On This Day: May 5

Pour yourself something warm. May 5 is a date of courage – on the cliffs of Gallipoli, in a boxing ring in Tokyo, and in a small capsule above the Earth. It also belongs, today, to someone rather special.

Happy birthday, Georgia

Before the history – a brief and important detour. Today is my middle daughter Georgia’s birthday. Every year this date brings a reminder that the world is genuinely improved by people who arrive full of curiosity and warmth. Happy birthday, Georgia. You share your day with some remarkable company, though we suspect the day is lucky to have you.

1915 — Gallipoli: ten days in

By May 5, 1915, Australian and New Zealand troops had been fighting and dying on the cliffs of Gallipoli for 10 days. The landing on April 25 had been chaotic. The terrain was nothing like what had been expected. The Ottoman resistance, commanded by the young Mustafa Kemal – later Atatürk – was fierce and determined. What followed was eight months of brutal stalemate. By the time the evacuation came in December, 8,700 Australians had died on that peninsula. The campaign failed militarily. But Gallipoli became the story Australia told itself about who it was. The courage of the men on those beaches needs no embellishment. It was real.

1961 — An American touches the sky

On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space – a 15-minute suborbital flight that answered the Soviet Union’s triumph with Gagarin weeks earlier. He later walked on the Moon and famously hit a golf ball on the lunar surface. It went, by his own cheerful estimation, miles and miles and miles.

Some big things happened in Australia on this date. In 1865 Bushranger Ben Hall is ambushed and shot dead by police near Goobang Creek, New South Wales. In 1906, the first electric trams begin operations in Melbourne, with the opening of a service from St Kilda to Brighton. And in 1998, four Royal Australian Navy sailors die from carbon monoxide poisoning after a fire aboard HMAS Westralia.

Some days carry the full sweep of human courage. May 5 is one of them. Come back tomorrow for another spin through the calendar.