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August 12	Events	Events
August 12	Pre-1600	Pre-1600 1099 – First Crusade: Battle of Ascalon Crusaders under the command of Godfrey of Bouillon defeat Fatimid forces led by Al-Afdal Shahanshah. This is considered the last engagement of the First Crusade. 1121 – Battle of Didgori: The Georgian army under King David IV wins a decisive victory over the famous Seljuk commander Ilghazi. 1164 – Battle of Harim: Nur ad-Din Zangi defeats the Crusader armies of the County of Tripoli and the Principality of Antioch. 1323 – The Treaty of Nöteborg between Sweden and Novgorod Republic is signed, regulating the border between the two countries for the first time. 1492 – Christopher Columbus arrives in the Canary Islands on his first voyage to the New World. 1499 – First engagement of the Battle of Zonchio between Venetian and Ottoman fleets.
August 12	1601–1900	1601–1900 1624 – Charles de La Vieuville is arrested and replaced by Cardinal Richelieu as the French king's chief advisor. 1676 – Praying Indian John Alderman shoots and kills Metacomet, the Wampanoag war chief, ending King Philip's War. 1687 – Battle of Mohács: Charles of Lorraine defeats the Ottoman Empire. 1765 – Treaty of Allahabad is signed. The Treaty marks the political and constitutional involvement and the beginning of Company rule in India. 1788 – The Anjala conspiracy is signed.Anjalan liitto – Anjala-seura (in Finnish) 1793 – The Rhône and Loire départments are created when the former département of Rhône-et-Loire is split into two. 1806 – Santiago de Liniers, 1st Count of Buenos Aires re-takes the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina after the first British invasion. 1831 – French intervention forces William I of the Netherlands to abandon his attempt to suppress the Belgian Revolution. 1851 – Isaac Singer is granted a patent for his sewing machine. 1865 – Joseph Lister, British surgeon and scientist, performs the first antiseptic surgery. 1883 – The last quagga dies at the Natura Artis Magistra, a zoo in Amsterdam, Netherlands. 1898 – The Hawaiian flag is lowered from ʻIolani Palace in an elaborate annexation ceremony and replaced with the flag of the United States to signify the transfer of sovereignty from the Republic of Hawaii to the United States where it is formally recognized as Hawaii.
August 12	1901–present	1901–present 1914 – World War I: The United Kingdom and the British Empire declare war on Austria-Hungary. 1914 – World War I: The Battle of Halen a.k.a. Battle of the Silver Helmets a clash between large Belgian and German cavalry formations at Halen, Belgium. 1944 – Waffen-SS troops massacre 560 people in Sant'Anna di Stazzema. 1944 – Nazi German troops end the week-long Wola massacre, during which time at least 40,000 people are killed indiscriminately or in mass executions. 1944 – Alençon is liberated by General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, the first city in France to be liberated from the Nazis by French forces. 1948 – Between 15 and 150 unarmed members of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement are killed by Pakistani police. 1950 – Korean War: Bloody Gulch massacre: Seventy-five American POWs are massacred by the North Korean Army. 1952 – The Night of the Murdered Poets: Thirteen prominent Jewish intellectuals are murdered in Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union. 1953 – First thermonuclear bomb test: The Soviet atomic bomb project continues with the detonation of "RDS-6s" (Joe 4) using a "layered" scheme. 1953 – The 7.2 Ionian earthquake shakes the southern Ionian Islands with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme). Between 445 and 800 people are killed. 1960 – Echo 1A, NASA's first successful communications satellite, is launched. 1964 – South Africa is banned from the Olympic Games due to the country's racist policies. 1969 – Violence erupts after the Apprentice Boys of Derry march in Derry, Northern Ireland, resulting in a three-day communal riot known as the Battle of the Bogside. 1976 – Between 1,000 and 3,500 Palestinians are killed in the Tel al-Zaatar massacre, one of the bloodiest events of the Lebanese Civil War. 1977 – The first free flight of the . 1977 – The Sri Lanka Riots: Targeting the minority Sri Lankan Tamils, begin, less than a month after the United National Party came to power. Over 300 Tamils are killed. 1981 – The IBM Personal Computer is released. 1984 – An infamous brawl takes place at the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium between the Atlanta Braves and San Diego Padres. 1985 – Japan Air Lines Flight 123 crashes into Osutaka ridge in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, killing 520, to become the worst single-plane air disaster. 1990 – Sue, the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton found to date, is discovered by Sue Hendrickson in South Dakota. 1992 – Canada, Mexico and the United States announce completion of negotiations for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). 1994 – Major League Baseball players go on strike, eventually forcing the cancellation of the 1994 World Series. 2000 – The Russian Navy submarine explodes and sinks in the Barents Sea during a military exercise, killing her entire 118-man crew. 2015 – At least two massive explosions kill 173 people and injure nearly 800 more in Tianjin, China. 2016 – Syrian civil war: The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) capture the city of Manbij from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). 2017 - The Unite the Right rally occurs in Charlottesville, Virginia, leading to the deaths of 3 and injuring nearly 50 more. 2018 – Thirty-nine civilians, including a dozen children, are killed in an explosion at a weapons depot in Sarmada, Syria. 2021 – Six people, five victims and the perpetrator are killed in Keyham, Plymouth in the worst mass shooting in the UK since 2010.
August 12	Births	Births
August 12	Pre-1600	Pre-1600 1452 – Abraham Zacuto, Jewish astronomer, astrologer, mathematician, rabbi and historian (d. 1515) 1503 – Christian III of Denmark (d. 1559) 1506 – Franciscus Sonnius, Dutch counter-Reformation theologian (d. 1576) 1591 – Louise de Marillac, co-founder of the Daughters of Charity (d. 1660) 1599 – Sir William Curtius FRS, German magistrate, English baronet (d. 1678)
August 12	1601–1900	1601–1900 1604 – Tokugawa Iemitsu, Japanese shōgun (d. 1651) 1626 – Giovanni Legrenzi, Italian composer (d. 1690) 1629 – Archduchess Isabella Clara of Austria, Austrian archduchess (d. 1685) 1644 – Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Bohemian-Austrian violinist and composer (d. 1704) 1686 – John Balguy, English philosopher and author (d. 1748) 1696 – Maurice Greene, English organist and composer (d. 1755) 1762 – George IV of the United Kingdom (d. 1830) 1773 – Karl Faber, Prussian historian and academic (d. 1853) 1774 – Robert Southey, English poet and author (d. 1843) 1831 – Helena Blavatsky, Russian theosophist and scholar (d. 1891) 1852 – Michael J. McGivney, American priest and founder of the Knights of Columbus (d. 1890) 1856 – Diamond Jim Brady, American businessman and philanthropist (d. 1917) 1857 – Ernestine von Kirchsberg, Austrian painter and educator (d. 1924) 1859 – Katharine Lee Bates, American poet and author (d. 1929) 1860 – Klara Hitler, Austrian mother of Adolf Hitler (d. 1907) 1866 – Jacinto Benavente, Spanish playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1954) 1866 – Henrik Sillem, Dutch target shooter, mountaineer, and jurist (d. 1907) 1867 – Edith Hamilton, German-American author and educator (d. 1963) 1870 – Henry Reuterdahl, Swedish-American artist (d. 1925) 1871 – Gustavs Zemgals, Latvian politician, 2nd President of Latvia (d. 1939) 1876 – Mary Roberts Rinehart, American author and playwright (d. 1958) 1877 – Albert Bartha, Hungarian general and politician, Hungarian Minister of Defence (d. 1960) 1880 – Radclyffe Hall, English poet, author, and activist (d. 1943) 1880 – Christy Mathewson, American baseball player and manager (d. 1925) 1881 – Cecil B. DeMille, American director and producer (d. 1959) 1883 – Martha Hedman, Swedish-American actress and playwright (d. 1974) 1883 – Marion Lorne, American actress (d. 1968) 1885 – Jean Cabannes, French physicist and academic (d. 1959) 1885 – Keith Murdoch, Australian journalist (d. 1952) 1885 – Juhan Simm, Estonian composer and conductor (d. 1959) 1887 – Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1961) 1889 – Zerna Sharp, American author and educator (d. 1981) 1891 – C. E. M. Joad, English philosopher and academic (d. 1953) 1891 – John McDermott, American golfer (d. 1971) 1892 – Alfred Lunt, American actor and director (d. 1977) 1897 – Maurice Fernandes, Guyanese cricketer (d. 1981) 1899 – Ben Sealey, Trinidadian cricketer (d. 1963)
August 12	1901–present	1901–present 1902 – Mohammad Hatta, Indonesian statesman, 1st Vice President of Indonesia (d. 1980) 1904 – Idel Jakobson, Latvian-Estonian NKVD officer (d. 1997) 1904 – Tamás Lossonczy, Hungarian painter (d. 2009) 1904 – Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia (d. 1918) 1906 – Harry Hopman, Australian tennis player and coach (d. 1985) 1906 – Tedd Pierce, American animator, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1972) 1907 – Gladys Bentley, American blues singer (d. 1960) 1907 – Joe Besser, American actor (d. 1988) 1907 – Boy Charlton, Australian swimmer (d. 1975) 1907 – Benjamin Sheares, Singaporean physician and politician, 2nd President of Singapore (d. 1981) 1909 – Bruce Matthews, Canadian general and businessman (d. 1991) 1910 – Yusof bin Ishak, Singaporean journalist and politician, 1st President of Singapore (d. 1970) 1910 – Jane Wyatt, American actress (d. 2006) 1911 – Cantinflas, Mexican actor, screenwriter, and producer (d. 1993) 1912 – Samuel Fuller, American actor, director, and screenwriter (d. 1997) 1913 – Richard L. Bare, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2015) 1914 – Gerd Buchdahl, German-English philosopher and author (d. 2001) 1914 – Ruth Lowe, Canadian pianist and songwriter (d. 1981) 1915 – Michael Kidd, American dancer and choreographer (d. 2007) 1916 – Ioan Dicezare, Romanian general and pilot (d. 2012) 1916 – Edward Pinkowski, American writer, journalist and Polonia historian (d. 2020) 1917 – Oliver Crawford, American screenwriter and author (d. 2008) 1917 – Ebba Haslund, Norwegian writer (d. 2009) 1918 – Sid Bernstein, American record producer (d. 2013) 1918 – Guy Gibson, Anglo-Indian commander and pilot, Victoria Cross recipient (d. 1944) 1919 – Margaret Burbidge, English-American astrophysicist and academic (d. 2020) 1919 – Vikram Sarabhai, Indian physicist and academic (d. 1971) 1920 – Charles Gibson, American ethnohistorian (d. 1985) 1920 – Percy Mayfield, American R&B singer-songwriter (d. 1984) 1922 – Fulton Mackay, Scottish actor and playwright (d. 1987) 1922 – Miloš Jakeš, Czech communist politician (d. 2020) 1923 – John Holt, Jamaican cricketer (d. 1997) 1924 – Derek Shackleton, English cricketer, coach, and umpire (d. 2007) 1924 – Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistani general and politician, 6th President of Pakistan (d. 1988) 1925 – Dale Bumpers, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 38th Governor of Arkansas (d. 2016) 1925 – Guillermo Cano Isaza, Colombian journalist (d. 1986) 1925 – Donald Justice, American poet and writing teacher (d. 2004) 1925 – Norris McWhirter, Scottish publisher and activist co-founded the Guinness World Records (d. 2004) 1925 – Ross McWhirter, Scottish publisher and activist, co-founded the Guinness World Records (d. 1975) 1925 – George Wetherill, American physicist and academic (d. 2006) 1926 – Douglas Croft, American child actor (d. 1963) 1926 – John Derek, American actor, director, and cinematographer (d. 1998) 1926 – Joe Jones, American R&B singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2005) 1927 – Porter Wagoner, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2007) 1928 – Charles Blackman, Australian painter and illustrator (d. 2018) 1928 – Bob Buhl, American baseball player (d. 2001) 1928 – Dan Curtis, American director and producer (d. 2006) 1929 – Buck Owens, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2006) 1930 – Harry Babcock, American football player and first overall draft pick (d. 1996) 1930 – George Soros, Hungarian-American businessman and investor, founded the Soros Fund Management 1930 – Kanagaratnam Sriskandan, Sri Lankan engineer and civil servant (d. 2010) 1930 – Jacques Tits, Belgian-French mathematician and academic (d. 2021) 1931 – William Goldman, American author, playwright, and screenwriter (d. 2018) 1932 – Dallin H. Oaks, American lawyer, jurist, and religious leader 1932 – Charlie O'Donnell, American radio and television announcer (d. 2010) 1932 – Sirikit, Queen mother of Thailand 1933 – Parnelli Jones, American race car driver and businessman (d. 2024) 1933 – Frederic Lindsay, Scottish author and educator (d. 2013) 1934 – Robin Nicholson, English metallurgist and academic (d. 2024) 1935 – John Cazale, American actor (d. 1978) 1936 – Kjell Grede, Swedish director and screenwriter (d. 2017) 1937 – Walter Dean Myers, American author and poet (d. 2014) 1938 – Jean-Paul L'Allier, Canadian journalist and politician, 38th Mayor of Quebec City (d. 2016) 1939 – George Hamilton, American actor 1939 – David Jacobs, American television writer and producer (d. 2023) 1939 – S. Jayakumar, Singaporean politician, 4th Senior Minister of Singapore 1939 – Pam Kilborn, Australian track and field athlete 1939 – David King, South African chemist and academic 1939 – Sushil Koirala, Nepalese politician, 37th Prime Minister of Nepal (d. 2016) 1939 – Roy Romanow, Canadian lawyer and politician, 12th Premier of Saskatchewan 1940 – Eddie Barlow, South African cricketer and coach (d. 2005) 1940 – John Waller, English historical European martial arts (HEMA) revival pioneer and fight director (d. 2018) 1941 – L. M. Kit Carson, American actor, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2014) 1941 – Réjean Ducharme, Canadian author and playwright (d. 2017) 1941 – Dana Ivey, American actress 1942 – Hans-Wilhelm Müller-Wohlfahrt, German physician and author 1943 – Javeed Alam, Indian academician (d. 2016) 1945 – Dorothy E. Denning, American computer scientist and academic 1945 – Ron Mael, American keyboard player and songwriter 1946 – Terry Nutkins, English television host and author (d. 2012) 1947 – John Nathan-Turner, English author and television director, producer, and writer (d. 2002) 1948 – Siddaramaiah, Indian lawyer and politician, 22nd Chief Minister of Karnataka 1948 – Graham J. Zellick, English academic and jurist 1949 – Panagiotis Chinofotis, Greek admiral and politician 1949 – Mark Knopfler, Scottish-English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer 1949 – Lou Martin, Northern Irish pianist, songwriter, and producer (d. 2012) 1949 – Alex Naumik, Lithuanian-Norwegian singer-songwriter and producer (d. 2013) 1949 – Rick Ridgeway, American mountaineer and photographer 1950 – Jim Beaver, American actor, director, and screenwriter 1950 – August "Kid Creole" Darnell, American musician, bandleader, singer-songwriter, and record producer 1950 – George McGinnis, American basketball player (d. 2023) 1951 – Klaus Toppmöller, German football manager and former player 1952 – Daniel Biles, American associate justice of the Kansas Supreme Court 1952 – Sitaram Yechury, Indian politician and leader of CPI(M) (d. 2024) 1954 – Rob Borbidge, Australian politician, 35th Premier of Queensland 1954 – Leung Chun-ying, Hong Kong businessman and politician, 3rd Chief Executive of Hong Kong 1954 – Ibolya Dávid, Hungarian lawyer and politician, Minister of Justice of Hungary 1954 – François Hollande, French lawyer and politician, 24th President of France 1954 – Sam J. Jones, American actor 1954 – Pat Metheny, American jazz guitarist and composer 1956 – Lee Freedman, Australian horse trainer 1956 – Bruce Greenwood, Canadian actor and producer 1956 – Sidath Wettimuny, Sri Lankan cricketer 1957 – Friedhelm Schütte, German footballer 1957 – Amanda Redman, English actress 1958 – Jürgen Dehmel, German bass player and songwriter 1959 – Kerry Boustead, Australian rugby league player 1960 – Laurent Fignon, French cyclist and sportscaster (d. 2010) 1960 – Greg Thomas, Welsh-English cricketer 1961 – Roy Hay, English guitarist, keyboard player, and composer 1961 – Mark Priest, New Zealand cricketer 1963 – Kōji Kitao, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 60th Yokozuna (d. 2019) 1963 – Campbell Newman, Australian politician, 38th Premier of Queensland 1963 – Sir Mix-a-Lot, American rapper, producer, and actor 1964 – Txiki Begiristain, Spanish footballer 1964 – Michael Hagan, Australian rugby league player and coach 1965 – Peter Krause, American actor 1966 – Tobias Ellwood, American-English captain and politician 1967 – Andy Hui, Hong Kong singer-songwriter and actor 1967 – Andrey Plotnikov, Russian race walker 1967 – Regilio Tuur, Dutch boxer 1968 – Thorsten Boer, German footballer and manager 1969 – Aga Muhlach, Filipino actor and politician 1969 – Stuart Williams, Nevisian cricketer 1969 – Tanita Tikaram, British pop/folk singer-songwriter 1970 – Aleksandar Đurić, Bosnian footballer 1970 – Charles Mesure, English-Australian actor and screenwriter 1970 – Toby Perkins, English businessman and politician 1970 – Jim Schlossnagle, American baseball player and coach 1970 – Anthony Swofford, American soldier and author 1971 – Michael Ian Black, American comedian, actor, director, producer, and screenwriter 1971 – Yvette Nicole Brown, American actress, comedian, and talk show host 1971 – Rebecca Gayheart, American actress 1971 – Pete Sampras, American tennis player 1972 – Demir Demirkan, Turkish singer-songwriter and producer 1972 – Mark Kinsella, Irish footballer and manager 1972 – Takanohana Kōji, Japanese sumo wrestler, the 65th Yokozuna 1972 – Gyanendra Pandey, Indian cricketer 1972 – Del the Funky Homosapien, American rapper 1973 – Jonathan Coachman, American sportscaster and wrestler 1973 – Mark Iuliano, Italian footballer and manager 1973 – Todd Marchant, American ice hockey player and coach 1974 – Matt Clement, American baseball player and coach 1974 – Karl Stefanovic, Australian television host 1975 – Casey Affleck, American actor 1976 – Pedro Collins, Barbadian cricketer 1976 – Mikko Lindström, Finnish guitarist 1976 – Henry Tuilagi, Samoan rugby player 1976 – Antoine Walker, American basketball player 1977 – Plaxico Burress, American football player 1977 – Jesper Grønkjær, Danish footballer 1977 – Park Yong-ha, South Korean actor (d. 2010) 1978 – Chris Chambers, American football player 1978 – Hayley Wickenheiser, Canadian ice hockey player 1979 – D. J. Houlton, American baseball player 1979 – Ian Hutchinson, English motorcycle racer 1979 – Cindy Klassen, Canadian speed skater 1979 – Austra Skujytė, Lithuanian pentathlete 1980 – Javier Chevantón, Uruguayan footballer 1980 – Maggie Lawson, American actress 1980 – Dominique Swain, American actress 1980 – Matt Thiessen, Canadian-American singer-songwriter and guitarist 1981 – Tony Capaldi, Norwegian–Northern Irish footballer 1981 – Djibril Cissé, French footballer 1982 – Boban Grnčarov, Macedonian footballer 1982 – Alexandros Tzorvas, Greek footballer 1983 – Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, Dutch footballer 1983 – Kléber Giacomance de Souza Freitas, Brazilian footballer 1983 – Manoa Vosawai, Italian rugby player 1984 – Bryan Pata, American football player (d. 2006) 1985 – Danny Graham, English footballer 1985 – Franck Moutsinga, German rugby player 1986 – Andrei Agius, Maltese footballer 1986 – Kyle Arrington, American football player 1987 – Vanessa Watts, West Indian cricketer 1988 – Tyson Fury, English boxer 1988 – Matt Gillett, Australian rugby league player 1989 – Tom Cleverley, English footballer 1989 – Hong Jeong-ho, South Korean footballer 1989 – Sunye, South Korean singer 1990 – Mario Balotelli, Italian footballer 1990 – Marvin Zeegelaar, Dutch footballer 1990 – Martin Zurawsky, German footballer 1991 – Jesinta Campbell, Australian model 1991 – Sam Hoare, Australian rugby league player 1991 – Khris Middleton, American basketball player 1991 – LaKeith Stanfield, American actor and musician 1992 – Cara Delevingne, English model and actress 1992 – Jacob Loko, Australian rugby player 1992 – Teo Gheorghiu, Swiss pianist and actor 1993 – Ewa Farna, Czech singer-songwriter 1993 – Luna, South Korean singer, actress and presenter 1994 – Ian Happ, American baseball player 1996 – Choi Yu-jin, South Korean singer and actress 1996 – Julio Urías, Mexican baseball player 1996 – Arthur Melo, Brazilian footballer 1996 – Samuel Moutoussamy, Congolese footballer 1998 – Stefanos Tsitsipas, Greek tennis player 1999 – Matthijs de Ligt, Dutch footballer 1999 – Dream, American YouTuber 1999 – Jule Niemeier, German tennis player 1999 – GK Barry, social media star and presenter 2000 – Tristan Charpentier, French racing driver 2001 – Dixie D'Amelio, American social media personality and singer
August 12	Deaths	Deaths
August 12	Pre-1600	Pre-1600 30 BC – Cleopatra, Egyptian queen (b. 69 BC) 792 – Jænberht, archbishop of Canterbury 875 – Louis II, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 825) 960 – Li Gu, chancellor of Later Zhou (b. 903) 961 – Yuan Zong, emperor of Southern Tang (b. 916) 1222 – Vladislaus III, duke of Bohemia 1295 – Charles Martel, king of Hungary (b. 1271) 1319 – Rudolf I, duke of Bavaria (b. 1274) 1315 – Guy de Beauchamp, 10th Earl of Warwick, English nobleman 1335 – Prince Moriyoshi, Japanese shōgun (b. 1308) 1399 – Demetrius I Starshy, Prince of Trubczewsk (in battle) (b. 1327) 1424 – Yongle, emperor of the Ming Empire (b. 1360) 1484 – Sixtus IV, pope of the Catholic Church (b. 1414) 1546 – Francisco de Vitoria, Spanish theologian (b. 1492) 1577 – Thomas Smith, English scholar and diplomat (b. 1513) 1588 – Alfonso Ferrabosco the elder, Italian-English composer (b. 1543)
August 12	1601–1900	1601–1900 1602 – Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak, Mughal vizier and historian (b. 1551) 1612 – Giovanni Gabrieli, Italian organist and composer (b. 1557) 1638 – Johannes Althusius, German jurist and philosopher (b. 1557) 1674 – Philippe de Champaigne, Belgian-French painter and educator (b. 1602) 1689 – Pope Innocent XI (b. 1611) 1778 – Peregrine Bertie, 3rd Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven, English general and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire (b. 1714) 1809 – Mikhail Kamensky, Russian field marshal (b. 1738) 1810 – Étienne Louis Geoffroy, French pharmacist and entomologist (b. 1725) 1822 – Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, Irish-English politician, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (b. 1769) 1827 – William Blake, English poet and painter (b. 1757) 1829 – Charles Sapinaud de La Rairie, French general (b. 1760) 1848 – George Stephenson, English engineer and academic (b. 1781) 1849 – Albert Gallatin, Swiss-American ethnologist, linguist, and politician, 4th United States Secretary of the Treasury (b. 1761) 1861 – Eliphalet Remington, American inventor and businessman, founded Remington Arms (b. 1793) 1864 – Sakuma Shōzan, Japanese scholar and politician (b. 1811) 1865 – William Jackson Hooker, English botanist and academic (b. 1785) 1891 – James Russell Lowell, American poet and critic (b. 1819) 1896 – Thomas Chamberlain, American colonel (b. 1841) 1900 – Wilhelm Steinitz, Austrian chess player and theoretician (b. 1836)
August 12	1901–present	1901–present 1901 – Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, Finnish-Swedish botanist, geologist, mineralogist, and explorer (b. 1832) 1904 – William Renshaw, English tennis player (b. 1861) 1914 – John Philip Holland, Irish engineer, designed (b. 1840) 1918 – William Thompson, American archer (b. 1848) 1921 – Pyotr Boborykin, Russian playwright and journalist (b. 1836) 1922 – Arthur Griffith, Irish journalist and politician, 3rd President of Dáil Éireann (b. 1871) 1924 – Sándor Bródy, Hungarian journalist and author (b. 1863) 1928 – Leoš Janáček, Czech composer and educator (b. 1854) 1934 – Hendrik Petrus Berlage, Dutch architect, designed the Beurs van Berlage (b. 1856) 1935 – Friedrich Schottky, German mathematician and academic (b. 1851) 1940 – Nikolai Triik, Estonian painter, illustrator, and academic (b. 1884) 1941 – Freeman Freeman-Thomas, 1st Marquess of Willingdon, English soldier and politician, 56th Governor General of Canada (b. 1866) 1941 – Bobby Peel, English cricketer and umpire (b. 1857) 1943 – Vittorio Sella, Italian photographer and mountaineer (b. 1859) 1944 – Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., American lieutenant and pilot (b. 1915) 1944 – Jacques Pellegrin, French zoologist (b. 1873)KMAE Journal Bull. Fr. Piscic. (1944) 135 : 94–96 DOI: 10.1051/kmae:1944004 1952 – David Bergelson, Ukrainian author and playwright (b. 1884) 1955 – Thomas Mann, German author and critic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1875) 1955 – James B. Sumner, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1887) 1959 – Mike O'Neill, Irish-American baseball player and manager (b. 1877) 1964 – Ian Fleming, English spy, journalist, and author (b. 1908) 1966 – Artur Alliksaar, Estonian poet and author (b. 1923) 1967 – Esther Forbes, American historian and author (b. 1891) 1973 – Walter Rudolf Hess, Swiss physiologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1881) 1973 – Karl Ziegler, German chemist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1898) 1976 – Tom Driberg, British politician/journalist (b. 1905) 1978 – John Williams, English motorcycle racer (b. 1946) 1979 – Ernst Boris Chain, German-Irish biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1906) 1982 – Henry Fonda, American actor (b. 1905) 1982 – Salvador Sánchez, Mexican boxer (b. 1959) 1983 – Theodor Burchardi, German admiral (b. 1892) 1984 – Ladi Kwali, Nigerian potter (b. 1925) 1985 – Kyu Sakamoto, Japanese singer-songwriter (b. 1941) 1985 – Manfred Winkelhock, German race car driver (b. 1951) 1986 – Evaline Ness, American author and illustrator (b. 1911) 1988 – Jean-Michel Basquiat, American painter (b. 1960) 1989 – Aimo Koivunen, Finnish soldier and corporal (b. 1917) 1989 – William Shockley, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1910) 1990 – Dorothy Mackaill, English-American actress (b. 1903) 1992 – John Cage, American composer and theorist (b. 1912) 1996 – Victor Ambartsumian, Georgian-Armenian astrophysicist and academic (b. 1908) 1996 – Mark Gruenwald, American author and illustrator (b. 1953) 1997 – Jack Delano, American photographer and composer (b. 1914) 1999 – Jean Drapeau, Canadian lawyer and politician, 37th Mayor of Montreal (b. 1916) 2000 – Gennady Lyachin, Russian captain (b. 1955) 2000 – Loretta Young, American actress (b. 1913) 2002 – Enos Slaughter, American baseball player and manager (b. 1916) 2004 – Godfrey Hounsfield, English biophysicist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1919) 2005 – John Loder, English sound engineer and producer, founded Southern Studios (b. 1946) 2006 – Victoria Gray Adams, American civil rights activist (b. 1926) 2007 – Merv Griffin, American actor, singer, and producer, created Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune (b. 1925) 2007 – Mike Wieringo, American author and illustrator (b. 1963) 2008 – Christie Allen, English-Australian singer (b. 1954) 2008 – Helge Hagerup, Norwegian playwright, poet and novelist (b. 1933) 2009 – Les Paul, American guitarist and songwriter (b. 1915) 2010 – Isaac Bonewits, American Druid, author, and activist; founded Ár nDraíocht Féin (b. 1949) 2010 – Guido de Marco, Maltese lawyer and politician, 6th President of Malta (b. 1931) 2010 – Richie Hayward, American drummer and songwriter (b. 1946) 2010 – André Kim, South Korean fashion designer (b. 1935) 2011 – Robert Robinson, English journalist and author (b. 1927) 2012 – Jimmy Carr, American football player and coach (b. 1933) 2012 – Jerry Grant, American race car driver (b. 1935) 2012 – Joe Kubert, Polish-American illustrator, founded The Kubert School (b. 1926) 2012 – Édgar Morales Pérez, Mexican engineer and politician 2012 – Alf Morris, English politician and activist (b. 1928) 2013 – Tereza de Arriaga, Portuguese painter (b. 1915) 2013 – Hans-Ekkehard Bob, German soldier and pilot (b. 1917) 2013 – Pauline Maier, American historian and academic (b. 1938) 2013 – David McLetchie, Scottish lawyer and politician (b. 1952) 2013 – Vasiliy Mihaylovich Peskov, Russian ecologist and journalist (b. 1930) 2014 – Lauren Bacall, American model, actress, and singer (b. 1924) 2014 – Futatsuryū Jun'ichi, Japanese sumo wrestler (b. 1950) 2014 – Kongō Masahiro, Japanese sumo wrestler (b. 1948) 2015 – Jaakko Hintikka, Finnish philosopher and academic (b. 1929) 2015 – Stephen Lewis, English actor and screenwriter (b. 1926) 2015 – Meshulim Feish Lowy, Hungarian-Canadian rabbi and author (b. 1921) 2015 – John Scott, English organist and conductor (b. 1956) 2016 – Juan Pedro de Miguel, Spanish handball player (b. 1958) 2017 – Bryan Murray, Canadian ice hockey coach (b. 1942) 2019 – DJ Arafat, Ivorian DJ and singer (b. 1986) 2020 – Bill Yeoman, American college football player and coach (b. 1927) 2021 – Una Stubbs, English actress, TV personality, and dancer (b. 1937) 2024 – Kim Kahana, American actor and stunt performer (b. 1929)
August 12	Holidays and observances	Holidays and observances Christian feast day: Euplius Eusebius of Milan Herculanus of Brescia Pope Innocent XI Jænberht Jane Frances de Chantal Muiredach (or Murtagh) Porcarius II August 12 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics) Glorious Twelfth (United Kingdom) HM the Queen Mother's Birthday and National Mother's Day (Thailand) International Youth Day (United Nations) Russian Air Force Day (Russia) Russian Railway Troops Day (Russia) Sea Org Day (Scientology) World Elephant Day (International)
August 12	References	References
August 12	External links	External links Category:Days of August
August 12	Table of Content	pp-pc1, Events, Pre-1600, 1601–1900, 1901–present, Births, Pre-1600, 1601–1900, 1901–present, Deaths, Pre-1600, 1601–1900, 1901–present, Holidays and observances, References, External links
Alfred Russel Wallace	Short description	Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was an English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection; his 1858 paper on the subject was published that year alongside extracts from Charles Darwin's earlier writings on the topic. It spurred Darwin to set aside the "big species book" he was drafting and to quickly write an abstract of it, which was published in 1859 as On the Origin of Species. Wallace did extensive fieldwork, starting in the Amazon River basin. He then did fieldwork in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the faunal divide now termed the Wallace Line, which separates the Indonesian archipelago into two distinct parts: a western portion in which the animals are largely of Asian origin, and an eastern portion where the fauna reflect Australasia. He was considered the 19th century's leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species, and is sometimes called the "father of biogeography", or more specifically of zoogeography. Wallace was one of the leading evolutionary thinkers of the 19th century, working on warning coloration in animals and reinforcement (sometimes known as the Wallace effect), a way that natural selection could contribute to speciation by encouraging the development of barriers against hybridisation. Wallace's 1904 book Man's Place in the Universe was the first serious attempt by a biologist to evaluate the likelihood of life on other planets. He was one of the first scientists to write a serious exploration of whether there was life on Mars. Aside from scientific work, he was a social activist, critical of what he considered to be an unjust social and economic system in 19th-century Britain. His advocacy of spiritualism and his belief in a non-material origin for the higher mental faculties of humans strained his relationship with other scientists. He was one of the first prominent scientists to raise concerns over the environmental impact of human activity. He wrote prolifically on both scientific and social issues; his account of his adventures and observations during his explorations in Southeast Asia, The Malay Archipelago, was first published in 1869. It continues to be both popular and highly regarded.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Biography	Biography
Alfred Russel Wallace	Early life	Early life Alfred Russel Wallace was born on 8 January 1823 in Llanbadoc, Monmouthshire. He was the eighth of nine children born to Mary Anne Wallace () and Thomas Vere Wallace. His mother was English, while his father was of Scottish ancestry. His family claimed a connection to William Wallace, a leader of Scottish forces during the Wars of Scottish Independence in the 13th century. Wallace's father graduated in law but never practised it. He owned some income-generating property, but bad investments and failed business ventures resulted in a steady deterioration of the family's financial position. Wallace's mother was from a middle-class family of Hertford, to which place his family moved when Wallace was five years old. He attended Hertford Grammar School until 1837, when he reached the age of 14, the normal leaving age for a pupil not going on to university. thumb\|left\|upright\|A photograph from Wallace's autobiography shows the building Wallace and his brother John designed and built for the Neath Mechanics' Institute.\|alt=a building designed by Wallace and his brother Wallace then moved to London to board with his older brother John, a 19-year-old apprentice builder. This was a stopgap measure until William, his oldest brother, was ready to take him on as an apprentice surveyor. While in London, Alfred attended lectures and read books at the London Mechanics Institute. Here he was exposed to the radical political ideas of the Welsh social reformer Robert Owen and of the English-born political theorist Thomas Paine. He left London in 1837 to live with William and work as his apprentice for six years. They moved repeatedly to different places in Mid-Wales. Then at the end of 1839, they moved to Kington, Herefordshire, near the Welsh border, before eventually settling at Neath in Wales. Between 1840 and 1843, Wallace worked as a land surveyor in the countryside of the west of England and Wales. The natural history of his surroundings aroused his interest; from 1841 he collected flowers and plants as an amateur botanist. One result of Wallace's early travels is a modern controversy about his nationality. Since he was born in Monmouthshire, some sources have considered him to be Welsh. Other historians have questioned this because neither of his parents were Welsh, his family only briefly lived in Monmouthshire, the Welsh people Wallace knew in his childhood considered him to be English, and because he consistently referred to himself as English rather than Welsh. One Wallace scholar has stated that the most reasonable interpretation is therefore that he was an Englishman born in Wales. In 1843 Wallace's father died, and a decline in demand for surveying meant William's business no longer had work available. For a short time Wallace was unemployed, then early in 1844 he was engaged by the Collegiate School in Leicester to teach drawing, mapmaking, and surveying. He had already read George Combe's The Constitution of Man, and after Spencer Hall lectured on mesmerism, Wallace as well as some of the older pupils tried it out. Wallace spent many hours at the town library in Leicester; he read An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Robert Malthus, Alexander von Humboldt's Personal Narrative, Darwin's Journal (The Voyage of the Beagle), and Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology. One evening Wallace met the entomologist Henry Bates, who was 19 years old, and had published an 1843 paper on beetles in the journal Zoologist. He befriended Wallace and started him collecting insects. When Wallace's brother William died in March 1845, Wallace left his teaching position to assume control of his brother's firm in Neath, but his brother John and he were unable to make the business work. After a few months, he found work as a civil engineer for a nearby firm that was working on a survey for a proposed railway in the Vale of Neath. Wallace's work on the survey was largely outdoors in the countryside, allowing him to indulge his new passion for collecting insects. Wallace persuaded his brother John to join him in starting another architecture and civil engineering firm. It carried out projects including the design of a building for the Neath Mechanics' Institute, founded in 1843. During this period, he exchanged letters with Bates about books. By the end of 1845, Wallace was convinced by Robert Chambers's anonymously published treatise on progressive development, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, but he found Bates was more critical. Wallace re-read Darwin's Journal, and on 11 April 1846 wrote "As the Journal of a scientific traveller, it is second only to Humboldt's 'Personal Narrative'—as a work of general interest, perhaps superior to it." William Jevons, the founder of the Neath institute, was impressed by Wallace and persuaded him to give lectures there on science and engineering. In the autumn of 1846, Wallace and his brother John purchased a cottage near Neath, where they lived with their mother and sister Fanny.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Exploration and study of the natural world	Exploration and study of the natural world Inspired by the chronicles of earlier and contemporary travelling naturalists, Wallace decided to travel abroad. He later wrote that Darwin's Journal and Humboldt's Personal Narrative were "the two works to whose inspiration I owe my determination to visit the tropics as a collector." After reading A Voyage up the River Amazon by William Henry Edwards, Wallace and Bates estimated that by collecting and selling natural history specimens such as birds and insects they could meet their costs, with the prospect of good profits. They therefore engaged as their agent Samuel Stevens who would advertise and arrange sales to institutions and private collectors, for a commission of 20% on sales plus 5% on despatching freight and remittances of money. In 1848, Wallace and Bates left for Brazil aboard the Mischief. They intended to collect insects and other animal specimens in the Amazon Rainforest for their private collections, selling the duplicates to museums and collectors back in Britain to fund the trip. Wallace hoped to gather evidence of the transmutation of species. Bates and he spent most of their first year collecting near Belém, then explored inland separately, occasionally meeting to discuss their findings. In 1849, they were briefly joined by another young explorer, the botanist Richard Spruce, along with Wallace's younger brother Herbert. Herbert soon left (dying two years later from yellow fever), but Spruce, like Bates, would spend over ten years collecting in South America. Wallace spent four years charting the Rio Negro, collecting specimens and making notes on the peoples and languages he encountered as well as the geography, flora, and fauna. On 12 July 1852, Wallace embarked for the UK on the brig Helen. After 25 days at sea, the ship's cargo caught fire, and the crew was forced to abandon ship. All the specimens Wallace had on the ship, mostly collected during the last, and most interesting, two years of his trip, were lost. He managed to save a few notes and pencil sketches, but little else. Wallace and the crew spent ten days in an open boat before being picked up by the brig Jordeson, which was sailing from Cuba to London. The Jordeson provisions were strained by the unexpected passengers, but after a difficult passage on short rations, the ship reached its destination on 1 October 1852. The lost collection had been insured for £200 by Stevens. After his return to Britain, Wallace spent 18 months in London living on the insurance payment, and selling a few specimens that had been shipped home. During this period, despite having lost almost all the notes from his South American expedition, he wrote six academic papers (including "On the Monkeys of the Amazon") and two books, Palm Trees of the Amazon and Their Uses and Travels on the Amazon. At the same time, he made connections with several other British naturalists. thumb\|upright=1.5\|A map from The Malay Archipelago shows the physical geography of the archipelago and Wallace's travels around the area. The thin black lines indicate where Wallace travelled; the red lines indicate chains of volcanoes.\|alt=Map of Wallace's travels in the Malay Archipelago Bates and others were collecting in the Amazon area, Wallace was more interested in new opportunities in the Malay Archipelago as demonstrated by the travel writings of Ida Laura Pfeiffer, and valuable insect specimens she collected which Stevens sold as her agent. In March 1853 Wallace wrote to Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, who was then in London, and who arranged assistance in Sarawak for Wallace. In June Wallace wrote to Murchison at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) for support, proposing to again fund his exploring entirely from sale of duplicate collections. He later recalled that, while researching in the insect-room of the British Museum, he was introduced to Darwin and they "had a few minutes' conversation." After presenting a paper and a large map of the Rio Negro to the RGS, Wallace was elected a Fellow of the society on 27 February 1854. Free passage arranged on Royal Navy ships was stalled by the Crimean War, but eventually the RGS funded first class travel by P&O steamships. Wallace and a young assistant, Charles Allen, embarked at Southampton on 4 March 1854. After the overland journey to Suez and another change of ship at Ceylon they disembarked at Singapore on 19 April 1854. From 1854 to 1862, Wallace travelled around the islands of the Malay Archipelago or East Indies (now Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia). His main objective "was to obtain specimens of natural history, both for my private collection and to supply duplicates to museums and amateurs". In addition to Allen, he "generally employed one or two, and sometimes three Malay servants" as assistants, and paid large numbers of local people at various places to bring specimens. His total was 125,660 specimens, most of which were insects including more than 83,000 beetles, pdf at Darwin Online Several thousand of the specimens represented species new to science, Overall, more than thirty men worked for him at some stage as full-time paid collectors. He also hired guides, porters, cooks and boat crews, so well over 100 individuals worked for him. thumb\|Mount Santubong around 1855, watercolour by missionary Harriette McDougall After collecting expeditions to Bukit Timah Hill in Singapore, and to Malacca, Wallace and Allen reached Sarawak in October 1854, and were welcomed at Kuching by Sir James Brooke's (then) heir Captain John Brooke. Wallace hired a Malay named Ali as a general servant and cook, and spent the early 1855 wet season in a small Dyak house at the foot of Mount Santubong, overlooking a branch outlet of the Sarawak River. He read about species distribution, notes on Pictets's Palaeontology, and wrote his "Sarawak Paper". In March he moved to the Simunjon coal-works, operated by the Borneo Company under Ludvig Verner Helms, and supplemented collecting by paying workers a cent for each insect. A specimen of the previously unknown gliding tree frog Rhacophorus nigropalmatus (now called Wallace's flying frog) came from a Chinese workman who told Wallace that it glided down. Local people also assisted with shooting orangutans. They spent time with Sir James, then in February 1856 Allen chose to stay on with the missionaries at Kuching. pdf at Darwin Online On reaching Singapore in May 1856, Wallace hired a bird-skinner. With Ali as cook, they collected for two days on Bali, then from 17 June to 30 August on Lombok. In December 1856, Darwin had written to contacts worldwide to get specimens for his continuing research into variation under domestication. At Lombok's port city, Ampanam, Wallace wrote telling his agent, Stevens, about specimens shipped, including a domestic duck variety "for Mr. Darwin & he would perhaps also like the jungle cock, which is often domesticated here & is doubtless one of the originals of the domestic breed of poultry." In the same letter, Wallace said birds from Bali and Lombok, divided by a narrow strait, "belong to two quite distinct zoological provinces, of which they form the extreme limits", Java, Borneo, Sumatra and Malacca, and Australia and the Moluccas. Stevens arranged publication of relevant paragraphs in the January 1857 issue of The Zoologist. After further investigation, the zoogeographical boundary eventually became known as the Wallace Line., also Proceedings of Natural-History Collectors in Foreign Countries, by Alfred Russel Wallace Ali became Wallace's most trusted assistant, a skilled collector and researcher. Wallace collected and preserved the delicate insect specimens, while most of the birds were collected and prepared by his assistants; of those, Ali collected and prepared around 5000. pdf at Darwin Online While exploring the archipelago, Wallace refined his thoughts about evolution, and had his famous insight on natural selection. In 1858 he sent an article outlining his theory to Darwin; it was published, along with a description of Darwin's theory, that same year. Accounts of Wallace's studies and adventures were eventually published in 1869 as The Malay Archipelago. This became one of the most popular books of scientific exploration of the 19th century, and has never been out of print. It was praised by scientists such as Darwin (to whom the book was dedicated), by Lyell, and by non-scientists such as the novelist Joseph Conrad. Conrad called the book his "favorite bedside companion" and used information from it for several of his novels, especially Lord Jim. A set of 80 bird skeletons Wallace collected in Indonesia are held in the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology, and described as of exceptional historical significance. + Specimens and illustrations
Alfred Russel Wallace	Return to Britain, marriage and children	Return to Britain, marriage and children thumb\|upright\|A photograph of Wallace taken in Singapore in 1862\|alt=portrait photograph of Wallace In 1862, Wallace returned to Britain, where he moved in with his sister Fanny Sims and her husband Thomas. While recovering from his travels, Wallace organised his collections and gave numerous lectures about his adventures and discoveries to scientific societies such as the Zoological Society of London. Later that year, he visited Darwin at Down House, and became friendly with both Lyell and the philosopher Herbert Spencer. During the 1860s, Wallace wrote papers and gave lectures defending natural selection. He corresponded with Darwin about topics including sexual selection, warning coloration, and the possible effect of natural selection on hybridisation and the divergence of species. In 1865, he began investigating spiritualism. After a year of courtship, Wallace became engaged in 1864 to a young woman whom, in his autobiography, he would only identify as Miss L. Miss L. was the daughter of Lewis Leslie who played chess with Wallace, but to Wallace's great dismay, she broke off the engagement. In 1866, Wallace married Annie Mitten. Wallace had been introduced to Mitten through the botanist Richard Spruce, who had befriended Wallace in Brazil and who was a friend of Annie Mitten's father, William Mitten, an expert on mosses. In 1872, Wallace built the Dell, a house of concrete, on land he leased in Grays in Essex, where he lived until 1876. The Wallaces had three children: Herbert (1867–1874), Violet (1869–1945), and William (1871–1951).
Alfred Russel Wallace	Financial struggles	Financial struggles In the late 1860s and 1870s, Wallace was very concerned about the financial security of his family. While he was in the Malay Archipelago, the sale of specimens had brought in a considerable amount of money, which had been carefully invested by the agent who sold the specimens for Wallace. On his return to the UK, Wallace made a series of bad investments in railways and mines that squandered most of the money, and he found himself badly in need of the proceeds from the publication of The Malay Archipelago. Despite assistance from his friends, he was never able to secure a permanent salaried position such as a curatorship in a museum. To remain financially solvent, Wallace worked grading government examinations, wrote 25 papers for publication between 1872 and 1876 for various modest sums, and was paid by Lyell and Darwin to help edit some of their works. In 1876, Wallace needed a £500 advance from the publisher of The Geographical Distribution of Animals to avoid having to sell some of his personal property. Darwin was very aware of Wallace's financial difficulties and lobbied long and hard to get Wallace awarded a government pension for his lifetime contributions to science. When the £200 annual pension was awarded in 1881, it helped to stabilise Wallace's financial position by supplementing the income from his writings.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Social activism	Social activism thumb\|Article written by Professor Wallace, published in the report of the proceedings of the International Worker's Congress In 1881, Wallace was elected as the first president of the newly formed Land Nationalisation Society. In the next year, he published a book, Land Nationalisation; Its Necessity and Its Aims, on the subject. He criticised the UK's free trade policies for the negative impact they had on working-class people. In 1889, Wallace read Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy and declared himself a socialist, despite his earlier foray as a speculative investor. After reading Progress and Poverty, the bestselling book by the progressive land reformist Henry George, Wallace described it as "Undoubtedly the most remarkable and important book of the present century." Wallace opposed eugenics, an idea supported by other prominent 19th-century evolutionary thinkers, on the grounds that contemporary society was too corrupt and unjust to allow any reasonable determination of who was fit or unfit. In his 1890 article "Human Selection" he wrote, "Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent ..." He said, "The world does not want the eugenicist to set it straight," "Give the people good conditions, improve their environment, and all will tend towards the highest type. Eugenics is simply the meddlesome interference of an arrogant, scientific priestcraft." In 1898, Wallace wrote a paper advocating a pure paper money system, not backed by silver or gold, which impressed the economist Irving Fisher so much that he dedicated his 1920 book Stabilizing the Dollar to Wallace. Wallace wrote on other social and political topics, including in support of women's suffrage and repeatedly on the dangers and wastefulness of militarism. In an 1899 essay, he called for popular opinion to be rallied against warfare by showing people "that all modern wars are dynastic; that they are caused by the ambition, the interests, the jealousies, and the insatiable greed of power of their rulers, or of the great mercantile and financial classes which have power and influence over their rulers; and that the results of war are never good for the people, who yet bear all its burthens (burdens)". In a letter published by the Daily Mail in 1909, with aviation in its infancy, he advocated an international treaty to ban the military use of aircraft, arguing against the idea "that this new horror is 'inevitable', and that all we can do is to be sure and be in the front rank of the aerial assassins—for surely no other term can so fitly describe the dropping of, say, ten thousand bombs at midnight into an enemy's capital from an invisible flight of airships." In 1898, Wallace published The Wonderful Century: Its Successes and Its Failures, about developments in the 19th century. The first part of the book covered the major scientific and technical advances of the century; the second part covered what Wallace considered to be its social failures including the destruction and waste of wars and arms races, the rise of the urban poor and the dangerous conditions in which they lived and worked, a harsh criminal justice system that failed to reform criminals, abuses in a mental health system based on privately owned sanatoriums, the environmental damage caused by capitalism, and the evils of European colonialism. Wallace continued his social activism for the rest of his life, publishing the book The Revolt of Democracy just weeks before his death.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Further scientific work	Further scientific work In 1880, he published Island Life as a sequel to The Geographic Distribution of Animals. In November 1886, Wallace began a ten-month trip to the United States to give a series of popular lectures. Most of the lectures were on Darwinism (evolution through natural selection), but he also gave speeches on biogeography, spiritualism, and socio-economic reform. During the trip, he was reunited with his brother John who had emigrated to California years before. He spent a week in Colorado, with the American botanist Alice Eastwood as his guide, exploring the flora of the Rocky Mountains and gathering evidence that would lead him to a theory on how glaciation might explain certain commonalities between the mountain flora of Europe, Asia and North America, which he published in 1891 in the paper "English and American Flowers". He met many other prominent American naturalists and viewed their collections. His 1889 book Darwinism used information he collected on his American trip and information he had compiled for the lectures.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Death	Death thumb\|upright\|Wallace's grave in Broadstone Cemetery, Dorset, restored by the A. R. Wallace Memorial Fund in 2000. It features a fossil tree trunk 7 feet (2.1 m) tall from Portland, mounted on a block of Purbeck limestone.\|alt=photograph of Wallace's grave On 7 November 1913, Wallace died at home, aged 90, in the country house he called Old Orchard, which he had built a decade earlier. His death was widely reported in the press. The New York Times called him "the last of the giants [belonging] to that wonderful group of intellectuals composed of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Lyell, Owen, and other scientists, whose daring investigations revolutionized and evolutionized the thought of the century". Another commentator in the same edition said: "No apology need be made for the few literary or scientific follies of the author of that great book on the 'Malay Archipelago'." (Vol.1, Vol.2) Some of Wallace's friends suggested that he be buried in Westminster Abbey, but his wife followed his wishes and had him buried in the small cemetery at Broadstone, Dorset. Several prominent British scientists formed a committee to have a medallion of Wallace placed in Westminster Abbey near where Darwin had been buried. The medallion was unveiled on 1 November 1915.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Theory of evolution	Theory of evolution
Alfred Russel Wallace	Early evolutionary thinking	Early evolutionary thinking Wallace began his career as a travelling naturalist who already believed in the transmutation of species. The concept had been advocated by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Erasmus Darwin, and Robert Grant, among others. It was widely discussed, but not generally accepted by leading naturalists, and was considered to have radical, even revolutionary connotations. Prominent anatomists and geologists such as Georges Cuvier, Richard Owen, Adam Sedgwick, and Lyell attacked transmutation vigorously. It has been suggested that Wallace accepted the idea of the transmutation of species in part because he was always inclined to favour radical ideas in politics, religion and science, and because he was unusually open to marginal, even fringe, ideas in science. Wallace was profoundly influenced by Robert Chambers's Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, a controversial work of popular science published anonymously in 1844. It advocated an evolutionary origin for the Solar System, the Earth, and living things. Wallace wrote to Henry Bates in 1845 describing it as "an ingenious hypothesis strongly supported by some striking facts and analogies, but which remains to be proven by ... more research". In 1847, he wrote to Bates that he would "like to take some one family [of beetles] to study thoroughly, ... with a view to the theory of the origin of species."Wallace Family Archive, 11 October 1847, quoted in . Wallace planned fieldwork to test the evolutionary hypothesis that closely related species should inhabit neighbouring territories. During his work in the Amazon basin, he came to realise that geographical barriers—such as the Amazon and its major tributaries—often separated the ranges of closely allied species. He included these observations in his 1853 paper "On the Monkeys of the Amazon". Near the end of the paper he asked the question, "Are very closely allied species ever separated by a wide interval of country?" In February 1855, while working in Sarawak on the island of Borneo, Wallace wrote "On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species". The paper was published in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History in September 1855. In this paper, he discussed observations of the geographic and geologic distribution of both living and fossil species, a field that became biogeography. His conclusion that "Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a closely allied species" has come to be known as the "Sarawak Law", answering his own question in his paper on the monkeys of the Amazon basin. Although it does not mention possible mechanisms for evolution, this paper foreshadowed the momentous paper he would write three years later. The paper challenged Lyell's belief that species were immutable. Although Darwin had written to him in 1842 expressing support for transmutation, Lyell had continued to be strongly opposed to the idea. Around the start of 1856, he told Darwin about Wallace's paper, as did Edward Blyth who thought it "Good! Upon the whole! ... Wallace has, I think put the matter well; and according to his theory the various domestic races of animals have been fairly developed into species." Despite this hint, Darwin mistook Wallace's conclusion for the progressive creationism of the time, writing that it was "nothing very new ... Uses my simile of tree [but] it seems all creation with him." Lyell was more impressed, and opened a notebook on species in which he grappled with the consequences, particularly for human ancestry. Darwin had already shown his theory to their mutual friend Joseph Hooker and now, for the first time spelt out the full details of natural selection to Lyell. Although Lyell could not agree, he urged Darwin to publish to establish priority. Darwin demurred at first, but began writing up a species sketch of his continuing work in May 1856.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Natural selection and Darwin	Natural selection and Darwin By February 1858, Wallace had been convinced by his biogeographical research in the Malay Archipelago that evolution was real. He later wrote in his autobiography that the problem was of how species change from one well-marked form to another. He stated that it was while he was in bed with a fever that he thought about Malthus's idea of positive checks on human population, and had the idea of natural selection. His autobiography says that he was on the island of Ternate at the time; but the evidence of his journal suggests that he was in fact on the island of Gilolo. From 1858 to 1861, he rented a house on Ternate from the Dutchman Maarten Dirk van Renesse van Duivenbode, which he used as a base for expeditions to other islands such as Gilolo. Wallace describes how he discovered natural selection as follows: thumb\|upright\|The Darwin–Wallace Medal was issued by the Linnean Society on the 50th anniversary of the reading of Darwin and Wallace's papers on natural selection. Wallace received the only gold example.\|alt=photograph of the Darwin-Wallace medal Wallace had once briefly met Darwin, and was one of the correspondents whose observations Darwin used to support his own theories. Although Wallace's first letter to Darwin has been lost, Wallace carefully kept the letters he received. In the first letter, dated 1 May 1857, Darwin commented that Wallace's letter of 10 October which he had recently received, as well as Wallace's paper "On the Law which has regulated the Introduction of New Species" of 1855, showed that they thought alike, with similar conclusions, and said that he was preparing his own work for publication in about two years time. The second letter, dated 22 December 1857, said how glad he was that Wallace was theorising about distribution, adding that "without speculation there is no good and original observation" but commented that "I believe I go much further than you". Wallace believed this and sent Darwin his February 1858 essay, "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type", asking Darwin to review it and pass it to Charles Lyell if he thought it worthwhile. Although Wallace had sent several articles for journal publication during his travels through the Malay archipelago, the Ternate essay was in a private letter. Darwin received the essay on 18 June 1858. Although the essay did not use Darwin's term "natural selection", it did outline the mechanics of an evolutionary divergence of species from similar ones due to environmental pressures. In this sense, it was very similar to the theory that Darwin had worked on for 20 years, but had yet to publish. Darwin sent the manuscript to Charles Lyell with a letter saying "he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters ... he does not say he wishes me to publish, but I shall, of course, at once write and offer to send to any journal." Distraught about the illness of his baby son, Darwin put the problem to Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker, who decided to publish the essay in a joint presentation together with unpublished writings which highlighted Darwin's priority. Wallace's essay was presented to the Linnean Society of London on 1 July 1858, along with excerpts from an essay which Darwin had disclosed privately to Hooker in 1847 and a letter Darwin had written to Asa Gray in 1857. Communication with Wallace in the far-off Malay Archipelago involved months of delay, so he was not part of this rapid publication. Wallace accepted the arrangement after the fact, happy that he had been included at all, and never expressed bitterness in public or in private. Darwin's social and scientific status was far greater than Wallace's, and it was unlikely that, without Darwin, Wallace's views on evolution would have been taken seriously. Lyell and Hooker's arrangement relegated Wallace to the position of co-discoverer, and he was not the social equal of Darwin or the other prominent British natural scientists. All the same, the joint reading of their papers on natural selection associated Wallace with the more famous Darwin. This, combined with Darwin's (as well as Hooker's and Lyell's) advocacy on his behalf, would give Wallace greater access to the highest levels of the scientific community. The reaction to the reading was muted, with the president of the Linnean Society remarking in May 1859 that the year had not been marked by any striking discoveries; but, with Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species later in 1859, its significance became apparent. When Wallace returned to the UK, he met Darwin. Although some of Wallace's opinions in the ensuing years would test Darwin's patience, they remained on friendly terms for the rest of Darwin's life. Over the years, a few people have questioned this version of events. In the early 1980s, two books, one by Arnold Brackman and another by John Langdon Brooks, suggested not only that there had been a conspiracy to rob Wallace of his proper credit, but that Darwin had actually stolen a key idea from Wallace to finish his own theory. These claims have been examined and found unconvincing by a number of scholars. Shipping schedules show that, contrary to these accusations, Wallace's letter could not have been delivered earlier than the date shown in Darwin's letter to Lyell.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Defence of Darwin and his ideas	Defence of Darwin and his ideas After Wallace returned to England in 1862, he became one of the staunchest defenders of Darwin's On the Origin of Species. In an incident in 1863 that particularly pleased Darwin, Wallace published the short paper "Remarks on the Rev. S. Haughton's Paper on the Bee's Cell, And on the Origin of Species". This rebutted a paper by a professor of geology at the University of Dublin that had sharply criticised Darwin's comments in the Origin on how hexagonal honey bee cells could have evolved through natural selection. An even longer defence was a 1867 article in the Quarterly Journal of Science called "Creation by Law". It reviewed George Campbell, the 8th Duke of Argyll's book, The Reign of Law, which aimed to refute natural selection. After an 1870 meeting of the British Science Association, Wallace wrote to Darwin complaining that there were "no opponents left who know anything of natural history, so that there are none of the good discussions we used to have".
