Today in History

1769 Captain Cook observes transit of Mercury

Captain Cook and astronomer Charles Green observed the transit of Mercury at Te Whanganui-a-hei (Mercury Bay) on the Coromandel Peninsula.

The inner planets, Mercury and Venus, occasionally pass across the Sun and can be observed as small black dots. Timing these 'transits' from different locations on Earth was the first accurate method of determining our distance from the Sun.

Captain James Cook and his expedition members had recently been in Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus, and were now on a mission to search for the rumoured 'Great Southern Continent'. When stormy seas caused damage to the Endeavour, Cook turned his course towards the land discovered by Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman in 1642. On 6 October 1769, Nicholas Young the cabin boy spotted the East Coast of the North Island.

Over the next few months Cook mapped the entire coastline, providing the first-ever 'outline' of New Zealand – and establishing that it was not the Great Southern Continent. His charts proved so accurate that some were still being used in the 20th century.

During this time Cook and his expedition members had many encounters with Māori, whom Cook described as 'a brave, war-like people, with sentiments void of treachery'. The Endeavour’s occupants were at first taken for atua (supernatural beings), ancestors, or living visitors from the ancestral land Hawaiki. Contact was sometimes friendly, but at other times conflict broke out and several Māori were killed by members of the expedition.

Much of Cook’s surveying was done from offshore, but as 9 November approached he sought solid ground from which to observe the transit of Mercury. A cairn on what is now known as Cook’s Beach marks the spot. The observation was made using the cutting-edge technology of the time, a sextant (invented in 1757).

The next transit of Mercury that will be fully visible from New Zealand will occur in 2052.

Image: Captain Cook with sextant (Te Ara) 

1920 White New Zealand policy introduced

New Zealand's immigration policy in the early 20th century was strongly influenced by racial ideology. The Immigration Restriction Amendment Act 1920 made it necessary for immigrants to apply for a permanent residence permit before they arrived in New Zealand.

Permission was given at the discretion of the Minister of Customs. People of British birth and parentage were not subject to this requirement, but officials could avoid allowing Indians and other non-white British subjects into New Zealand by referring to the definitions in the Act. These stated that a person who was a naturalised British subject (or whose parents fell into this category) or who was an 'aboriginal Native or the descendant of an aboriginal Native' of any other British dominion, colony or protectorate, was not of British birth and parentage. Thus, without specifically targeting non-whites, the Act could be used to keep them out.

Image: emigration poster