The logistical support of INTERFET (International Force East Timor), a
multinational peacekeeping mission in 1999 and 2000, involved
11,693 personnel from 23 countries. Led by Australia, it was the
largest deployment of Australian forces overseas since the Vietnam War.
INTERFET deployed to East Timor in September 1999. A base was
established in Darwin, with supplies, equipment, stores and personnel
stockpiled or staged there. East Timor possessed only one deepwater
port, Dili, with a limited quayside depth, and only three airfields
(heliport pictured). Troops were initially landed with a minimum of
vehicles and supplies. Effective logistical support enabled INTERFET to
carry out its mission without severe limitations, although there were
some shortages. Over 90 per cent of the cargo and most of the
passengers travelled by sea. Eleven nations contributed transport
aircraft, which flew 3,400 sorties, carried 9,500 tonnes of cargo and
transported more than 30,000 passengers.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTERFET_logistics>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1657:
Citizens of New Netherland presented the Flushing Remonstrance
to Peter Stuyvesant, the director general, requesting an exemption to
his ban on Quaker worship.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flushing_Remonstrance>
1831:
HMS Beagle departed Plymouth, England, on a voyage to South
America that would make a name for Charles Darwin as a naturalist.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_voyage_of_HMS_Beagle>
1922:
The Imperial Japanese Navy commissioned Hōshō, the world's
first purpose-built aircraft carrier.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_H%C5%8Dsh%C5%8D>
1985:
The body of murdered American primatologist Dian Fossey was
discovered inside her cabin in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dian_Fossey>
2007:
Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated while
leaving a Pakistan Peoples Party political rally at Liaqat National Bagh
in Rawalpindi.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Benazir_Bhutto>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
golden touch:
(idiomatic) Synonym of Midas touch (“the ability to achieve financial
reward (or, more generally, success) easily and consistently”)
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/golden_touch>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight
and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to
an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to
other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the
preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its
offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of
surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which are
periodically born, but a small number can survive. I have called this
principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by
the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's
power of selection.
--Charles Darwin
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin>