Timeline of the Taman Shud Case

1948 November 30th, a suitcase allegedly belonging to the Somerton Man was checked into Adelaide Train Station cloak room at 11.00am.
1948 December 1st, estimated time of death of man 2:00am.
1948 December 1st, man found dead at 6.30am, Somerton Beach, Adelaide.
1948 December 2nd, The Advertiser newspaper in an article "Body found on beach" suggests the "E. C. Johnson" is the deceased man.^[1]
1948 December 3rd, Johnson walks into a police station to prove he is alive. This possibility is thus eliminated.
1948 December 4th, Police announce that the Somerton Man's fingerprints were not on South Australian police records.
1948 December 5th, Police search military records in response to a reported sighting of a military man named 'Solomonson', resembling the Somerton Man, was sighted drinking at a hotel in Glenelg on November 30th, 1948.
1948 December 10th, the dead body was embalmed in formaldehyde to preserve it.
1949 January, two people identified the body as that of 63 year old former wood cutter Robert Walsh. This possibility was ruled out as the dead body looked too young to be Walsh. Also Walsh was a Woodcutter and the hands of the Somerton man showed no signs of manual labor. Elizabeth Thompson,who had identified the body as Walsh, retracted her statement.
1949 January 14th, Adelaide Railway Station find a brown suitcase apparently belonging to the dead man.

1949 February, there were eight different possible identifications of the body, including a missing stablehand, a worker on a steamship, a Swedish man, and a man from Darwin.
1949 June 17th, the adjourned coronial inquest recommenced and Sir John Cleland re-examined the body find the piece of paper bearing the inscription "Tamám Shud." Cleland laso noticed the dead man's shoe's were remarkably clean and polished for someone who had been supposedly walking on a beach.
1978 The ABC TV documentary show called Inside Story screened an episode of "The Somerton Beach Mystery" at 8pm, Thursday, August 24th, 1978 (Sydney time). The documentary was put together by Stuart Littlemore.
2009 March 19th, The Adelaide University project team all visit the SA Police Museum and examine the bust of the Somerton man closely, noting that hair is definitely embedded in the plaster cast and that the ears have an unusual ridge across them.
2009 March 19th, Derek Abbott checks the original State pathology report books of 1948 and 1949, finding that there is no entry for the Somerton Man.

Notes