Australia Connected to the World

Overland Telegraph Line near Tennant Creek, NT

140 years ago today, on 22 October 1872, the first overseas telegraph message was received in Adelaide via the newly completed Overland Telegraph Line connecting Port Augusta in South Australia with Darwin 3200km further North by 35,000 telegraph poles strung throught he Red Centre of the Australian continent.
 
Elsewhere in the world, the death of King Fernando without a male heir to the Portuguese throne threw Portugal into a 2-year civil war (1383), André-Jacques Garnerin made the first recorded parachute jump (Paris, 1797), the New York Met opened its doors (1883). Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature but refused the honour (1964).

Today's birthdays include American pioneer and explorer Daniel Boone (Pennsylvania, 1734), famous composer and pianist Franz Liszt (Doborjan/Kingdom of Hungary, 1811), Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, last German Empress and Queen of Prussia (Dolzig Palace/Prussia, 1858).
 
Charles Martel, aka "Charles the Hammer", grandfather of Charlemagne and victorious Frankish commander at the Battle of Tours in 732, halting the northward expansion of the Moorish Empire, died on this day in Quierzy/Picardy (741), French post-impressionist painter Paul Cezanne died in Aix-en-Provence/France (1906) and Andrew Fisher, Australia's first Prime Minister to lead a majority government and the second longest serving Labor Prime Minister died in London (1928).