Wake in Fright

Donald Pleasence and Gary Bond in Wake in Fright

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 19 April Captain James Cook espies Australia, 1770 On this day in 1770, the British captain James Cook’s ship Endeavour became the first recorded European vessel to catch sight of Australia. Cook had been commissioned to travel to the Pacific Ocean by the Royal Society, who were collecting data on the transit of Venus across the sun, during which the planet appears as a black dot against the solar disc. It is a rare occurrence and the Royal Society hoped the measurements Cook’s ship collected would add to the sum of scientific knowledge, as well as helping to calculate longitude, which … Read more