Joeys Daily Dose of History - 15 October 1911

Death of a Sydney visionary - Norman Selfe, engineer, naval architect, inventor, teacher, education activist and city visionary, died in Sydney of a heart attack.
In the late 1880s he had campaigned for a variety of infrastructure improvements to the city of Sydney, such as proposing a city railway loop, an overhead railway station for Circular Quay, major landscaping of Belmore Park, redevelopment of the Rocks and a cantilever bridge to McMahons Point on the North Shore of Sydney Harbour. He didn't live to see any of this happening, but many of his proposals became the foundations of what Sydney looks like today. The suburb of Normanhurst, in Hornsby Shire in Sydney's North, is named after him and his self-designed villa Gilligaloola is still a local landmark.

Other famous deaths of the day include Dutch dancer Mata Hari, who was executed for working as a spy for Germany (1917, Paris) and Hermann Goering, Nazi war criminal and founder of the Gestapo, who poisoned himself just hours before his scheduled execution (1946, Nuremberg).

Some birthdays of the day: Publius Vergilius Maro, better known as Virgil, the famous Roman poet (70BC, Andes near Mantua/Cisalpine Gaul), the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844,  Röcken near Leipzig/Prussia), 'Godfather' author Mario Puzo (1920, Manhattan/New York) and Chrysler magnate Lee Iacocca (1924, Allentown/Pennsylvania).
 
Elsewhere in the world today, many Catholic countries switched to the Gregorian calendar and skipped 10 days (1582), in Cologne/Germany the building of the cathedral was finally completed after 632 years of construction, Led Zeppelin made its performance debut in England (1968, Battersea Park), while closer to home, a section of the West Gate Bridge over the Yarra River in Melbourne collapsed during construction killing 35 workers (1970).
South Africa's President F.W. de Klerk and African National Congress President Nelson Mandela were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to end the apartheid system in South Africa (1993, Oslo) and Singapore Airlines became the World's first airline to take delivery of an Airbus A380 (2007, Singapore) - wow, they have been around for 5 years already. When will you hop on one and come Down Under??