Alfred Russel Wallace	Differences between Darwin and Wallace	Differences between Darwin and Wallace Historians of science have noted that, while Darwin considered the ideas in Wallace's paper to be essentially the same as his own, there were differences. Darwin emphasised competition between individuals of the same species to survive and reproduce, whereas Wallace emphasised environmental pressures on varieties and species forcing them to become adapted to their local conditions, leading populations in different locations to diverge. The historian of science Peter J. Bowler has suggested that in the paper he mailed to Darwin, Wallace might have been discussing group selection. Against this, Malcolm Kottler showed that Wallace was indeed discussing individual variation and selection. Others have noted that Wallace appeared to have envisioned natural selection as a kind of feedback mechanism that kept species and varieties adapted to their environment (now called 'stabilizing", as opposed to 'directional' selection). They point to a largely overlooked passage of Wallace's famous 1858 paper, in which he likened "this principle ... [to] the centrifugal governor of the steam engine, which checks and corrects any irregularities". The cybernetician and anthropologist Gregory Bateson observed in the 1970s that, although writing it only as an example, Wallace had "probably said the most powerful thing that'd been said in the 19th Century". Bateson revisited the topic in his 1979 book Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, and other scholars have continued to explore the connection between natural selection and systems theory.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Warning coloration and sexual selection	Warning coloration and sexual selection thumb\|upright\|Illustration of Batesian mimicry: a wasp (top) mimicked by a beetle in Wallace's 1889 book Darwinism\|alt=see caption Warning coloration was one of Wallace's contributions to the evolutionary biology of animal coloration. In 1867, Darwin wrote to Wallace about a problem in explaining how some caterpillars could have evolved conspicuous colour schemes. Darwin had come to believe that many conspicuous animal colour schemes were due to sexual selection, but he saw that this could not apply to caterpillars. Wallace responded that he and Bates had observed that many of the most spectacular butterflies had a peculiar odour and taste, and that he had been told by John Jenner Weir that birds would not eat a certain kind of common white moth because they found it unpalatable. Since the moth was as conspicuous at dusk as a coloured caterpillar in daylight, it seemed likely that the conspicuous colours served as a warning to predators and thus could have evolved through natural selection. Darwin was impressed by the idea. At a later meeting of the Entomological Society, Wallace asked for any evidence anyone might have on the topic. In 1869, Weir published data from experiments and observations involving brightly coloured caterpillars that supported Wallace's idea. Wallace attributed less importance than Darwin to sexual selection. In his 1878 book Tropical Nature and Other Essays, he wrote extensively about the coloration of animals and plants, and proposed alternative explanations for a number of cases Darwin had attributed to sexual selection. He revisited the topic at length in his 1889 book Darwinism. In 1890, he wrote a critical review in Nature of his friend Edward Bagnall Poulton's The Colours of Animals which supported Darwin on sexual selection, attacking especially Poulton's claims on the "aesthetic preferences of the insect world".
Alfred Russel Wallace	Wallace effect	Wallace effect In 1889, Wallace wrote the book Darwinism, which explained and defended natural selection. In it, he proposed the hypothesis that natural selection could drive the reproductive isolation of two varieties by encouraging the development of barriers against hybridisation. Thus it might contribute to the development of new species. He suggested the following scenario: When two populations of a species had diverged beyond a certain point, each adapted to particular conditions, hybrid offspring would be less adapted than either parent form and so natural selection would tend to eliminate the hybrids. Furthermore, under such conditions, natural selection would favour the development of barriers to hybridisation, as individuals that avoided hybrid matings would tend to have more fit offspring, and thus contribute to the reproductive isolation of the two incipient species. This idea came to be known as the Wallace effect, later called reinforcement. Wallace had suggested to Darwin that natural selection could play a role in preventing hybridisation in private correspondence as early as 1868, but had not worked it out to this level of detail. It continues to be a topic of research in evolutionary biology today, with both computer simulation and empirical results supporting its validity.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Application of theory to humans, and role of teleology in evolution	Application of theory to humans, and role of teleology in evolution thumb\|left\|upright\|An illustration from the chapter on the application of natural selection to humans in Wallace's 1889 book Darwinism shows a chimpanzee.\|alt=illustration of a chimpanzee from one of Wallace's books In 1864, Wallace published a paper, "The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced from the Theory of 'Natural Selection, applying the theory to humankind. Darwin had not yet publicly addressed the subject, although Thomas Huxley had in Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature. Wallace explained the apparent stability of the human stock by pointing to the vast gap in cranial capacities between humans and the great apes. Unlike some other Darwinists, including Darwin himself, he did not "regard modern primitives as almost filling the gap between man and ape". He saw the evolution of humans in two stages: achieving a bipedal posture that freed the hands to carry out the dictates of the brain, and the "recognition of the human brain as a totally new factor in the history of life". Wallace seems to have been the first evolutionist to see that the human brain effectively made further specialisation of the body unnecessary. Wallace wrote the paper for the Anthropological Society of London to address the debate between the supporters of monogenism, the belief that all human races shared a common ancestor and were one species, and the supporters of polygenism, who held that different races had separate origins and were different species. Wallace's anthropological observations of Native Americans in the Amazon, and especially his time living among the Dayak people of Borneo, had convinced him that human beings were a single species with a common ancestor. He still felt that natural selection might have continued to act on mental faculties after the development of the different races; and he did not dispute the nearly universal view among European anthropologists of the time that Europeans were intellectually superior to other races. According to political scientist Adam Jones, "Wallace found little difficulty in reconciling the extermination of native peoples with his progressive political views". In 1864, in the aforementioned paper, he stated "It is the same great law of the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life, which leads to the inevitable extinction of all those low and mentally undeveloped populations with which Europeans come in contact." He argued that the natives die out due to an unequal struggle. Shortly afterwards, Wallace became a spiritualist. At about the same time, he began to maintain that natural selection could not account for mathematical, artistic, or musical genius, metaphysical musings, or wit and humour. He stated that something in "the unseen universe of Spirit" had interceded at least three times in history: the creation of life from inorganic matter; the introduction of consciousness in the higher animals; and the generation of the higher mental faculties in humankind. He believed that the raison d'être of the universe was the development of the human spirit. While some historians have concluded that Wallace's belief that natural selection was insufficient to explain the development of consciousness and the higher functions of the human mind was directly caused by his adoption of spiritualism, other scholars have disagreed, and some maintain that Wallace never believed natural selection applied to those areas. Reaction to Wallace's ideas on this topic among leading naturalists at the time varied. Lyell endorsed Wallace's views on human evolution rather than Darwin's. Wallace's belief that human consciousness could not be entirely a product of purely material causes was shared by a number of prominent intellectuals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All the same, many, including Huxley, Hooker, and Darwin himself, were critical of Wallace's views. As the historian of science and sceptic Michael Shermer has stated, Wallace's views in this area were at odds with two major tenets of the emerging Darwinian philosophy. These were that evolution was not teleological (purpose-driven), and that it was not anthropocentric (human-centred). Much later in his life Wallace returned to these themes, that evolution suggested that the universe might have a purpose, and that certain aspects of living organisms might not be explainable in terms of purely materialistic processes. He set out his ideas in a 1909 magazine article entitled The World of Life, later expanded into a book of the same name. Shermer commented that this anticipated ideas about design in nature and directed evolution that would arise from religious traditions throughout the 20th century.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Assessment of Wallace's role in history of evolutionary theory	Assessment of Wallace's role in history of evolutionary theory In many accounts of the development of evolutionary theory, Wallace is mentioned only in passing as simply being the stimulus to the publication of Darwin's own theory. In reality, Wallace developed his own distinct evolutionary views which diverged from Darwin's, and was considered by many (especially Darwin) to be a leading thinker on evolution in his day, whose ideas could not be ignored. One historian of science has pointed out that, through both private correspondence and published works, Darwin and Wallace exchanged knowledge and stimulated each other's ideas and theories over an extended period. Wallace is the most-cited naturalist in Darwin's Descent of Man, occasionally in strong disagreement. Darwin and Wallace agreed on the importance of natural selection, and some of the factors responsible for it: competition between species and geographical isolation. But Wallace believed that evolution had a purpose ("teleology") in maintaining species' fitness to their environment, whereas Darwin hesitated to attribute any purpose to a random natural process. Scientific discoveries since the 19th century support Darwin's viewpoint, by identifying additional mechanisms and triggers such as mutations triggered by environmental radiation or mutagenic chemicals. Wallace remained an ardent defender of natural selection for the rest of his life. By the 1880s, evolution was widely accepted in scientific circles, but natural selection less so. Wallace's 1889 Darwinism was a response to the scientific critics of natural selection. Of all Wallace's books, it is the most cited by scholarly publications.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Other scientific contributions	Other scientific contributions
Alfred Russel Wallace	Biogeography and ecology	Biogeography and ecology thumb\|upright=1.5\|A map of the world from The Geographical Distribution of Animals shows Wallace's six biogeographical regions.\|alt=map of the world divided into Wallace's six biogeographical regions In 1872, at the urging of many of his friends, including Darwin, Philip Sclater, and Alfred Newton, Wallace began research for a general review of the geographic distribution of animals. Initial progress was slow, in part because classification systems for many types of animals were in flux. He resumed the work in earnest in 1874 after the publication of a number of new works on classification. Extending the system developed by Sclater for birds—which divided the earth into six separate geographic regions for describing species distribution—to cover mammals, reptiles and insects as well, Wallace created the basis for the zoogeographic regions in use today. He discussed the factors then known to influence the current and past geographic distribution of animals within each geographic region. These factors included the effects of the appearance and disappearance of land bridges (such as the one currently connecting North America and South America) and the effects of periods of increased glaciation. He provided maps showing factors, such as elevation of mountains, depths of oceans, and the character of regional vegetation, that affected the distribution of animals. He summarised all the known families and genera of the higher animals and listed their known geographic distributions. The text was organised so that it would be easy for a traveller to learn what animals could be found in a particular location. The resulting two-volume work, The Geographical Distribution of Animals, was published in 1876 and served as the definitive text on zoogeography for the next 80 years. The book included evidence from the fossil record to discuss the processes of evolution and migration that had led to the geographical distribution of modern species. For example, he discussed how fossil evidence showed that tapirs had originated in the Northern Hemisphere, migrating between North America and Eurasia and then, much more recently, to South America after which the northern species became extinct, leaving the modern distribution of two isolated groups of tapir species in South America and Southeast Asia. Wallace was very aware of, and interested in, the mass extinction of megafauna in the late Pleistocene. In The Geographical Distribution of Animals (1876) he wrote, "We live in a zoologically impoverished world, from which all the hugest, and fiercest, and strangest forms have recently disappeared". He added that he believed the most likely cause for the rapid extinctions was glaciation, but by the time he wrote World of Life (1911) he had come to believe those extinctions were "due to man's agency". thumb\|left\|upright=1.7\|The line separating the Indo-Malayan and the Austro-Malayan region in Wallace's On the Physical Geography of the Malay Archipelago (1863)\|alt=map of Southeast Asia showing the Wallace line In 1880, Wallace published the book Island Life as a sequel to The Geographical Distribution of Animals. It surveyed the distribution of both animal and plant species on islands. Wallace classified islands into oceanic and two types of continental islands. Oceanic islands, in his view, such as the Galapagos and Hawaiian Islands (then called Sandwich Islands) formed in mid-ocean and never part of any large continent. Such islands were characterised by a complete lack of terrestrial mammals and amphibians, and their inhabitants (except migratory birds and species introduced by humans) were typically the result of accidental colonisation and subsequent evolution. Continental islands, in his scheme, were divided into those that were recently separated from a continent (like Britain) and those much less recently (like Madagascar). Wallace discussed how that difference affected flora and fauna. He discussed how isolation affected evolution and how that could result in the preservation of classes of animals, such as the lemurs of Madagascar that were remnants of once widespread continental faunas. He extensively discussed how changes of climate, particularly periods of increased glaciation, may have affected the distribution of flora and fauna on some islands, and the first portion of the book discusses possible causes of these great ice ages. Island Life was considered a very important work at the time of its publication. It was discussed extensively in scientific circles both in published reviews and in private correspondence.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Environmentalism	Environmentalism Wallace's extensive work in biogeography made him aware of the impact of human activities on the natural world. In Tropical Nature and Other Essays (1878), he warned about the dangers of deforestation and soil erosion, especially in tropical climates prone to heavy rainfall. Noting the complex interactions between vegetation and climate, he warned that the extensive clearing of rainforest for coffee cultivation in Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka) and India would adversely impact the climate in those countries and lead to their impoverishment due to soil erosion. In Island Life, Wallace again mentioned deforestation and invasive species. On the impact of European colonisation on the island of Saint Helena, he wrote that the island was "now so barren and forbidding that some persons find it difficult to believe that it was once all green and fertile". He explained that the soil was protected by the island's vegetation; once that was destroyed, the soil was washed off the steep slopes by heavy tropical rain, leaving "bare rock or sterile clay". He attributed the "irreparable destruction" to feral goats, introduced in 1513. The island's forests were further damaged by the "reckless waste" of the East India Company from 1651, which used the bark of valuable redwood and ebony trees for tanning, leaving the wood to rot unused. Wallace's comments on environment grew more urgent later in his career. In The World of Life (1911) he wrote that people should view nature "as invested with a certain sanctity, to be used by us but not abused, and never to be recklessly destroyed or defaced." alt=Title page to Man's Place in the Universe (1903)\|thumb\|229x229px\|Title page to Man's Place in the Universe (1903)
Alfred Russel Wallace	Astrobiology	Astrobiology Wallace's 1904 book Man's Place in the Universe was the first serious attempt by a biologist to evaluate the likelihood of life on other planets. He concluded that the Earth was the only planet in the Solar System that could possibly support life, mainly because it was the only one in which water could exist in the liquid phase. His treatment of Mars in this book was brief, and in 1907, Wallace returned to the subject with the book Is Mars Habitable? to criticise the claims made by the American astronomer Percival Lowell that there were Martian canals built by intelligent beings. Wallace did months of research, consulted various experts, and produced his own scientific analysis of the Martian climate and atmospheric conditions. He pointed out that spectroscopic analysis had shown no signs of water vapour in the Martian atmosphere, that Lowell's analysis of Mars's climate badly overestimated the surface temperature, and that low atmospheric pressure would make liquid water, let alone a planet-girding irrigation system, impossible. Richard Milner comments that Wallace "effectively debunked Lowell's illusionary network of Martian canals." Wallace became interested in the topic because his anthropocentric philosophy inclined him to believe that man would be unique in the universe.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Other activities	Other activities
