In the past 100 years, 58 tsnamis have claimed more than 260,000 lives, or an average of 4,600 per disaster. The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 lone caused an estimated 227,000 fatalities in 14 countries, with Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand hardest-hit. "In December 2015, the UN General Assembly designated 5 November as World Tsunami… Read More »World Tsunami Awareness Day
"... the environment has often remained the unpublicized victim of war. Water wells have been polluted, crops torched, forests cut down, soils poisoned, and animals killed to gain military advantage. Furthermore, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has found that over the last 60 years, at least 40 percent of all internal conflicts have been linked to… Read More »International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict
"In 1907 Justice Henry Bourne Higgins, President of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Court, set the first federally arbitrated wages standard in Australia. Higgins’s ruling became the basis for setting Australia’s minimum wage standard for the next 70 years.Using the Sunshine Harvester Factory as a test case, Justice Higgins took the pioneering approach of hearing… Read More »1907: Harvester minimum wage judgement by Justice Higgins
"On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin’s Communist Party announced a change in his city’s relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country’s borders. East and West Berliners flocked to… Read More »1989: Opening of the Berlin Wall
"At a time when there is widespread criticism of Church structures, we also hear criticism that bishops and priests—indeed, all of us—are too preoccupied with administration of temporal matters. Pope Leo is an example of a great administrator who used his talents in areas where spirit and structure are inseparably combined: doctrine, peace, and pastoral… Read More »Saint Leo the Great
By linking science more closely with society, World Science Day for Peace and Development aims to ensure that citizens are kept informed of developments in science. It also underscores the role scientists play in broadening our understanding of the remarkable, fragile planet we call home and in making our societies more sustainable. This year's theme… Read More »World Science Day for Peace and Development
On this day in 1995, writer and human rights activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed in Nigeria despite worldwide pleas for clemency. The country's military rulers ordered the execution of Mr Saro-Wiwa and eight other dissidents. BBC On This Day
"At 11 am on 11 November 1918 the guns on the Western Front fell silent after more than four years of continuous warfare... The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month attained a special significance in the post-war years. The moment when hostilities ceased on the Western Front became universally associated with the… Read More »Remembrance (Armistice) Day, commemorating the end of World War I in 1918
"On 11 November 1975, after a series of dramatic events including a 1974 double dissolution and a budgetary supply crisis, the Gough Whitlam-led federal Labor government became the first (and only) government in Australian history to be dismissed by the Governor-General. While this constitutional crisis has overshadowed the Whitlam years, the administration left a lasting… Read More »1975: Dismissal of the Whitlam Government
In 1595, the Orthodox bishop of Brest-Litovsk in present-day Belarus and five other bishops representing millions of Ruthenians, sought reunion with Rome. John Kunsevich — who took the name Josaphat in religious life — was to dedicate his life, and die for the same cause. Josaphat was the first saint of the Eastern Church to… Read More »Saint Josaphat