John "Black" Caesar died / Distant Early Warning Line legislation signed - February 15

On this day in 1796, Australia's first bushranger, John "Black" Caesar, died. / On this day in 1954, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation approving the Distant Early Warning Line, a network of radar stations built to detect Soviet bombers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, Technically you're getting two days in history today
because we're running two episodes from the History Vault. I
hope you enjoy. Hey. I'm Eves, and welcome to this
Day in History Class, a show that uncovers history one
day at a time. The day was February. John Caesar,

(00:28):
who had the nickname Black Caesar, was shot dead after
escaping his settlement in Australia. Caesar was a bush ranger.
In fact, he's thought to be Australia's first bush ranger.
Bush Rangers were convicts and outlaws who took to the
Australian bush to avoid capture and punishment. Not all of

(00:51):
them were violent, but bush rangers did become known as
bandits who robbed stage coaches and banks and killed people.
Many people came to romanticize bush rangers for their rebellion
and anti authoritarianism, but Caesar only had a reputation for
his theft and penchant for escaping his confines. In the

(01:14):
late seventeen seventies, English captain James Cook charted eastern Australia
and claimed it for the British Crown, dubbing it New
South Wales, and soon after the British began colonizing New
South Wales in January of seventeen eighty eight. The first
fleet that had left England the previous year, arrived at

(01:36):
Botany Bay on the east coast of Australia. There are
likely several reasons for the move. Britain's population was growing,
its prisons couldn't accommodate everybody who was sentenced in America,
was no longer accepting transported criminals, and the land was
prime real estate Britain could expand the Empire, set up

(01:58):
a base in the region, and claimed the territory against
other places that might claw for that possession. Regardless of
the motives behind the colonization, Britain sent eleven vessels in
the first fleet, including six transports that held hundreds of convicts.
The plan was to put the convicts to work on

(02:20):
government farms. When the British realized that the land at
Botany Bay wasn't sufficient for their plans, they moved north
and established a penal colony in Port Jackson at Sydney Cove.
John Black Caesar was one of the convicts who were
sent to New South Wales in the first fleet. Caesar's

(02:41):
exact ancestry isn't known, but it is known that Caesar
was of African descent. Caesar was possibly born in Madagascar
or America, as one historian notes, but he later moved
to England and became a servant. In seventy six, when
he was some where around twenty two or twenty three

(03:02):
years old, John was charged with stealing money and sentenced
to transportation or banishment to a penal colony for seven years.
He was imprisoned on the ship the Alexander and sent
away to Australia in seventeen eighty seven. Caesar was described
as a hard worker but troublesome, and so were many

(03:24):
of the convicts who lived in harsh conditions in a
struggling colony among indigenous peoples who were not all welcoming
of the British immigrants in their problems. In April of
seventeen eighty nine, John was once again tried for theft
at the Criminal Court, but this time he was sentenced

(03:45):
to a life term of transportation that meant he was
destined to live out the rest of his days in
subjugation in Australia. So Caesar fled and took refuge in
the bush or, as Lieutenant Governor David Collins put it
at the time, Caesar had quote taken into the woods
with some provisions, an iron pot and a soldier's musket,

(04:09):
which he had found means to steal. Caesar was soon
caught and sent to work at Garden Island and Chains,
but that wouldn't be his last getaway. Caesar was a
character for sure, a fact made clear by contemporary descriptions
of him. Collins set the following about Caesar in his book,

(04:29):
An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales.
This man was always reputed the hardest working convict in
the country. His frame was muscular and well calculated for
heart labor, but in his intellects he did not very
widely differ from a brute. His appetite was ravenous, for
he could in any one day devour the full ration

(04:52):
for two days. To gratify this appetite, he was compelled
to steal from others, and all his stuffs were directed
that purpose. He was such a wretch and so indifferent
about meeting death, that he declared while in confinement that
if he should be hanged, he would create a laugh
before he was turned off by playing off some trick

(05:13):
upon the executioner. That same year, Caesar was allowed to
work without chains, and he escaped in a stolen canoe
with the gun. He tried to make do in the
bush by robbing gardens, threatening aborigines and taking their food,
but the aborigines ended up spearing him and he returned

(05:34):
to camp in early seventeen ninety. In March, Caesar was
sent to Norfolk Island, where he got land in a hog.
The next year he was given one acre or nearly
half a hectare and told to work three days a week,
and in seventeen ninety two he had a daughter with

(05:54):
a woman named and Power, who had been sent to
Australia on the Lady Juliana, a up that transported female convicts.
But Caesar soon left his family and went back to
Port Jackson in seventeen nine. He stole off again in
seventeen ninety four, but was soon back in custody. But