Alfred Russel Wallace	Spiritualism<!--linked from 'Spiritualism (philosophy)'-->	Spiritualism Wallace was an enthusiast of phrenology. Early in his career, he experimented with hypnosis, then known as mesmerism, managing to hypnotise some of his students in Leicester. When he began these experiments, the topic was very controversial: early experimenters, such as John Elliotson, had been harshly criticised by the medical and scientific establishment. Wallace drew a connection between his experiences with mesmerism and spiritualism, arguing that one should not deny observations on "a priori grounds of absurdity or impossibility". thumb\|upright\|Spirit photograph taken by Frederick Hudson of Wallace and his late mother in 1882; he may have used double exposure.\|alt=a purported spirit photograph of Wallace and his late mother as if together Wallace began investigating spiritualism in the summer of 1865, possibly at the urging of his older sister Fanny Sims. After reviewing the literature and attempting to test what he witnessed at séances, he came to believe in it. For the rest of his life, he remained convinced that at least some séance phenomena were genuine, despite accusations of fraud and evidence of trickery. One biographer suggested that the emotional shock when his first fiancée broke their engagement contributed to his receptiveness to spiritualism. Other scholars have emphasised his desire to find scientific explanations for all phenomena. In 1874, Wallace visited the spirit photographer Frederick Hudson. He declared that a photograph of him with his deceased mother was genuine. Others reached a different conclusion: Hudson's photographs had previously been exposed as fraudulent in 1872. Wallace's public advocacy of spiritualism and his repeated defence of spiritualist mediums against allegations of fraud in the 1870s damaged his scientific reputation. In 1875 he published the evidence he believed proved his position in On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism. His attitude permanently strained his relationships with previously friendly scientists such as Henry Bates, Thomas Huxley, and even Darwin. See Wallace's letters dated 22 November and 1 December 1866 to Thomas Huxley, and Huxley's reply that he was not interested. Others, such as the physiologist William Benjamin Carpenter and zoologist E. Ray Lankester became publicly hostile to Wallace over the issue. Wallace was heavily criticised by the press; The Lancet was particularly harsh. When, in 1879, Darwin first tried to rally support among naturalists to get a civil pension awarded to Wallace, Joseph Hooker responded that "Wallace has lost caste considerably, not only by his adhesion to Spiritualism, but by the fact of his having deliberately and against the whole voice of the committee of his section of the British Association, brought about a discussion on Spiritualism at one of its sectional meetings ... This he is said to have done in an underhanded manner, and I well remember the indignation it gave rise to in the B.A. Council." Hooker eventually relented and agreed to support the pension request.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Flat Earth wager	Flat Earth wager In 1870, a flat-Earth proponent named John Hampden offered a £500 wager (roughly ) in a magazine advertisement to anyone who could demonstrate a convex curvature in a body of water such as a river, canal, or lake. Wallace, intrigued by the challenge and short of money at the time, designed an experiment in which he set up two objects along a stretch of canal. Both objects were at the same height above the water, and he mounted a telescope on a bridge at the same height above the water as well. When seen through the telescope, one object appeared higher than the other, showing the curvature of the Earth. The judge for the wager, the editor of Field magazine, declared Wallace the winner, but Hampden refused to accept the result. He sued Wallace and launched a campaign, which persisted for several years, of writing letters to various publications and to organisations of which Wallace was a member denouncing him as a swindler and a thief. Wallace won multiple libel suits against Hampden, but the resulting litigation cost Wallace more than the amount of the wager, and the controversy frustrated him for years.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Anti-vaccination campaign	Anti-vaccination campaign alt=Alfred Russel Wallace 1896 National anti-vaccination League postcard\|thumb\|Alfred Russel Wallace 1896 National Anti-Vaccination League postcard In the early 1880s, Wallace joined the debate over mandatory smallpox vaccination. Wallace originally saw the issue as a matter of personal liberty; but, after studying statistics provided by anti-vaccination activists, he began to question the efficacy of vaccination. At the time, the germ theory of disease was new and far from universally accepted. Moreover, no one knew enough about the human immune system to understand why vaccination worked. Wallace discovered instances where supporters of vaccination had used questionable, in a few cases completely false, statistics to support their arguments. Always suspicious of authority, Wallace suspected that physicians had a vested interest in promoting vaccination, and became convinced that reductions in the incidence of smallpox that had been attributed to vaccination were due to better hygiene and improvements in public sanitation. Another factor in Wallace's thinking was his belief that, because of the action of natural selection, organisms were in a state of balance with their environment, and that everything in nature, served a useful purpose. Wallace pointed out that vaccination, which at the time was often unsanitary, could be dangerous. In 1890, Wallace gave evidence to a Royal Commission investigating the controversy. It found errors in his testimony, including some questionable statistics. The Lancet averred that Wallace and other activists were being selective in their choice of statistics. The commission found that smallpox vaccination was effective and should remain compulsory, though they recommended some changes in procedures to improve safety, and that the penalties for people who refused to comply be made less severe. Years later, in 1898, Wallace wrote a pamphlet, Vaccination a Delusion; Its Penal Enforcement a Crime, attacking the commission's findings. It, in turn, was attacked by The Lancet, which stated that it repeated many of the same errors as his evidence given to the commission.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Legacy and historical perception	Legacy and historical perception
Alfred Russel Wallace	Honours	Honours thumb\|left\|upright\|Wallace and his signature on the frontispiece of Darwinism (1889)\|alt=frontispiece of one of Wallace's books As a result of his writing, Wallace became a well-known figure both as a scientist and as a social activist, and was often sought out for his views. He became president of the anthropology section of the British Association in 1866, and of the Entomological Society of London in 1870. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1873. The British Association elected him as head of its biology section in 1876. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1893. He was asked to chair the International Congress of Spiritualists meeting in London in 1898. He received honorary doctorates and professional honours, such the Royal Society's Royal Medal in 1868 and its Darwin Medal in 1890, and the Order of Merit in 1908.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Obscurity and rehabilitation	Obscurity and rehabilitation Wallace's fame faded quickly after his death. For a long time, he was treated as a relatively obscure figure in the history of science. Reasons for this lack of attention may have included his modesty, his willingness to champion unpopular causes without regard for his own reputation, and the discomfort of much of the scientific community with some of his unconventional ideas. The reason that the theory of evolution is popularly credited to Darwin is likely the impact of Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Recently, Wallace has become better known, with the publication of at least five book-length biographies and two anthologies of his writings published since 2000. A web page dedicated to Wallace scholarship is maintained at Western Kentucky University. In a 2010 book, the environmentalist Tim Flannery argued that Wallace was "the first modern scientist to comprehend how essential cooperation is to our survival", and suggested that Wallace's understanding of natural selection and his later work on the atmosphere should be seen as a forerunner to modern ecological thinking. A collection of his medals, including the Order of Merit, were sold at auction for £273,000 in 2022.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Centenary celebrations	Centenary celebrations thumb\|upright\|Anthony Smith's statue of Wallace, looking up at a bronze model of a Wallace's golden birdwing butterfly. Natural History Museum, London, unveiled 7 November 2013.\|alt=photograph of a statue of Wallace in London The Natural History Museum, London, co-ordinated commemorative events for the Wallace centenary worldwide in the 'Wallace100' project in 2013. On 24 January, his portrait was unveiled in the Main Hall of the museum by Bill Bailey, a fervent admirer."Alfred Russel Wallace, the forgotten man of evolution, gets his moment" The Guardian. Retrieved 3 May 2013. Bailey further championed Wallace in his 2013 BBC Two series "Bill Bailey's Jungle Hero".Bill Bailey's Jungle Hero: An audience with the sultan" BBC TV Blog. Retrieved 3 May 2013. On 7 November 2013, the 100th anniversary of Wallace's death, Sir David Attenborough unveiled a statue of Wallace at the museum.Natural History Museum: David Attenborough unveils Wallace Statue . Retrieved 13 November 2013. The statue, sculpted by Anthony Smith, was donated by the A. R. Wallace Memorial Fund."Bronze statue of Wallace" . Retrieved 10 January 2014. It depicts Wallace as a young man, collecting in the jungle. November 2013 marked the debut of The Animated Life of A. R. Wallace, a paper-puppet animation film dedicated to Wallace's centennial. In addition, Bailey unveiled a bust of Wallace, sculpted by Felicity Crawley, in Twyn Square in Usk, Monmouthshire in November 2021.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Bicentenary celebrations	Bicentenary celebrations Commemorations of the 200th anniversary of Wallace's birth celebrated during the course of 2023 range from naturalist walk events to scientific congresses and presentations. A Harvard Museum of Natural History event in April 2023 will also include a mixologist-designed special cocktail to honor Wallace's legacy.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Memorials	Memorials Mount Wallace in California's Sierra Nevada mountain range was named in his honour in 1895.Browning, Peter, Place Names of the Sierra Nevada From Abbot to Zumwalt, 1986, Wilderness Press, . In 1928, a house at Richard Hale School (then called Hertford Grammar School, where he had been a pupil) was named after Wallace. The Alfred Russel Wallace building is a prominent feature of the Glyntaff campus at the University of South Wales, by Pontypridd, with several teaching spaces and laboratories for science courses. The Natural Sciences Building at Swansea University and lecture theatre at Cardiff University are named after him, as are impact craters on Mars and the Moon. In 1986, the Royal Entomological Society mounted a year-long expedition to the Dumoga-Bone National Park in North Sulawesi named Project Wallace. A group of Indonesian islands is known as the Wallacea biogeographical region in his honour, and Operation Wallacea, named after the region, awards "Alfred Russel Wallace Grants" to undergraduate ecology students. Several hundred species of plants and animals, both living and fossil, have been named after Wallace, such as the gecko Cyrtodactylus wallacei,Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . ("Wallace", p. 279). and the freshwater stingray Potamotrygon wallacei. More recently, several new species have been named during the bicentenary year of Wallace's birth, including a large spider from Peru, Linothele wallacei Sherwood et al., 2023 and a South African weevil, Nama wallacei Meregalli & Borovec, 2023.
Alfred Russel Wallace	Writings	Writings Wallace was a prolific author. In 2002, historian of science Michael Shermer published a quantitative analysis of Wallace's publications. He found that Wallace had published 22 full-length books and at least 747 shorter pieces, 508 of which were scientific papers (191 of them published in Nature). He further broke down the 747 short pieces by their primary subjects: 29% were on biogeography and natural history, 27% were on evolutionary theory, 25% were social commentary, 12% were on anthropology, and 7% were on spiritualism and phrenology. An online bibliography of Wallace's writings has more than 750 entries.
Alfred Russel Wallace	References	References
Alfred Russel Wallace	Notes	Notes
Alfred Russel Wallace	Citations	Citations
Alfred Russel Wallace	Sources	Sources Vol. 1 . Vol. 2
Alfred Russel Wallace	Further reading	Further reading There is an extensive literature on Wallace. Recent books on him include: Vol. 2 (Parts III – VII) (Project Gutenberg). London: Cassell and Company. Published in a single volume by Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York and London, June 1916.
Alfred Russel Wallace	External links	External links The Alfred Russel Wallace Website by George Beccaloni Alfred Russel Wallace at Western Kentucky University The Alfred Russel Wallace Correspondence Project Wallace Online, ed. John van Wyhe – The first complete online edition of the writings of Alfred Russel Wallace Great Lives – Bill Bailey on his hero Alfred Russel Wallace on BBC Radio 4 Category:1823 births Category:1913 deaths Category:19th-century British writers Category:20th-century English non-fiction writers Category:19th-century English naturalists Category:20th-century English naturalists Category:19th-century English explorers Category:19th-century British geographers Category:20th-century British geographers Category:19th-century British biologists Category:20th-century British biologists Category:People from Monmouthshire Category:English people of Scottish descent Category:Biogeographers Category:British anti-vaccination activists Category:English coleopterists Category:British deists Category:Charles Darwin Category:English activists Category:English anthropologists Category:English biologists Category:English socialists Category:English spiritualists Category:British evolutionary biologists Category:Explorers of Amazonia Category:Explorers of Indonesia Category:Fellows of the Linnean Society of London Category:Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:Fellows of the Zoological Society of London Category:Georgists Category:English lepidopterists Category:British botanical illustrators Category:Members of the Order of Merit Category:Natural history of Indonesia Category:People associated with Birkbeck, University of London Category:People educated at Hertford Grammar School Category:People from Broadstone, Dorset Category:People from Grays, Essex Category:People from Kington, Herefordshire Category:People from Usk Category:Philosophical theists Category:Recipients of the Copley Medal Category:Royal Medal winners Category:Victorian writers Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society
Alfred Russel Wallace	Table of Content	Short description, Biography, Early life, Exploration and study of the natural world, Return to Britain, marriage and children, Financial struggles, Social activism, Further scientific work, Death, Theory of evolution, Early evolutionary thinking, Natural selection and Darwin, Defence of Darwin and his ideas, Differences between Darwin and Wallace, Warning coloration and sexual selection, Wallace effect, Application of theory to humans, and role of teleology in evolution, Assessment of Wallace's role in history of evolutionary theory, Other scientific contributions, Biogeography and ecology, Environmentalism, Astrobiology, Other activities, Spiritualism<!--linked from 'Spiritualism (philosophy)'-->, Flat Earth wager, Anti-vaccination campaign, Legacy and historical perception, Honours, Obscurity and rehabilitation, Centenary celebrations, Bicentenary celebrations, Memorials, Writings, References, Notes, Citations, Sources, Further reading, External links
Australian Labor Party	Short description	The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also known as the Labor Party or simply Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia and one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party has been in government since the 2022 federal election, and with political branches active in all the Australian states and territories, they currently hold government in New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory. As of 2025, Queensland, Tasmania and Northern Territory are the only states or territories where Labor currently forms the opposition. It is the oldest continuously operating political party in Australian history, having been established on 8 May 1901 at Parliament House, Melbourne, the meeting place of the first Federal Parliament. The ALP is descended from the labour parties founded in the various Australian colonies by the emerging labour movement. Colonial Labour parties contested seats from 1891, and began contesting federal seats following Federation at the 1901 federal election. In 1904, the ALP briefly formed what is considered the world's first labour party government and the world's first democratic socialist or social democratic government at a national level. At the 1910 federal election, Labor became the first party in Australia to win a majority in either house of the Australian parliament. In every election since 1910 Labor has either served as the governing party or the opposition. There have been 13 Labor prime ministers and 10 periods of federal Labor governments, including under Billy Hughes from 1915 to 1916, James Scullin from 1929 to 1932, John Curtin from 1941 to 1945, Ben Chifley from 1945 to 1949, Gough Whitlam from 1972 to 1975, Bob Hawke from 1983 to 1991, Paul Keating from 1991 to 1996, Kevin Rudd from 2007 to 2010 and 2013, Julia Gillard from 2010 to 2013, and Anthony Albanese since 2022. The Labor Party is often called the party of unions due to its close ties to the labour movement in Australia and historical founding by trade unions, with the majority of Australian trade unions being affiliated with the Labor Party. The party's structure allocates 50% of delegate representation at state and national conferences to affiliated unions, with the remaining 50% to rank-and-file party members. At the federal and state/colony level, the Australian Labor Party predates both the British Labour Party and the New Zealand Labour Party in party formation, government, and policy implementation. Internationally, the ALP is a member of the Progressive Alliance, a network of progressive, democratic socialist and social democratic parties, having previously been a member of the Socialist International.
Australian Labor Party	Name and spelling	Name and spelling In standard Australian English, the word labour is spelt with a u. However, the political party uses the spelling Labor, without a u. There was originally no standardised spelling of the party's name, with Labor and Labour both in common usage. According to Ross McMullin, who wrote an official history of the Labor Party, the title page of the proceedings of the Federal Conference used the spelling "Labor" in 1902, "Labour" in 1905 and 1908, and then "Labor" from 1912 onwards. In 1908, James Catts put forward a motion at the Federal Conference that "the name of the party be the Australian Labour Party", which was carried by 22 votes to 2. A separate motion recommending state branches adopt the name was defeated. There was no uniformity of party names until 1918 when the Federal party resolved that state branches should adopt the name "Australian Labor Party", now spelt without a u. Each state branch had previously used a different name, due to their different origins. Although the ALP officially adopted the spelling without a u, it took decades for the official spelling to achieve widespread acceptance. According to McMullin, "the way the spelling of 'Labor Party' was consolidated had more to do with the chap who ended up being in charge of printing the federal conference report than any other reason". Some sources have attributed the official choice of Labor to influence from King O'Malley, who was born in the United States and was reputedly an advocate of English-language spelling reform; the spelling without a u is the standard form in American English. Andrew Scott, who wrote "Running on Empty: 'Modernising' the British and Australian Labour Parties", suggests that the adoption of the spelling without a u "signified one of the ALP's earliest attempts at modernisation", and served the purpose of differentiating the party from the Australian labour movement as a whole and distinguishing it from other British Empire labour parties. The decision to include the word "Australian" in the party's name, rather than just "Labour Party" as in the United Kingdom, Scott attributes to "the greater importance of nationalism for the founders of the colonial parties".
Australian Labor Party	History	History thumb\|left\|Anderson Dawson's ministry leaving Parliament House, Brisbane, after being sworn in on 1 December 1899. His was the first government formed by a Labour party in the world The Australian Labor Party has its origins in the Labour parties founded in the 1890s in the Australian colonies prior to federation. Labor tradition ascribes the founding of Queensland Labour to a meeting of striking pastoral workers under a ghost gum tree (the Tree of Knowledge) in Barcaldine, Queensland in 1891. The 1891 shearers' strike is credited as being one of the factors for the formation of the Australian Labor Party. On 9 September 1892 the Manifesto of the Queensland Labour Party was read out under the well known Tree of Knowledge at Barcaldine following the Great Shearers' Strike. The State Library of Queensland now holds the manifesto; in 2008 the historic document was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Australian Register and, in 2009, the document was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World International Register. The Balmain, New South Wales branch of the party claims to be the oldest in Australia. However, the Scone Branch has a receipt for membership fees for the Labour Electoral League dated April 1891. This predates the Balmain claim. This can be attested in the Centenary of the ALP book. Labour as a parliamentary party dates from 1891 in New South Wales and South Australia, 1893 in Queensland, and later in the other colonies. The first election contested by Labour candidates was the 1891 New South Wales election, when Labour candidates (then called the Labor Electoral League of New South Wales) won 35 of 141 seats. The major parties were the Protectionist and Free Trade parties and Labour held the balance of power. It offered parliamentary support in exchange for policy concessions. The United Labor Party (ULP) of South Australia was founded in 1891, and three candidates were that year elected to the South Australian Legislative Council. The first successful South Australian House of Assembly candidate was John McPherson at the 1892 East Adelaide by-election. Richard Hooper however was elected as an Independent Labor candidate at the 1891 Wallaroo by-election, while he was the first labor member of the House of Assembly he was not a member of the newly formed ULP. At the 1893 South Australian elections, the ULP was immediately elevated to balance of power status with 10 of 54 lower house seats. The liberal government of Charles Kingston was formed with the support of the ULP, ousting the conservative government of John Downer. So successful, less than a decade later at the 1905 state election, Thomas Price formed the world's first stable Labor government. John Verran led Labor to form the state's first of many majority governments at the 1910 state election. In 1899, Anderson Dawson formed a minority Labour government in Queensland, the first in the world, which lasted one week while the conservatives regrouped after a split. The colonial Labour parties and the trade unions were mixed in their support for the Federation of Australia. Some Labour representatives argued against the proposed constitution, claiming that the Senate as proposed was too powerful, similar to the anti-reformist colonial upper houses and the British House of Lords. They feared that federation would further entrench the power of the conservative forces. However, the first Labour leader and Prime Minister Chris Watson was a supporter of federation. Historian Celia Hamilton, examining New South Wales, argues for the central role of Irish Catholics. Before 1890, they opposed Henry Parkes, the main Liberal leader, and of free trade, seeing them both as the ideals of Protestant Englishmen who represented landholding and large business interests. In the strike of 1890 the leading Catholic, Sydney's Archbishop Patrick Francis Moran was sympathetic toward unions, but Catholic newspapers were negative. After 1900, says Hamilton, Irish Catholics were drawn to the Labour Party because its stress on equality and social welfare fitted with their status as manual labourers and small farmers. In the 1910 elections Labour gained in the more Catholic areas and the representation of Catholics increased in Labour's parliamentary ranks.Celia Hamilton, "Irish-Catholics of New South Wales and the Labor Party, 1890–1910." Historical Studies: Australia & New Zealand (1958) 8#31: 254–267.
