Yagan was a Noongar warrior who played a key part in early indigenous
Australian resistance to European settlement and rule in the area of
Perth, Western Australia. After he led a series of attacks in which
white settlers were murdered, a bounty was offered for his capture
dead or alive, and he was shot dead by a young settler. Yagan's death
has passed into Western Australian folklore as a symbol of the unjust
and sometimes brutal treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia
by colonial settlers. Yagan's head was removed and taken to Britain,
where it was exhibited as an "anthropological curiosity". It spent
over a century in storage at a museum before being buried in an
unmarked grave in 1964. In 1993 its location was identified, and four
years later it was exhumed and repatriated to Australia. Since then,
the issue of its proper reburial has become a source of great
controversy and conflict amongst the indigenous people of the Perth
area. To date, the head remains unburied.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yagan
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1801:
The U.S. House of Representatives elected Thomas Jefferson as
President and Aaron Burr as Vice President of the United States,
resolving an electoral tie in the 1800 presidential election.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election%2C_1800)
1854:
Britain recognized the independence of the Orange Free State in the
present-day Free State Province, South Africa.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Free_State)
1895:
The ballet Swan Lake was first performed at full length with music by
Tchaikovsky in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Lake)
1959:
Vanguard 2, the first weather satellite, was launched to measure
cloud-cover distribution.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard_2)
1979:
About 120,000 troops of the People's Liberation Army of China crossed
into northern Vietnam, starting the Sino-Vietnamese War.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War)
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Wikiquote of the day:
"Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make
it happen." -- Michael Jordan
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Jordan)