The Avenue Range Station massacre was the murder of at least nine Aboriginal Tanganekald people, who were shot by white settlers on the Avenue Range pastoral station in the colony of South Australia around September 1848, during the Australian frontier wars. Those confirmed to have been killed were an old blind man, three women, two teenage girls, and three female children, including a baby. The sheep farmer James Brown (pictured) and his overseer, Eastwood, were suspected, and Brown was charged with the murder of "unknown aboriginal natives" in March 1849. The magistrate who committed him for trial said that there was "little question of the butchery or the butcher". Further investigation was ordered, but by the November 1849 sittings of the Supreme Court in the colonial capital of Adelaide, the case had been dropped. At the time there were significant restrictions on the use of evidence given by Aboriginal witnesses, especially where a verdict could involve capital punishment.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue_Range_Station_massacre

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1901:

The National Flag of Australia, a Blue Ensign defaced with the Commonwealth Star and the Southern Cross, flew for the first time atop the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Australia

1918:

The Bolshevik government of Russia published the first official announcement of the Red Terror, a period of repression against political opponents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror

1950:

Winning the Italian Grand Prix, Giuseppe Farina became the first Formula One world champion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Farina

1991:

A fire killed 25 people locked inside a burning chicken processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet_chicken_processing_plant_fire

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

thrice: (dated) Three times. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thrice

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

The true architectural art, that art toward which I would lead you, rests, not upon scholarship but upon human powers; and, therefore, it is to be tested, not by the fruits of scholarship, but by the touch- stone of humanity.   --Louis Sullivan https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Sullivan