Australian Labor Party	Early decades at the federal level	Early decades at the federal level thumb\|Group photograph of federal Labour Party MPs elected to the House of Representatives and Senate at the inaugural 1901 election The federal parliament in 1901 was contested by each state Labour Party. In total, they won 15 of the 75 seats in the House of Representatives, collectively holding the balance of power, and the Labour members now met as the Federal Parliamentary Labour Party (informally known as the caucus) on 8 May 1901 at Parliament House, Melbourne, the meeting place of the first federal Parliament. The caucus decided to support the incumbent Protectionist Party in minority government, while the Free Trade Party formed the opposition. It was some years before there was any significant structure or organisation at a national level. Labour under Chris Watson doubled its vote at the 1903 federal election and continued to hold the balance of power. In April 1904, however, Watson and Alfred Deakin fell out over the issue of extending the scope of industrial relations laws concerning the Conciliation and Arbitration bill to cover state public servants, the fallout causing Deakin to resign. Free Trade leader George Reid declined to take office, which saw Watson become the first Labour Prime Minister of Australia, and the world's first Labour head of government at a national level (Anderson Dawson had led a short-lived Labour government in Queensland in December 1899), though his was a minority government that lasted only four months. He was aged only 37, and is still the youngest prime minister in Australia's history. George Reid of the Free Trade Party adopted a strategy of trying to reorient the party system along Labour vs. non-Labour lines prior to the 1906 federal election and renamed his Free Trade Party to the Anti-Socialist Party. Reid envisaged a spectrum running from socialist to anti-socialist, with the Protectionist Party in the middle. This attempt struck a chord with politicians who were steeped in the Westminster tradition and regarded a two-party system as very much the norm. Although Watson led the party to a plurality victory (though not government, thanks to the union of Free Traders and Protectionists) in 1906, he stepped down from the leadership the following year, to be succeeded by Andrew Fisher's minority government for seven months until it fell in June 1909. At the 1910 federal election, Fisher led Labor to victory, forming Australia's first elected federal majority government, Australia's first elected Senate majority, the world's first Labour Party majority government at a national level, and after the 1904 Chris Watson minority government the world's second Labour Party government at a national level. It was the first time a Labour Party had controlled any house of a legislature, and the first time the party controlled both houses of a bicameral legislature. The state branches were also successful, except in Victoria, where the strength of Deakinite liberalism inhibited the party's growth. The state branches formed their first majority governments in New South Wales and South Australia in 1910, Western Australia in 1911, Queensland in 1915 and Tasmania in 1925. Such success eluded the other Commonwealth Labour parties for another decade; the Labour Party in Great Britain would not form even a minority government until 1929, and would have to wait another sixteen years to win a majority in its own right. Even in neighboring New Zealand, Labour would not take power until 1935. In Canada, a national labour party was not even formed until 1932 and never formed government. Analysis of the early NSW Labor caucus reveals "a band of unhappy amateurs", made up of blue collar workers, a squatter, a doctor, and even a mine owner, indicating that the idea that only the socialist working class formed Labor is untrue. In addition, many members from the working class supported the liberal notion of free trade between the colonies; in the first grouping of state MPs, 17 of the 35 were free-traders. In the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917, support for socialism grew in trade union ranks, and at the 1921 All-Australian Trades Union Congress a resolution was passed calling for "the socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange". The 1922 Labor Party National Conference adopted a similarly worded socialist objective which remained official policy for many years. The resolution was immediately qualified, however, by the Blackburn amendment, which said that "socialisation" was desirable only when was necessary to "eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features". Only once has a federal Labor government attempted to nationalise any industry (Ben Chifley's bank nationalisation of 1947), and that was held by the High Court to be unconstitutional. The commitment to nationalisation was dropped by Gough Whitlam, and Bob Hawke's government carried out the floating of the dollar. Privatisation of state enterprises such as Qantas airways and the Commonwealth Bank was carried out by the Paul Keating government. The Labor Party is commonly described as a social democratic party, and its constitution stipulates that it is a democratic socialist party. The party was created by, and has always been influenced by, the trade unions, and in practice its policy at any given time has usually been the policy of the broader labour movement. Thus at the first federal election 1901 Labor's platform called for a White Australia policy, a citizen army and compulsory arbitration of industrial disputes. Labor has at various times supported high tariffs and low tariffs, conscription and pacifism, White Australia and multiculturalism, nationalisation and privatisation, isolationism and internationalism. From 1900 to 1940, Labor and its affiliated unions were strong defenders of the White Australia policy, which banned all non-European migration to Australia. This policy was motivated by fears of economic competition from low-wage overseas workers which was shared by the vast majority of Australians and all major political parties. In practice the Labor party opposed all migration, on the grounds that immigrants competed with Australian workers and drove down wages, until after World War II, when the Chifley government launched a major immigration program. The party's opposition to non-European immigration did not change until after the retirement of Arthur Calwell as leader in 1967. Subsequently, Labor has become an advocate of multiculturalism.
Australian Labor Party	World War II and beyond	World War II and beyond The Curtin and Chifley governments governed Australia through the latter half of the Second World War and initial stages of transition to peace. Labor leader John Curtin became prime minister in October 1941 when two independents crossed the floor of Parliament. Labor, led by Curtin, then led Australia through the years of the Pacific War. In December 1941, Curtin announced that "Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom", thus helping to establish the Australian-American alliance (later formalised as ANZUS by the Menzies Government). Remembered as a strong war time leader and for a landslide win at the 1943 federal election, Curtin died in office just prior to the end of the war and was succeeded by Ben Chifley. Chifley Labor won the 1946 federal election and oversaw Australia's initial transition to a peacetime economy. Labor was defeated at the 1949 federal election. At the conference of the New South Wales Labor Party in June 1949, Chifley sought to define the labour movement as follows: "We have a great objective – the light on the hill – which we aim to reach by working for the betterment of mankind.... [Labor would] bring something better to the people, better standards of living, greater happiness to the mass of the people." To a large extent, Chifley saw centralisation of the economy as the means to achieve such ambitions. With an increasingly uncertain economic outlook, after his attempt to nationalise the banks and a strike by the Communist-dominated Miners' Federation, Chifley lost office in 1949 to Robert Menzies' Liberal-National Coalition. Labor commenced a 23-year period in opposition. The party was primarily led during this time by H. V. Evatt and Arthur Calwell. In 1955, the Australian Labor Party split, and the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) was formed. The preferences of the DLP were used to keep the ALP in Opposition until the election of Gough Whitlam in 1972. thumb\|Labor Party policy launch before a crowd in the Sydney Domain on 24 November 1975. Various ideological beliefs were factionalised under reforms to the ALP under Gough Whitlam, resulting in what is now known as the Socialist Left who tend to favour a more interventionist economic policy and more socially progressive ideals, and Labor Right, the now dominant faction that tends to be more economically liberal and focus to a lesser extent on social issues. The Whitlam Labor government, marking a break with Labor's socialist tradition, pursued social democratic policies rather than democratic socialist policies. In contrast to earlier Labor leaders, Whitlam also cut tariffs by 25 percent. Whitlam led the Federal Labor Party back to office at the 1972 and 1974 federal elections, and passed a large amount of legislation. The Whitlam government lost office following the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis and dismissal by Governor-General John Kerr after the Coalition blocked supply in the Senate after a series of political scandals, and was defeated at the 1975 federal election in the largest landslide of Australian federal history. Whitlam remains the only Prime Minister to have his commission terminated in that manner. Whitlam also lost the 1977 federal election and subsequently resigned as leader. Bill Hayden succeeded Whitlam as leader. At the 1980 federal election, the party achieved a big swing, though the unevenness of the swing around the nation prevented an ALP victory. In 1983, Bob Hawke became leader of the party after Hayden resigned to avoid a leadership spill. Bob Hawke led Labor back to office at the 1983 federal election and the party won four consecutive elections under Hawke. In December 1991 Paul Keating defeated Bob Hawke in a leadership spill. The ALP then won the 1993 federal election. It was in power for five terms over 13 years, until severely defeated by John Howard at the 1996 federal election. This was the longest period the party has ever been in government at the national level. Kim Beazley led the party to the 1998 federal election, winning 51 percent of the two-party-preferred vote but falling short on seats, and the ALP lost ground at the 2001 federal election. After a brief period when Simon Crean served as ALP leader, Mark Latham led Labor to the 2004 federal election but lost further ground. Beazley replaced Latham in 2005; not long afterwards he in turn was forced out of the leadership by Kevin Rudd. Rudd went on to defeat John Howard at the 2007 federal election with 52.7 percent of the two-party vote (Howard became the first prime minister since Stanley Melbourne Bruce to lose not just the election but his own parliamentary seat). The Rudd government ended prior to the 2010 federal election with the overthrow of Rudd as leader of the party by deputy leader Julia Gillard. Gillard, who was also the first woman to serve as prime minister of Australia, remained prime minister in a hung parliament following the election. Her government lasted until 2013, when Gillard lost a leadership spill, with Rudd becoming leader once again. Later that year the ALP lost the 2013 election. After this defeat, Bill Shorten became leader of the party. The party narrowly lost the 2016 election, yet gained 14 seats. It remained in opposition after the 2019 election, despite having been ahead in opinion polls for the preceding two years. The party lost in 2019 some of the seats which it had won back in 2016. After the 2019 defeat, Shorten resigned from the leadership, though he remained in parliament. Anthony Albanese was elected as leader unopposed and led the party to victory in the 2022 election, and became the new prime minister and was later re-elected with a landslide victory in 2025. Between the 2007 federal election and the 2008 Western Australian state election, Labor was in government nationally and in all eight state and territory parliaments. This was the first time any single party or any coalition had achieved this since the ACT and the NT gained self-government.In 1969–1970, before the ACT and NT achieved self-government, the Liberal and National Coalition was in power federally and in all six states. University of WA elections database Labor narrowly lost government in Western Australia at the 2008 state election and Victoria at the 2010 state election. These losses were further compounded by landslide defeats in New South Wales in 2011, Queensland in 2012, the Northern Territory in 2012, Federally in 2013 and Tasmania in 2014. Labor secured a good result in the Australian Capital Territory in 2012 and, despite losing its majority, the party retained government in South Australia in 2014. However, most of these reversals proved only temporary with Labor returning to government in Victoria in 2014 and in Queensland in 2015 after spending only one term in opposition in both states. Furthermore, after winning the 2014 Fisher by-election by nine votes from a 7.3 percent swing, the Labor government in South Australia went from minority to majority government. Labor won landslide victories in the 2016 Northern Territory election, the 2017 Western Australian election and the 2018 Victorian state election. However, Labor lost the 2018 South Australian state election after 16 years in government. In 2022, Labor returned to government after defeating the Liberal Party in the 2022 South Australian state election. Despite favourable polling, the party also did not return to government in the 2019 New South Wales state election or the 2019 federal election. The latter has been considered a historic upset due to Labor's consistent and significant polling lead; the result has been likened to the Coalition's loss in the 1993 federal election, with 2019 retrospectively referred to in the media as the "unloseable election". Anthony Albanese led the party into the 2022 Australian federal election, in which the party returned to power with a majority government. Despite Labor's win, Labor nevertheless recorded its lowest primary vote since either 1903 or 1934, depending on whether the Lang Labor vote is included. In 2023, Labor won the March 2023 New South Wales state election returning to government for the first time since 2011. This victory marked the first time in 15 years that Labor were in government in all mainland states. In 2024, Labor lost in a landslide in the 2024 Northern Territory election, losing its first mainland state or territory since the 2018 South Australian election. Labor would also lose in the 2024 Queensland state election. Albanese later led the party into the 2025 Australian federal election, in which the party once again won a majority government in a landslide.
Australian Labor Party	National platform	National platform The policy of the Australian Labor Party is contained in its National Platform, which is approved by delegates to Labor's National Conference, held every three years. According to the Labor Party's website, "The Platform is the result of a rigorous and constructive process of consultation, spanning the nation and including the cooperation and input of state and territory policy committees, local branches, unions, state and territory governments, and individual Party members. The Platform provides the policy foundation from which we can continue to work towards the election of a federal Labor government." The platform gives a general indication of the policy direction which a future Labor government would follow, but does not commit the party to specific policies. It maintains that "Labor's traditional values will remain a constant on which all Australians can rely." While making it clear that Labor is fully committed to a market economy, it says that: "Labor believes in a strong role for national government – the one institution all Australians truly own and control through our right to vote." Labor "will not allow the benefits of change to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, or located only in privileged communities. The benefits must be shared by all Australians and all our regions." The platform and Labor "believe that all people are created equal in their entitlement to dignity and respect, and should have an equal chance to achieve their potential." For Labor, "government has a critical role in ensuring fairness by: ensuring equal opportunity; removing unjustifiable discrimination; and achieving a more equitable distribution of wealth, income and status." Further sections of the platform stress Labor's support for equality and human rights, labour rights and democracy. In practice, the platform provides only general policy guidelines to Labor's federal, state and territory parliamentary leaderships. The policy Labor takes into an election campaign is determined by the Cabinet (if the party is in office) or the Shadow Cabinet (if it is in opposition), in consultation with key interest groups within the party, and is contained in the parliamentary Leader's policy speech delivered during the election campaign. When Labor is in office, the policies it implements are determined by the Cabinet, subject to the platform. Generally, it is accepted that while the platform binds Labor governments, how and when it is implemented remains the prerogative of the parliamentary caucus. It is now rare for the platform to conflict with government policy, as the content of the platform is usually developed in close collaboration with the party's parliamentary leadership as well as the factions. However, where there is a direct contradiction with the platform, Labor governments have sought to change the platform as a prerequisite for a change in policy. For example, privatisation legislation under the Hawke government occurred only after holding a special national conference to debate changing the platform.
Australian Labor Party	Party structure	Party structure
Australian Labor Party	National executive and secretariat	National executive and secretariat The Australian Labor Party National Executive is the party's chief administrative authority, subject only to Labor's national conference. The executive is responsible for organising the triennial national conference; carrying out the decisions of the conference; interpreting the national constitution, the national platform and decisions of the national conference; and directing federal members. The party holds a national conference every three years, which consists of delegates representing the state and territory branches (many coming from affiliated trade unions, although there is no formal requirement for unions to be represented at the national conference). The national conference decides the party's platform, elects the national executive and appoints office-bearers such as the national secretary, who also serves as national campaign director during elections. The current national secretary is Paul Erickson. The head office of the ALP, the national secretariat, is managed by the national secretary. It plays a dual role of administration and a national campaign strategy. It acts as a permanent secretariat to the national executive by managing and assisting in all administrative affairs of the party. As the national secretary also serves as national campaign director during elections, it is also responsible for the national campaign strategy and organisation.
Australian Labor Party	Federal Parliamentary Labor Party	Federal Parliamentary Labor Party The elected members of the Labor party in both houses of the national Parliament meet as the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party, also known as the Caucus (see also caucus). Besides discussing parliamentary business and tactics, the Caucus also is involved in the election of the federal parliamentary leaders.
Australian Labor Party	Federal parliamentary leaders	Federal parliamentary leaders Until 2013, the parliamentary leaders were elected by the Caucus from among its members. The leader has historically been a member of the House of Representatives. Since October 2013, a ballot of both the Caucus and by the Labor Party's rank-and-file members determined the party leader and the deputy leader. When the Labor Party is in government, the party leader is the prime minister and the deputy leader is the deputy prime minister. If a Labor prime minister resigns or dies in office, the deputy leader acts as prime minister and party leader until a successor is elected. The deputy prime minister also acts as prime minister when the prime minister is on leave or out of the country. Members of the Ministry are also chosen by Caucus, though the leader may allocate portfolios to the ministers. Anthony Albanese is the leader of the federal Labor party, serving since 30 May 2019. The deputy leader is Richard Marles, also serving since 30 May 2019.
Australian Labor Party	State and territory branches	State and territory branches The Australian Labor Party is a federal party, consisting of eight branches from each state and territory. While the National Executive is responsible for national campaign strategy, each state and territory are an autonomous branch and are responsible for campaigning in their own jurisdictions for federal, state and local elections. State and territory branches consist of both individual members and affiliated trade unions, who between them decide the party's policies, elect its governing bodies and choose its candidates for public office. Members join a state branch and pay a membership fee, which is graduated according to income. The majority of trade unions in Australia are affiliated to the party at a state level. Union affiliation is direct and not through the Australian Council of Trade Unions. Affiliated unions pay an affiliation fee based on the size of their membership. Union affiliation fees make up a large part of the party's income. Other sources of funds for the party include political donations and public funding. Members are generally expected to attend at least one meeting of their local branch each year, although there are differences in the rules from state to state. In practice, only a dedicated minority regularly attend meetings. Many members are only active during election campaigns. The members and unions elect delegates to state and territory conferences (usually held annually, although more frequent conferences are often held). These conferences decide policy, and elect state or territory executives, a state or territory president (an honorary position usually held for a one-year term), and a state or territory secretary (a full-time professional position). However, ACT Labor directly elects its president. The larger branches also have full-time assistant secretaries and organisers. In the past the ratio of conference delegates coming from the branches and affiliated unions has varied from state to state, however under recent national reforms at least 50% of delegates at all state and territory conferences must be elected by branches. In some states, the party also contests local government elections or endorses local candidates. In others it does not, preferring to allow its members to run as non-endorsed candidates. The process of choosing candidates is called preselection. Candidates are preselected by different methods in the various states and territories. In some they are chosen by ballots of all party members, in others by panels or committees elected by the state conference, in still others by a combination of these two. The state and territory Labor branches are the following: BranchLeader Last state/territory election Status Federal representatives Lower house Upper houseMPsSenatorsYearVotes (%)SeatsTPP (%)Votes (%)SeatsNew South Wales LaborChris Minns 202337.154.337.1Victorian LaborJacinta Allan 202236.755.033.0Queensland LaborSteven Miles 202432.646.2align=center colspan=2 Western Australian LaborRoger Cook 202541.457.140.9South Australian LaborPeter Malinauskas 202240.054.637.0Tasmanian LaborDean Winter 202429.0align=right align=right ACT LaborAndrew Barr202434.5align=right align=center colspan=2 Territory LaborSelena Uibo 202428.742.0align=center colspan=2
Australian Labor Party	Country Labor	Country Labor The Country Labor Party, commonly known as Country Labor, was an affiliated organisation of the Labor Party. Although not expressly defined, Country Labor operated mainly within rural New South Wales, and was mainly seen as an extension of the New South Wales branch that operates in rural electorates. Country Labor was used as a designation by candidates contesting elections in rural areas. The Country Labor Party was registered as a separate party in New South Wales,List of Registered Parties , Electoral Commission NSW. and was also registered with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) for federal elections.Current register of political parties , Australian Electoral Commission. It did not have the same status in other states and, consequently, that designation could not be used on the ballot paper. The creation of a separation designation for rural candidates was first suggested at the June 1999 ALP state conference in New South Wales. In May 2000, following Labor's success at the 2000 Benalla by-election in Victoria, Kim Beazley announced that the ALP intended to register a separate "Country Labor Party" with the AEC;Country Labor: a new direction? , 7 June 2000. Retrieved 29 September 2017 this occurred in October 2000. The Country Labor designation was most frequently used in New South Wales. According to the ALP's financial statements for the 2015–16 financial year, NSW Country Labor had around 2,600 members (around 17 percent of the party total), but almost no assets. It recorded a severe funding shortfall at the 2015 New South Wales election, and had to rely on a $1.68-million loan from the party proper to remain solvent. It had been initially assumed that the party proper could provide the money from its own resources, but the NSW Electoral Commission ruled that this was impermissible because the parties were registered separately. Instead the party proper had to loan Country Labor the required funds at a commercial interest rate.Near-insolvent Country Labor 'may never repay' $1.68m to party, The Australian, 28 July 2017. The Country Labor Party was de-registered by the New South Wales Electoral Commission in 2021.
Australian Labor Party	Australian Young Labor	Australian Young Labor Australian Young Labor is the youth wing of the Australian Labor Party, where all members under age 26 are automatically members. It is the peak youth body within the ALP. Former presidents of AYL have included former NSW Premier Bob Carr, Federal Leader of the House Tony Burke, former Special Minister of State Senator John Faulkner, former Australian Workers Union National Secretary, current Member for Maribyrnong and former Federal Labor Leader Bill Shorten as well as dozens of State Ministers and MPs. The current National President is Manu Risoldi.
