Born on this day
Wednesday, October 27, 1728. : Captain James Cook, who charted Australia's eastern coastline, is born.
James Cook was born at Marton in North Yorkshire, on 27 October 1728. He was the son of a farm labourer, and held no great ambitions, being apprenticed in a grocer/haberdashery when he was 16. Lack of aptitude in the trade led his employer to introduce Cook to local shipowners, who took him on as a merchant navy apprentice. Here he was educated in algebra, trigonometry, navigation, and astronomy, which later set Cook up to command his own ship.
After working his way up to positions of greater responsibility and experience, Cook was hired in 1766 by the Royal Society to travel to the Pacific Ocean to observe and record the transit of Venus across the Sun. Following this, Cook's next orders were to search the south Pacific for Terra Australis Incognita, the great southern continent that many believed must extend around the southern pole. He came across New Zealand, which Abel Tasman had discovered in 1642, and spent some months there, charting the coastline. Nearly a year later, Cook set sail west for New Holland, which was later to become Australia
