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Category: Oceania

By The Generalist Posted on August 2, 2022August 13, 2022

The book arcade

Around the end of the 19th century, Melbourne, Australia, hosted one of the biggest – and certainly the most carnivalesque – bookstores in the world: Cole’s Book Arcade.

Categories: 19th century history, 20th century history, Economics & business, Literature, Oceania
By The Generalist Posted on June 17, 2022June 16, 2022

Small island alliance

For the last thirty-one years, an alliance of nearly forty small island states have campaigned against global warming – because if it is not checked, some of them will be underwater.

Categories: 20th century history, 21st century history, Earth science, Oceania, Politics & law, The oceans
By The Generalist Posted on February 7, 2022February 5, 2022

Volcanic city

Auckland, New Zealand, is built on top of more than fifty volcanoes.

Categories: Earth science, Oceania
By The Generalist Posted on January 10, 2022January 9, 2022

The Picasso Ransom

In 1986 the Australian Cultural Terrorists stole a Picasso from a Melbourne art gallery; they threatened to destroy the painting if the government did not create an art prize called the Picasso Ransom. The culprits were never found.

Categories: 20th century history, Art, Oceania, Politics & law
By The Generalist Posted on December 29, 2021December 28, 2021

Temporary island

Pobeda Ice Island was first discovered in 1840. It was seen again in the 1910s, but was gone by the late 1920s. By the 1960s it was back, only to disappear again in the 1970s.

Categories: 20th century history, Earth science, Oceania, The poles
By The Generalist Posted on December 10, 2021January 25, 2023

Beer beetles

The Australian beetle Julodimorpha bakewelli attempts to mate with discarded beer bottles, sometimes to the point of its own death.

Categories: Animals, Oceania
By The Generalist Posted on December 1, 2021November 30, 2021

Sentinel chickens

Specially designated “sentinel chickens” allow health officials to track the emergence of infectious diseases like West Nile virus amongst human populations.

Categories: Animals, Health & medicine, North & Central America, Oceania
By The Generalist Posted on November 25, 2021November 24, 2021

Napoleon in the Pacific

Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse led a French scientific expedition around the Pacific; in 1788 it disappeared without a trace. A young Napoléon Bonaparte almost went with him.

Categories: Early modern history, Europe, Military, Oceania, Politics & law
By The Generalist Posted on November 3, 2021January 25, 2023

Daylight robbery

New Zealand entomologist George Hudson proposed modern daylight saving time so that he could catch more bugs.

Categories: 19th century history, Oceania, Weights & measures
By The Generalist Posted on October 18, 2021January 25, 2023

Honorary whites

In apartheid-era South Africa, the government sometimes designated specific people or whole ethnic groups as “honorary whites.” But not everyone accepted it.

Categories: 20th century history, Africa, Games & sport, North & Central America, Oceania, Politics & law
By The Generalist Posted on September 29, 2021January 25, 2023

Castaway rabbits and cattle

Rabbits and cattle were introduced to a remote island near Antarctica as food for shipwreck survivors; they bred there in isolation for more than a century.

Categories: 19th century history, 20th century history, Animals, Oceania
By The Generalist Posted on September 21, 2021September 19, 2021

Samoan constitutional crisis (Part 2)

The 2021 Samoan constitutional crisis came to a head with a face-off between the old prime minister who wouldn’t leave, the new prime minister who couldn’t start, the head of state, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General, and the Speaker of the House. [2 of 2]

Categories: 21st century history, Oceania, Politics & law
By The Generalist Posted on September 20, 2021January 25, 2023

Samoan constitutional crisis (Part 1)

Samoa’s first female prime minister was elected this year despite the most dramatic and twist-filled constitutional crisis in the country’s history. [1 of 2]

Categories: 21st century history, Oceania, Politics & law
By The Generalist Posted on September 8, 2021September 8, 2021

The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom

In 2004, in response to an Australian law defining marriage as between a man and a woman only, a group of activists declared independence and raised a rainbow flag over the Coral Sea Islands.

Categories: 21st century history, Oceania, Politics & law
By The Generalist Posted on September 2, 2021January 25, 2023

Castaway cache

Between 1867 and 1927 the New Zealand government built, supplied, and maintained a set of supply huts on islands in the Southern Ocean so that no more castaways would starve to death while waiting for rescue.

Categories: 19th century history, Oceania, The oceans
By The Generalist Posted on August 13, 2021January 25, 2023

Twin shipwrecks

In 1864 two ships were wrecked on the same desert island. Despite sharing the island for an entire year, the crews never met and had no idea they were not alone.

Categories: 19th century history, Oceania, The oceans

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