Australian Labor Party	Networks	Networks The Australian Labor Party (ALP) includes a variety of networks and associations that connect members, advocate for issues, and contribute to the party's policy development. The national platform currently mandates or encourages state branches to formally establish these groups along with calling for generalised interest groups known as policy action caucuses. Examples of such groups include the Labor Environment Action Network, the LGBTQ wing Rainbow Labor, Labor For Choice, the women's wing Labor Women's Network, Labor for Drug Law Reform Labor for Refugees, Labor for Housing, Labor Teachers Network, Aboriginal Labor Network, and recently, Labor Enabled – the action group for Disability Advocacy These groups operate under different names across states and territories and are categorized into equity groups, which focus on representation based on identity or shared characteristics, and policy-focused groups, which emphasize thematic advocacy. In Queensland, these networks are formally referred to as Equity Groups and Associations, which are distinct entities. Other states use terms such as forums, caucuses, or committees. + Equity GroupsOrganisation Branches Organisation is Present in Federal NSW QLD Vic WA SA Tas ACT NTNational Labor Women's Network 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|YesRainbow Labor 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|UnknownAboriginal Labor Network 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Unknown 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|YesLabor Enabled 15px\|Unknown 15px\|Unknown 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Unknown 15px\|Unknown 15px\|Yes 15px\|Unknown 15px\|UnknownYoung Labor 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|YesMulticultural Labor 15px\|Unknown 15px\|Unknown 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Unknown 15px\|Unknown 15px\|Unknown 15px\|UnknownRegional Labor / Country Labor 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Yes 15px\|Unknown 15px\|Unknown + Interest GroupsOrganisationBranches Organisation is Present inLabor Environment Action Network (LEAN) NSW, QLD, Vic, WA, SA, Tas, ACT, NTLabor for Drug Law Reform 15px\|UnknownLabor For Choice QLD(Retired), Tas, 15px\|UnknownLabor for Housing QLD, 15px\|UnknownLabor Teachers Network QLD, 15px\|UnknownBusiness with Labor QLD, 15px\|UnknownLabor for Brisbane City Council QLDAustralian Israel Labor Dialogue QLD, NSW, 15px\|UnknownLabor for the Future QLDLabor for Decriminalisation QLDLabor for Refugees QLD, Vic, 15px\|UnknownLabor Friends of Palestine QLD, NSW, 15px\|UnknownLabor Friends of Palestine NSW, 15px\|UnknownLabor Ending Homelessness Action Committee NSW, 15px\|UnknownLabor for the Arts (L4TA) NSW, 15px\|UnknownLabor for Innovation NSW, 15px\|UnknownLabor for Treaty NSW, 15px\|UnknownLabor Science Network NSW, 15px\|UnknownLabor Action for Multiculturalism Policy (LAMP) NSW, 15px\|UnknownLabor for An Australian Republic (LFAR) Vic, 15px\|UnknownLabor for the Wise Use of Resources Tas, 15px\|UnknownTasmanian Labor Affiliated Unions Policy Action Caucus Tas, 15px\|UnknownLabor for the Wise Use of Resources Tas, 15px\|UnknownLocal Government PAC Tas, 15px\|UnknownLabor for Civil & Political Rights Policy Action Caucus Tas, 15px\|Unknown
Australian Labor Party	Ideology and factions	Ideology and factions Labor's constitution has long stated: "The Australian Labor Party is a democratic socialist party and has the objective of the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields". This "socialist objective" was introduced in 1921, but was later qualified by two further objectives: "maintenance of and support for a competitive non-monopolistic private sector" and "the right to own private property". Labor governments have not attempted the "democratic socialisation" of any industry since the 1940s, when the Chifley government failed to nationalise the private banks, and in fact have privatised several industries such as aviation and banking.
Australian Labor Party	Factions	Factions The Labor Party has always had a left wing and a right wing; however, since 1989, it has been organised into formal factions. The two largest factional groupings are the Labor Left, who are supportive of democratic socialist ideals, and the Labor Right who generally support social democratic traditions. The national factional groupings are themselves divided into formal factions, primarily state-based such as Centre Unity in New South Wales and Labor Forum in Queensland. Some trade unions are affiliated with the Labor Party and are also factionally aligned. Important unions supporting the right faction are the Australian Workers' Union (AWU), the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) and the Transport Workers Union of Australia (TWU). Important unions supporting the left include the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), United Workers Union, the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) and the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU).
Australian Labor Party	Election results	Election results
Australian Labor Party	House of Representatives	House of Representatives Election Leader Votes % Seats ± Position Status1901 None 79,736 15.8 14 3rd 1903 Chris Watson 223,163 31.0 7 3rd 1906 348,711 36.6 4 1st 1910Andrew Fisher 660,864 50.0 16 1st 1913 921,099 48.5 5 2nd 1914 858,451 50.9 5 1st 1917Frank Tudor 827,541 43.9 20 2nd 1919 811,244 42.5 4 2nd 1922Matthew Charlton 665,145 42.3 3 1st 1925 1,313,627 45.0 6 2nd 1928James Scullin 1,158,505 44.6 8 1st 1929 1,406,327 48.8 15 1st 1931 859,513 27.1 32 3rd 1934 952,251 26.8 4 2nd 1937John Curtin 1,555,737 43.2 11 1st 1940 1,556,941 40.2 3 1st 1943 2,058,578 49.9 17 1st 1946Ben Chifley 2,159,953 49.7 6 1st 1949 2,117,088 46.0 4 2nd 1951 2,174,840 47.6 5 1st 1954H. V. Evatt 2,280,098 50.0 5 1st 1955 1,961,829 44.6 10 2nd 1958 2,137,890 42.8 2 2nd 1961Arthur Calwell 2,512,929 47.9 15 1st 1963 2,489,184 45.5 10 2nd 1966 2,282,834 40.0 9 2nd 1969Gough Whitlam 2,870,792 47.0 18 1st 1972 3,273,549 49.6 8 1st 1974 3,644,110 49.3 1 1st 1975 3,313,004 42.8 30 2nd 1977 3,141,051 39.7 2 2nd 1980 Bill Hayden 3,749,565 45.2 13 2nd 1983Bob Hawke 4,297,392 49.5 24 1st 1984 4,120,130 47.6 7 1st 1987 4,222,431 45.8 4 1st 1990 3,904,138 39.4 8 1st 1993Paul Keating 4,751,390 44.9 2 1st 1996 4,217,765 38.7 31 2nd 1998Kim Beazley 4,454,306 40.1 18 1st 2001 4,341,420 37.8 2 2nd 2004 Mark Latham 4,408,820 37.6 5 2nd 2007 Kevin Rudd 5,388,184 43.4 23 1st 2010 Julia Gillard 4,711,363 38.0 11 1st 2013 Kevin Rudd 4,311,365 33.4 17 2nd 2016Bill Shorten 4,702,296 34.7 14 1st 2019 4,752,110 33.3 1 1st 2022Anthony Albanese 4,776,030 32.6 9 1st 2025 TBA TBA TBA 1st
Australian Labor Party	Donors	Donors In 2023/24, state and federal branches of Labor reported $67.5 million in donations. Labor's largest donation was $1m from Anthony Pratt. Other large donors were unions and gambling companies. The Labor Party also receives undisclosed funding through several methods, such as "associated entities". John Curtin House, Industry 2020, IR21 and the Happy Wanderers Club are entities which have been used to funnel donations to the Labor Party without disclosing the source. A 2019 report found that the Labor Party received $33,000 from pro-gun groups during the 2011–2018 periods compared to $82,000 received by the Coalition.
Australian Labor Party	See also	See also Australian labour movement Labor Against War Socialism in Australia Third Way Tasmanian Labor–Green Accord (1989–1990) Australian Capital Territory Labor–Greens coalition (2012–2024)
Australian Labor Party	Further reading	Further reading Ormonde, Paul (1982). A Foolish Passionate Man: a biography of Jim Cairns. Ringwood, Vic, Australia: Penguin Books. . Ormonde, Paul (1972). The Movement. Sydney: Thomas Nelson. Charlesworth, M. J. (2000) Ormonde, Paul (Ed). Santamaria : the politics of fear : critical reflections. Richmond, Vic.: Spectrum Publications.
Australian Labor Party	Notes	Notes
Australian Labor Party	References	References
Australian Labor Party	Bibliography	Bibliography Bramble, Tom, and Rick Kuhn. Labor's Conflict: Big Business, Workers, and the Politics of Class (Cambridge University Press; 2011) 240 pages. Calwell, A. A. (1963). Labor's Role in Modern Society. Melbourne, Lansdowne Press.
Australian Labor Party	External links	External links Australian Labor Party Victorian Branch Rules, April 2013 Manifesto of the Queensland Labour Party, 1892 – UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register 125th anniversary of the Manifesto of the Queensland Labour Party – John Oxley Library Blog, State Library of Queensland. OM69-18 Charles Seymour Papers 1880–1924 – Collection record, State Library of Queensland Charles Seymour Papers 1880–1924: Treasure collection of the John Oxley Library – John Oxley Library Blog, State Library of Queensland. Category:1891 establishments in Australia Category:Democratic socialist parties in Oceania Category:Former member parties of the Socialist International Category:Centre-left parties Category:Labour parties Category:Political parties established in 1891 Category:Progressive Alliance Category:Social democratic parties in Oceania
Australian Labor Party	Table of Content	Short description, Name and spelling, History, Early decades at the federal level, World War II and beyond, National platform, Party structure, National executive and secretariat, Federal Parliamentary Labor Party, Federal parliamentary leaders, State and territory branches, Country Labor, Australian Young Labor, Networks, Ideology and factions, Factions, Election results, House of Representatives, Donors, See also, Further reading, Notes, References, Bibliography, External links
August 18	Redirect
August 18	Events	Events
August 18	Pre-1600	Pre-1600 684 – Battle of Marj Rahit: Umayyad partisans defeat the supporters of Ibn al-Zubayr and cement Umayyad control of Syria. 707 – Princess Abe accedes to the imperial Japanese throne as Empress Genmei. 1304 – The Battle of Mons-en-Pévèle is fought to a draw between the French army and the Flemish militias. 1487 – The Siege of Málaga ends with the taking of the city by Castilian and Aragonese forces. 1492 – The first grammar of the Spanish language (Gramática de la lengua castellana) is presented to Queen Isabella I. 1572 – The Huguenot King Henry III of Navarre marries the Catholic Margaret of Valois, ostensibly to reconcile the feuding Protestants and Catholics of France. 1590 – John White, the governor of the Roanoke Colony, returns from a supply trip to England and finds his settlement deserted.
August 18	1601–1900	1601–1900 1612 – The trial of the Pendle witches, one of England's most famous witch trials, begins at Lancaster Assizes. 1634 – Urbain Grandier, accused and convicted of sorcery, is burned alive in Loudun, France. 1721 – The city of Shamakhi in Safavid Shirvan is sacked. 1783 – A huge fireball meteor is seen across Great Britain as it passes over the east coast. 1809 – The Senate of Finland is established in the Grand Duchy of Finland after the official adoption of the Statute of the Government Council by Tsar Alexander I of Russia.Titus Hjelm & George Maude: Historical Dictionary of Finland, p. 296. 1826 – Major Gordon Laing becomes the first European to enter Timbuktu. 1838 – The Wilkes Expedition, which would explore the Puget Sound and Antarctica, weighs anchor at Hampton Roads. 1848 – Camila O'Gorman and Ladislao Gutierrez are executed on the orders of Argentine dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas. 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Globe Tavern: Union forces try to cut a vital Confederate supply-line into Petersburg, Virginia, by attacking the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad. 1868 – French astronomer Pierre Janssen discovers helium. 1870 – Franco-Prussian War: Battle of Gravelotte is fought. 1877 – American astronomer Asaph Hall discovers Phobos, one of Mars’s moons. (Table II, p. 220: first observation of Phobos on 18 August 1877.38498) 1891 – A major hurricane strikes Martinique, leaving 700 dead.
August 18	1901–present	1901–present 1903 – German engineer Karl Jatho allegedly flies his self-made, motored gliding airplane four months before the first flight of the Wright brothers. 1917 – A Great Fire in Thessaloniki, Greece, destroys 32% of the city leaving 70,000 individuals homeless. 1920 – The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing women's suffrage. 1923 – The first British Track and Field championships for women are held in London, Great Britain. 1933 – The Volksempfänger is first presented to the German public at a radio exhibition; the presiding Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, delivers an accompanying speech heralding the radio as the ‘eighth great power’. 1937 – A lightning strike starts the Blackwater Fire of 1937 in Shoshone National Forest, killing 15 firefighters within three days and prompting the United States Forest Service to develop their smokejumper program. 1938 – The Thousand Islands Bridge, connecting New York, United States, with Ontario, Canada, over the Saint Lawrence River, is dedicated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 1940 – World War II: The Hardest Day air battle, part of the Battle of Britain, takes place. At that point, it is the largest aerial engagement in history with heavy losses sustained on both sides. 1945 – Sukarno takes office as the first president of Indonesia, following the country's declaration of independence the previous day. 1945 – Soviet-Japanese War: Battle of Shumshu: Soviet forces land at Takeda Beach on Shumshu Island and launch the Battle of Shumshu; the Soviet Union’s Invasion of the Kuril Islands commences. 1949 – 1949 Kemi strike: Two protesters die in the scuffle between the police and the strikers' protest procession in Kemi, Finland. 1950 – Julien Lahaut, the chairman of the Communist Party of Belgium, is assassinated. The Party newspaper blames royalists and Rexists. 1958 – Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita is published in the United States. 1958 – Brojen Das from Bangladesh swims across the English Channel in a competition as the first Bengali and the first Asian to do so, placing first among the 39 competitors. 1963 – Civil rights movement: James Meredith becomes the first African American to graduate from the University of Mississippi. 1965 – Vietnam War: Operation Starlite begins: United States Marines destroy a Viet Cong stronghold on the Van Tuong peninsula in the first major American ground battle of the war. 1966 – Vietnam War: The Battle of Long Tan ensues after a patrol from the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment clashes with a Viet Cong force in Phước Tuy Province. 1971 – Vietnam War: Australia and New Zealand decide to withdraw their troops from Vietnam. 1973 – Aeroflot Flight A-13 crashes after takeoff from Baku-Bina International Airport in Azerbaijan, killing 56 people and injuring eight. 1976 – The Korean axe murder incident in Panmunjom results in the deaths of two US Army officers. 1976 – The Soviet Union’s robotic probe Luna 24 successfully lands on the Moon. 1977 – Steve Biko is arrested at a police roadblock under Terrorism Act No. 83 of 1967 in King William's Town, South Africa. He later dies from injuries sustained during this arrest, bringing attention to South Africa's apartheid policies. 1983 – Hurricane Alicia hits the Texas coast, killing 21 people and causing over US$1 billion in damage (1983 dollars). 1989 – Leading presidential hopeful Luis Carlos Galán is assassinated near Bogotá in Colombia. 1993 – American International Airways Flight 808 crashes at Leeward Point Field at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, injuring the three crew members. 2003 – One-year-old Zachary Turner is murdered in Newfoundland by his mother, who was awarded custody despite facing trial for the murder of Zachary's father. The case was documented in the film Dear Zachary and led to reform of Canada's bail laws.After Canadian mother killed herself and their only grandchild, U.S. couple started 10-year fight to change Canada's bail laws \| National Post 2005 – A massive power blackout hits the Indonesian island of Java; affecting almost 100 million people, it is one of the largest and most widespread power outages in history. 2008 – The President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, resigns under threat of impeachment. 2008 – War of Afghanistan: The Uzbin Valley ambush occurs. 2011 – A terrorist attack on Israel's Highway 12 near the Egyptian border kills 16 and injures 40. 2017 – The first terrorist attack ever sentenced as a crime in Finland kills two and injures eight. 2019 – One hundred activists, officials, and other concerned citizens in Iceland hold a funeral for Okjökull glacier, which has completely melted after having once covered six square miles (15.5 km2).
