celebrated as Victory Day.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism: 1922 ↗
1914Germany destroys a Russian army at Tannenberg
When the First World War began in August 1914, Russia moved faster than Germany expected, sending two armies into East Prussia to help its French ally by drawing German troops away from the west. The First Army under Paul von Rennenkampf advanced from the east and the Second Army under Alexander Samsonov from the south, but the two commanders did not work together, and their orders were sent by radio without code.
The Germans, now led by Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, read the messages and moved almost all their forces against Samsonov. From 26 August his army was surrounded in the forests and lakes near Tannenberg, and by 30 August the battle was over. About 30,000 Russians were killed or wounded and more than 90,000 taken prisoner; Samsonov shot himself. The victory made Hindenburg a national hero, and the Germans named it after Tannenberg to answer the defeat of the Teutonic Knights near the same spot in 1410.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Battle of Tannenberg ↗
1918Lenin is shot and wounded in Moscow
By the summer of 1918 the Bolsheviks, who had seized power in Petrograd the previous autumn, were fighting a civil war on several fronts. They had broken up the elected Constituent Assembly, made a harsh peace with Germany and turned on their former allies, the Socialist Revolutionaries, many of whom now regarded Lenin as a traitor to the revolution.
On the evening of 30 August 1918, as Lenin left a meeting at the Mikhelson factory in Moscow, he was hit by two bullets, one in the neck and one in the shoulder. Fanny Kaplan, a Socialist Revolutionary, was arrested at the scene, said she had shot him for her beliefs, and was executed without trial a few days later. On the same day the head of the Petrograd secret police, Moisei Uritsky, had been assassinated. Lenin recovered, but the government answered the attacks by formally launching the Red Terror, a campaign of arrests, hostage-taking and mass executions.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Presidential Library of Russia: Declassified materials on the attempt on Lenin’s life ↗