(06:16):
even after being punished severely for escaping, John allegedly said
that quote all that would not make him better. Collins
frequently referred to Caesar as incorrigible, but Collins had a
lot of choice words to say about John and the
other people living in New South Wales. I'd say Caesar

(06:39):
was relentless in his pursuit of some sort of freedom.
He escaped for the final time in December sev leading
a band of armed wanderers in the bush in the
Port Jackson area. He and the people in his troop
were deemed a threat for their thievery, and people were
told not to supply the vagabonds with ammunition. But clearly

(07:02):
Caesar had had enough. He said he wouldn't turn himself
in or be captured alive. So Governor Hunter offered five
gallons of spirits to the person who caught him. John Wimbo,
who had been hunting for Caesar for days, found Caesar
and shot him on the morning of Monday, February sev

(07:25):
John Black. Caesar died that day in a colonist hut
at Liberty Plains. I'm eaves, Jeff Cote, and hopefully you
know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
And here's something else that I learned in researching this episode.
It said that Caesar wounded Pima Boy, and colonists celebrated

(07:48):
that one good deed of his as Pemma Boy was
an Aboriginal warrior and resistance leader who had conducted raids
on the colonists. A lot of the Aboriginal people resisted colonization,
but many of them died at the hands of the
colonists who spread disease, stole aborigines belongings, abused girls, and

(08:09):
committed massacres. Catch you all tomorrow for another episode. Hi everyone,
I'm Eves and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a podcast where we one day ship nugs of history
straight to your brain through your ear hole. The day

(08:38):
was February nineteen fifty four. US President Dwight D. Eisenhower
signed legislation that allowed for the construction of the Distant
Early Warning Line. The DOW Line was a system of
more than sixty radar installations established across the Arctic to
detect Soviet aircraft and intercontinental ballistic miss In the early

(09:01):
nineteen fifties, Cold War tensions were high, there were systems
in place to detect Soviet threats in the US and Canada,
including radar line. One such radar network was the Pine
Tree Line, the first line of air defense established in
Canada during the Cold War. It ran roughly along the
fiftieth parallel north across southern Canada and the northern US.

(09:26):
But the Pine Tree Line didn't provide that much warning
time before an attack, and it used pulse radar, which
had difficulty detecting planes close to the ground. Then there
was the Mid Canada Line, conceived to address these issues.
It was farther north than the Pine Tree Line and
it ran along the fifty parallel. The system used Doppler

(09:48):
radar and was better at low altitude detection. But the
US and Canadian governments determined that they needed a way
to spot Soviet attacks earlier. They determined that they would
need a system of radar stations across the Arctic, since
North America was vulnerable to attacks from across the North Pole,
so experimental stations were built in Illinois and Alaska. As

(10:11):
the threat of Soviet thermonuclear devices became more apparent, the
need for an early warning system became more urgent. On
February nine, fifty four, US President Eisenhower signed a bill
approving the construction of the Distant Early Warning Line. The
network would be the primary line of air defense warnings

(10:32):
for invasions of North America that came through the Arctic.
It would be located above the Arctic Circle, roughly along
the sixty nine parallel. A lot of that land was uninhabited,
but there were indigenous people living in some areas. The
Western Electric Company was tasked with completing the Dow Line
by July of nineteen fifty seven. It took around twenty

(10:55):
thousand people to plan and build the network, and thousands
of tons of materials were moved across the continent to
build radar domes, communication towers, and other facilities and infrastructure
necessary to build the stations on the line. The first
phase of the dow Line went into operation on July
thirty one, nineteen fifty seven. The Dow Line allowed for

(11:18):
more than four hours of morning time before an attack.
In addition to the stations across the Northern Arctic region
of Canada, the Dow Line was supplemented by stations and
air and sea patrols in the Aleutian Islands, Greenland, Iceland,
the Faroe Islands, and the UK. The network proved an
effective barrier against Soviet attacks. As technology advanced, facilities aged

(11:43):
in Soviet aggression during the Cold War became less of
an issue. The Dow Line became obsolete starting in nineteen
eighty five, the dow Line was reorganized and upgraded to
a new system called the North Warning System. Many of
the old Dow Line sites were abandoned or torn down.
As these stations have been cleaned up, there has been

(12:03):
controversy over the preservation of the sites and their impact
on the environment. I'm Eve Jeff Cote and hopefully you
know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
You can keep up with us on social media on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at t d i h C podcast. You

(12:23):
can also email us at this Day at I heart
media dot com. Thanks for listening. I hope to see
you here again tomorrow. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
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(12:44):
listen to your favorite shows.