August 18	Births	Births
August 18	Pre-1600	Pre-1600 1305 – Ashikaga Takauji, Japanese Shōgun (d. 1358) 1450 – Marko Marulić, Croatian poet and author (d. 1524) 1458 – Lorenzo Pucci, Catholic cardinal (d. 1531) 1497 – Francesco Canova da Milano, Italian composer (d. 1543) 1542 – Charles Neville, 6th Earl of Westmorland (d. 1601) 1579 – Countess Charlotte Flandrina of Nassau (d. 1640) 1587 – Virginia Dare, granddaughter of Governor John White of the Colony of Roanoke, first child born to English parents in the Americas (date of death unknown) 1596 – Jean Bolland, Flemish priest and hagiographer (d. 1665)
August 18	1601–1900	1601–1900 1605 – Henry Hammond, English churchman and theologian (d. 1660) 1606 – Maria Anna of Spain (d. 1646) 1629 – Agneta Horn, Swedish writer (d. 1672) 1657 – Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena, Italian architect and painter (d. 1743) 1685 – Brook Taylor, English mathematician and theorist (d. 1731) 1692 – Louis Henri, Duke of Bourbon (d. 1740) 1700 – Baji Rao I, first Peshwa of Maratha Empire (d. 1740) 1720 – Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers, English politician (d. 1760) 1750 – Antonio Salieri, Italian composer and conductor (d. 1825) 1754 – François, marquis de Chasseloup-Laubat, French general and engineer (d. 1833) 1774 – Meriwether Lewis, American soldier, explorer, and politician (d. 1809) 1792 – John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, English politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1878) 1803 – Nathan Clifford, American lawyer, jurist, and politician, 19th United States Attorney General (d. 1881) 1807 – B. T. Finniss, Australian politician, 1st Premier of South Australia (d. 1893) 1819 – Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia (d. 1876) 1822 – Isaac P. Rodman, American general and politician (d. 1862) 1830 – Franz Joseph I of Austria (d. 1916) 1831 – Ernest Noel, Scottish businessman and politician (d. 1931) 1834 – Marshall Field, American businessman, founded Marshall Field's (d. 1906) 1841 – William Halford, English-American lieutenant, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1919) 1855 – Alfred Wallis, English painter and illustrator (d. 1942) 1857 – Libert H. Boeynaems, Belgian-American bishop and missionary (d. 1926) 1866 – Mahboob Ali Khan, 6th Nizam of Hyderabad (d. 1911) 1869 – Carl Rungius, German-American painter and educator (d. 1959) 1870 – Lavr Kornilov, Russian general and explorer (d. 1918) 1879 – Alexander Rodzyanko, Russian general (d. 1970) 1885 – Nettie Palmer, Australian poet and critic (d. 1964) 1887 – John Anthony Sydney Ritson, English rugby player, mines inspector, engineer and professor of mining (d. 1957) 1890 – Walther Funk, German economist and politician, Reich Minister of Economics (d. 1960) 1893 – Burleigh Grimes, American baseball player and manager (d. 1985) 1893 – Ernest MacMillan, Canadian conductor and composer (d. 1973) 1896 – Jack Pickford, Canadian-American actor and director (d. 1933) 1898 – Clemente Biondetti, Italian race car driver (d. 1955) 1900 – Ruth Bonner, Soviet Communist activist, sentenced to a labor camp during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge (d. 1987) 1900 – Ruth Norman, American religious leader (d. 1993)
August 18	1901–present	1901–present 1902 – Adamson-Eric, Estonian painter (d. 1968) 1902 – Margaret Murie, American environmentalist and author (d. 2003) 1903 – Lucienne Boyer, French singer (d. 1983) 1904 – Max Factor, Jr., American businessman (d. 1996) 1905 – Enoch Light, American bandleader, violinist, and recording engineer (d. 1978) 1906 – Marcel Carné, French director and screenwriter (d. 1996) 1906 – Curtis Jones, American blues pianist and singer (d. 1971) 1908 – Edgar Faure, French historian and politician, 139th Prime Minister of France (d. 1988) 1908 – Olav H. Hauge, Norwegian poet and gardener (d. 1994) 1908 – Bill Merritt, New Zealand cricketer and sportscaster (d. 1977) 1909 – Gérard Filion, Canadian businessman and journalist (d. 2005) 1910 – Herman Berlinski, Polish-American pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 2001) 1910 – Robert Winters, Canadian colonel, engineer, and politician, 26th Canadian Minister of Public Works (d. 1969) 1911 – Amelia Boynton Robinson, American activist (d. 2015) 1911 – Klara Dan von Neumann, Hungarian computer scientist and programmer (d. 1963) 1911 – Maria Ulfah Santoso, Indonesian politician and women's rights activist (d. 1988) 1912 – Otto Ernst Remer, German general (d. 1997) 1913 – Romain Maes, Belgian cyclist (d. 1983) 1914 – Lucy Ozarin, United States Navy lieutenant commander and psychiatrist (d. 2017) 1915 – Max Lanier, American baseball player and manager (d. 2007) 1916 – Neagu Djuvara, Romanian historian, journalist, and diplomat (d. 2018) 1916 – Moura Lympany, English pianist (d. 2005) 1917 – Caspar Weinberger, American captain, lawyer, and politician, 15th United States Secretary of Defense (d. 2006) 1918 – Cisco Houston, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1961) 1919 – Wally Hickel, American businessman and politician, 2nd Governor of Alaska (d. 2010) 1920 – Godfrey Evans, English cricketer (d. 1999) 1920 – Bob Kennedy, American baseball player and manager (d. 2005) 1920 – Shelley Winters, American actress (d. 2006) 1921 – Lydia Litvyak, Russian lieutenant and pilot (d. 1943) 1921 – Zdzisław Żygulski, Polish historian and academic (d. 2015) 1922 – Alain Robbe-Grillet, French director, screenwriter, and novelist (d. 2008) 1923 – Katherine Victor, American actress (d. 2004) 1925 – Brian Aldiss, English author and critic (d. 2017) 1925 – Pierre Grondin, Canadian surgeon and academic (d. 2006) 1925 – Anis Mansour, Egyptian journalist and author (d. 2011) 1927 – Rosalynn Carter, 41st First Lady of the United States (d. 2023) 1928 – Marge Schott, American businesswoman (d. 2004) 1928 – Sonny Til, American R&B singer (d. 1981) 1929 – Hugues Aufray, French singer-songwriter 1930 – Liviu Librescu, Romanian-American engineer and academic (d. 2007) 1930 – Rafael Pineda Ponce, Honduran academic and politician (d. 2014) 1931 – Bramwell Tillsley, Canadian 14th General of The Salvation Army (d. 2019) 1931 – Hans van Mierlo, Dutch journalist and politician, Deputy Prime Minister of the Netherlands (d. 2010) 1931 – Grant Williams, American film, theater and television actor (d. 1985) 1932 – Luc Montagnier, French virologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2022) 1933 – Just Fontaine, Moroccan-French footballer and manager (d. 2023) 1933 – Roman Polanski, French-Polish director, producer, screenwriter, and actor 1933 – Frank Salemme, American gangster and hitman (d. 2022) 1934 – Vincent Bugliosi, American lawyer and author (d. 2015) 1934 – Roberto Clemente, Puerto Rican-American baseball player and soldier (d. 1972) 1934 – Gulzar, Indian poet, lyricist and film director 1934 – Rafer Johnson, American decathlete and actor (d. 2020) 1934 – Michael May, German-Swiss race car driver and engineer 1935 – Gail Fisher, American actress (d. 2000) 1935 – Hifikepunye Pohamba, Namibian lawyer and politician, 2nd President of Namibia 1936 – Robert Redford, American actor, director, and producer 1937 – Sheila Cassidy, English physician and author 1939 – Maxine Brown, American soul/R&B singer-songwriter 1939 – Robert Horton, English businessman (d. 2011) 1939 – Johnny Preston, American pop singer (d. 2011) 1940 – Adam Makowicz, Polish-Canadian pianist and composer 1940 – Gil Whitney, American journalist (d. 1982) 1942 – Henry G. Sanders, American actor 1943 – Martin Mull, American actor and comedian (d. 2024) 1943 – Gianni Rivera, Italian footballer and politician 1943 – Carl Wayne, English singer and actor (d. 2004) 1944 – Paula Danziger, American author (d. 2004) 1944 – Robert Hitchcock, Australian sculptor and illustrator 1945 – Sarah Dash, American singer-songwriter and actress (d. 2021) 1945 – Värner Lootsmann, Estonian lawyer and politician 1945 – Lewis Burwell Puller, Jr., American soldier, lawyer, and author (d. 1994) 1948 – James Jones, English bishop 1948 – John Scarlett, English intelligence officer 1949 – Nigel Griggs, English bass player, songwriter, and producer 1950 – Dennis Elliott, English drummer and sculptor 1952 – Elayne Boosler, American actress, director, and screenwriter 1952 – Patrick Swayze, American actor and dancer (d. 2009) 1952 – Ricardo Villa, Argentinian footballer and coach 1953 – Louie Gohmert, American captain, lawyer, and politician 1953 – Marvin Isley, American R&B bass player and songwriter (d. 2010) 1954 – Umberto Guidoni, Italian astrophysicist, astronaut, and politician 1955 – Bruce Benedict, American baseball player and coach 1955 – Taher Elgamal, Egyptian-American cryptographer 1956 – John Debney, American composer and conductor 1956 – Sandeep Patil, Indian cricketer and coach 1956 – Jon Schwartz, American drummer and producer 1956 – Kelly Willard, American singer-songwriter 1956 – Rainer Woelki, German cardinal 1957 – Carole Bouquet, French actress 1957 – Tan Dun, Chinese composer 1957 – Denis Leary, American comedian, actor, producer, and screenwriter 1957 – Ron Strykert, Australian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer 1958 – Didier Auriol, French race car driver 1958 – Madeleine Stowe, American actress 1959 – Tom Prichard, American wrestler and trainer 1960 – Mike LaValliere, American baseball player 1960 – Fat Lever, American basketball player and sportscaster 1961 – Huw Edwards, Welsh journalist and author 1961 – Timothy Geithner, American banker and politician, 75th United States Secretary of the Treasury 1961 – Bob Woodruff, American journalist and author 1962 – Felipe Calderón, Mexican lawyer and politician, 56th President of Mexico 1962 – Geoff Courtnall, Canadian ice hockey player and coach 1962 – Adam Storke, American actor 1964 – Craig Bierko, American actor and singer 1964 – Andi Deris, German singer and songwriter 1964 – Mark Sargent, Australian rugby league player 1964 – Kenny Walker, American basketball player and sportscaster 1965 – Ikue Ōtani, Japanese voice actress 1966 – Gustavo Charif, Argentinian director and producer 1967 – Daler Mehndi, Indian Punjabi singer, songwriter and record producer 1967 – Brian Michael Bendis, American author and illustrator 1969 – Everlast, American singer, rapper, and musician 1969 – Masta Killa, American rapper 1969 – Mark Kuhlmann, German rugby player and coach 1969 – Edward Norton, American actor 1969 – Christian Slater, American actor and producer 1970 – Jason Furman, American economist and politician 1970 – Malcolm-Jamal Warner, American actor and producer 1971 – Patrik Andersson, Swedish footballer 1971 – Richard David James, English musician and record producer 1974 – Nicole Krauss, American novelist and critic 1975 – Kaitlin Olson, American actress and comedian 1977 – Paraskevas Antzas, Greek footballer 1977 – Even Kruse Skatrud, Norwegian musician and educator 1978 – Andy Samberg, American actor and comedian 1979 – Stuart Dew, Australian footballer 1980 – Esteban Cambiasso, Argentinian footballer 1980 – Rob Nguyen, Australian race car driver 1980 – Ryan O'Hara, Australian rugby league player 1980 – Bart Scott, American football player 1980 – Jeremy Shockey, American football player 1981 – César Delgado, Argentinian footballer 1981 – Dimitris Salpingidis, Greek footballer 1983 – Mika, Lebanese-born English recording artist and singer-songwriter 1983 – Cameron White, Australian cricketer 1984 – Sigourney Bandjar, Dutch footballer 1984 – Robert Huth, German footballer 1985 – Inge Dekker, Dutch swimmer 1985 – Bryan Ruiz, Costa Rican footballer 1986 – Evan Gattis, American baseball player 1986 – Ross McCormack, Scottish footballer 1987 – Joanna Jędrzejczyk, Polish mixed martial artist 1987 – Justin Wilson, American baseball player 1988 – Jack Hobbs, English footballer 1988 – Eggert Jónsson, Icelandic footballer 1988 – G-Dragon, South Korean rapper, singer-songwriter and record producer 1989 – Anna Akana, American actress, comedian, musician, and YouTuber 1989 – Yu Mengyu, Singaporean table tennis player 1991 – Liz Cambage, Australian basketball player 1991 – Richard Harmon, Canadian actor 1992 – Elizabeth Beisel, American swimmer 1992 – Bogdan Bogdanović, Serbian basketball player 1992 – Frances Bean Cobain, American visual artist and model Cross, Charles R. Heavier Than Heaven, Hyperion, 2001. p. 246. 1993 – Jung Eun-ji, South Korean singer-songwriter 1993 – Maia Mitchell, Australian actress and singer 1994 – Madelaine Petsch, American actress and YouTuber 1994 – Morgan Sanson, French footballer 1994 – Seiya Suzuki, Japanese baseball player 1995 – Alīna Fjodorova, Latvian figure skater 1995 – Parker McKenna Posey, American actress 1997 – Josephine Langford, Australian actress 1997 – Renato Sanches, Portuguese footballer 1998 – Brian To'o, Australian-Samoan rugby league playerRugby League Project 1998 – Clairo, American singer-songwriter 1998 – Nick Fuentes, American far-right political commentator 1999 – Cassius Stanley, American basketball player
August 18	Deaths	Deaths
August 18	Pre-1600	Pre-1600 353 – Decentius, Roman usurper 440 – Pope Sixtus III 472 – Ricimer, Roman general and politician (b. 405) 670 – Fiacre, Irish hermit 673 – Kim Yu-shin, general of Silla (b. 595) 849 – Walafrid Strabo, German monk and theologian (b. 808) 911 – Al-Hadi ila'l-Haqq Yahya, first Zaydi Imam of Yemen (b. 859) 1095 – King Olaf I of Denmark 1211 – Narapatisithu, king of Burma (b. 1150) 1258 – Theodore II Laskaris, emperor of Nicea (Byzantine emperor in exile) 1276 – Pope Adrian V (b. 1220) 1318 – Clare of Montefalco, Italian nun and saint (b. 1268) 1430 – Thomas de Ros, 8th Baron de Ros, English soldier and politician (b. 1406) 1500 – Alfonso of Aragon, Spanish prince (b. 1481) 1502 – Knut Alvsson, Norwegian nobleman and politician (b. 1455) 1503 – Pope Alexander VI (b. 1431) 1550 – Antonio Ferramolino, Italian architect and military engineer 1559 – Pope Paul IV (b. 1476) 1563 – Étienne de La Boétie, French judge and philosopher (b. 1530) 1600 – Sebastiano Montelupi, Italian businessman (b. 1516)
August 18	1601–1900	1601–1900 1613 – Giovanni Artusi, Italian composer and theorist (b. 1540) 1620 – Wanli Emperor of China (b. 1563) 1625 – Edward la Zouche, 11th Baron Zouche, English diplomat (b. 1556) 1634 – Urbain Grandier, French priest (b. 1590) 1642 – Guido Reni, Italian painter and educator (b. 1575) 1648 – Ibrahim of the Ottoman Empire (b. 1615) 1683 – Charles Hart, English actor (b. 1625) 1707 – William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire, English soldier and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Derbyshire (b. 1640) 1712 – Richard Savage, 4th Earl Rivers, English general and politician, Lord Lieutenant of Essex (b. 1660) 1765 – Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor (b. 1708) 1815 – Chauncey Goodrich, American lawyer and politician, 8th Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut (b. 1759) 1823 – André-Jacques Garnerin, French balloonist and the inventor of the frameless parachute (b. 1769) 1842 – Louis de Freycinet, French explorer and navigator (b. 1779) 1850 – Honoré de Balzac, French novelist and playwright (b. 1799) 1852 – James Finlayson, Scottish Quaker (b. 1772)Brian D. J. Denoon: Finlayson, James (1772–1852), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. 1886 – Eli Whitney Blake, American inventor, invented the Mortise lock (b. 1795)
August 18	1901–present	1901–present 1919 – Joseph E. Seagram, Canadian businessman and politician, founded the Seagram Company (b. 1841) 1940 – Walter Chrysler, American businessman, founded Chrysler (b. 1875) 1942 – Erwin Schulhoff, Austro-Czech composer and pianist (b. 1894) 1943 – Ali-Agha Shikhlinski, Azerbaijani general (b. 1865) 1944 – Ernst Thälmann, German soldier and politician (b. 1886) 1945 – Subhas Chandra Bose, Indian activist and politician (b. 1897) 1946 – Che Yaoxian, Chinese communist (b. 1894) 1946 – Luo Shiwen, Chinese communist (b. 1904) 1949 – Paul Mares, American trumpet player and bandleader (b. 1900) 1950 – Julien Lahaut, Belgian soldier and politician (b. 1884) 1952 – Alberto Hurtado, Chilean priest, lawyer, and saint (b. 1901) 1961 – Learned Hand, American lawyer, jurist, and philosopher (b. 1872) 1964 – Hildegard Trabant, Berlin Wall victim (b. 1927) 1968 – Arthur Marshall, American pianist and composer (b. 1881) 1975 – Odd Lindbäck-Larsen, Norwegian Army general and war historian (b. 1897) 1979 – Vasantrao Naik, Indian politician (b. 1913) 1981 – Anita Loos, American author and screenwriter (b. 1889) 1983 – Nikolaus Pevsner, German-English historian and scholar (b. 1902) 1986 – Harun Babunagari, Bangladeshi Islamic scholar and educationist (b. 1902) 1990 – B. F. Skinner, American psychologist and philosopher, invented the Skinner box (b. 1904) 1994 – Francis Raymond Shea, American bishop (b. 1913) 1998 – Persis Khambatta, Indian model and actress, Femina Miss India 1965 (b. 1948) 2001 – David Peakall, English chemist and toxicologist (b. 1931) 2002 – Dean Riesner, American actor and screenwriter (b. 1918) 2003 – Tony Jackson, English singer and bassist (b. 1938) 2004 – Elmer Bernstein, American composer and conductor (b. 1922) 2004 – Hiram Fong, American soldier and politician (b. 1906) 2005 – Chri$ Ca$h, American wrestler (b. 1982) 2006 – Ken Kearney, Australian rugby player (b. 1924) 2007 – Michael Deaver, American soldier and politician, White House Deputy Chief of Staff (b. 1938) 2007 – Magdalen Nabb, English author (b. 1947) 2009 – Kim Dae-jung, South Korean lieutenant and politician, 15th President of South Korea, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1925) 2009 – Rose Friedman, Ukrainian-American economist and author (b. 1910) 2009 – Robert Novak, American journalist and author (b. 1931) 2010 – Hal Connolly, American hammer thrower and coach (b. 1931) 2010 – Benjamin Kaplan, American scholar and jurist (b. 1911) 2012 – Harrison Begay, American painter (b. 1917) 2012 – John Kovatch, American football player (b. 1920) 2012 – Scott McKenzie, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1939) 2012 – Ra. Ki. Rangarajan, Indian journalist and author (b. 1927) 2012 – Jesse Robredo, Filipino public servant and politician, 23rd Secretary of the Interior and Local Government (b. 1958) 2013 – Josephine D'Angelo, American baseball player (b. 1924) 2013 – Jean Kahn, French lawyer and activist (b. 1929) 2013 – Albert Murray, American author and critic (b. 1916) 2014 – Gordon Faber, American soldier and politician, 39th Mayor of Hillsboro, Oregon (b. 1930) 2014 – Jim Jeffords, American captain, lawyer, and politician (b. 1934) 2014 – Levente Lengyel, Hungarian chess player (b. 1933) 2014 – Don Pardo, American radio and television announcer (b. 1918) 2015 – Khaled al-Asaad, Syrian archaeologist and author (b. 1932) 2015 – Roger Smalley, English-Australian pianist, composer, and conductor (b. 1943) 2015 – Suvra Mukherjee, Wife of former Indian president Pranab Mukherjee (b. 1940) 2015 – Louis Stokes, American lawyer and politician (b. 1925) 2015 – Bud Yorkin, American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1926) 2016 – Ernst Nolte, German historian (b. 1923) 2017 – Bruce Forsyth, English television presenter and entertainer (b. 1928) 2017 – Zoe Laskari, Greek actress and beauty pageant winner (b. 1944) 2018 – Denis Edozie, Nigerian Supreme Court judge (b. 1935) 2018 – Kofi Annan, Ghanaian diplomat and seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations (b. 1938) 2020 – Ben Cross, English stage and film actor (b. 1947) 2023 – Lolita, the second-oldest orca in captivity (b. ca. 1966) 2023 – Al Quie, American politician, 35th Governor of Minnesota (b. 1923) 2024 – Ruth Johnson Colvin, American author and educator, founded ProLiteracy Worldwide (b. 1916) 2024 – Alain Delon, French-Swiss actor (b. 1935)Alain Delon, la légende du cinéma, est mort 2024 – Phil Donahue, American talk show host and producer (b. 1935)
August 18	Holidays and observances	Holidays and observances Christian feast day: Agapitus of Palestrina Alberto Hurtado Daig of Inniskeen Evan (or Inan) Fiacre Florus and Laurus Helena of Constantinople (Roman Catholic Church) August 18 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics) Arbor Day (Pakistan) Armed Forces Day (North Macedonia) Birthday of Virginia Dare (Roanoke Island) Constitution Day (Indonesia) Long Tan Day, also called Vietnam Veterans' Day (Australia) National Science Day (Thailand)
August 18	References	References
August 18	Sources	Sources
August 18	External links	External links Category:Days of August
August 18	Table of Content	Redirect, Events, Pre-1600, 1601–1900, 1901–present, Births, Pre-1600, 1601–1900, 1901–present, Deaths, Pre-1600, 1601–1900, 1901–present, Holidays and observances, References, Sources, External links

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