Gday...

1431  -     Joan of Arc is burned at the stake. 

 Whilst the exact date of Joan of Arc's birth is not known, traditionally she is regarded to have been born on 6 January 1412, in Domrémy, France. As a teenager, Joan of Arc received visions urging her to organise French resistance against English domination. In 1429, despite being a woman, she led the charge which attacked the English and forced them to retreat from Orléans. As she led further charges, she helped turn the Hundred Years War unequivocally in France's favour.

In 1430, several months after her victory against the English, Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English. Her claims of receiving visions and divine inspiration resulted in her being accused of heresy and witchcraft. During her trial in March 1431, she retracted her claims of visions and was sentenced to life imprisonment. However, she recanted on her retraction, and as a heretic, was burned at the stake on 30 May 1431 in Rouen.

Twenty five years after her death, King Charles VII ordered a rehabilitation trial that annulled the proceedings of the original trial. Joan of Arc was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920.

1861  -     Wills returns to the Dig tree to see whether a rescue party has arrived. 

Burke and Wills, with a huge party of men and supplies, departed Melbourne in August 1860 to cross Australia to the north coast and back. Burke, being impatient and anxious to complete the crossing as quickly as possible, split the expedition at Menindee. He moved on ahead to establish a depot at Cooper Creek, leaving William Wright in command of the Menindee depot. Splitting his party yet again at Cooper Creek, Burke chose to make a dash to the Gulf in the heat of Summer with Wills, Gray and King. He left stockman William Brahe in charge with instructions that if the party did not return in three months, Brahe was to return to Menindee. The trek to the Gulf and back took over four months, and during that time Gray died. A full day was spent in burying his body. When Burke returned to Cooper Creek, he discovered lettering freshly blazed on the coolibah tree at the depot, giving instructions to dig for the supplies Brahe had left. Thus the name 'Dig' Tree was spawned.

When Burke left the Dig tree to try to reach the police station at Mt Hopeless, 240km away, he failed to leave further messages emblazoned on the Dig tree indicating that his party had returned and were now making for Mt Hopeless. In May 1861, Brahe and Wright returned to check the depot, but they found no evidence of Burke's return, and saw no need to dig up the cache beneath the tree. Had they done so, they would have found evidence of Burke and Wills' return. On 30 May 1861, Wills returned to the Dig Tree to see whether a rescue party had arrived. Wills buried his journals and a message informing any potential rescue party of his location down the creek, but again failed to leave any message on the Dig Tree. One of Australian exploration's greatest tragedies - the death of Burke and Wills - could have been averted had this simple matter of communication been attended to between the main expedition and rescue parties.

1886  -     The Ly-ee-Moon steamer runs aground off Cape Green lighthouse in southern NSW, Australia, killing 71. 

The Ly-ee-Moon was built as a paddle steamer in 1859 by the Thames Shipbuilding Company of Blackall, London, England. Originally designed for use in the opium trade, she was also rigged with three masts and sails, and was the fastest steamer known at that time. In the early 1860s, during the American civil war, Ly-ee-Moon was used as a blockade runner, running in and out of Charleston, South Carolina. Following the civil war, the steamer moved to Hong Kong, where she remained for almost a decade. The steamer was then was sold to the Australasian Steam Navigation Company Ltd in the late 1870s. After catching fire whilst being refitted in Sydney and being scuttled to put out the fire, the ship was refloated and repaired, at a cost of approximately £4,000. The Ly-ee-Moon returned to service in 1878 and ran the Sydney to Melbourne route.

The Ly-ee-Moon departed Melbourne for Sydney on 29 May 1886 with 55 passengers and 41 crew aboard, carrying a varied cargo of staple foods, clothing, grains and alcohol. On the evening of 30 May 1886, the steamer was approaching Gabo Island, just south of the New South Wales/Victoria border, when it was wrecked off a reef near Cape Green lighthouse. The lighthouse keepers attempted to rescue the passengers and crew, but ultimately 71 people died - 41 passengers and 31 crew. The wreckage of the Ly-ee-Moon remains where the ship sank on that fateful night.

1894  -     Explorer David Carnegie finds gold at Niagara Creek, Western Australia.

The Hon. David Wynford Carnegie, born 23 March 1871 in the United Kingdom, arrived in Australia in 1892. He became an explorer and gold prospector in Western Australia after he joined the goldrush to Coolgardie. Following his failure to find any substantial gold, he joined up with another prospector named Gus Luck to explore the Hampton Plains immediately east of Kalgoorlie.

Finding it too dry and arid, they travelled instead to the Queen Victoria Springs, about 250 km east of Kalgoorlie. They then travelled north through unknown country to Mount Shenton, about 100 km north east of the present-day town of Laverton. They continued prospecting around Mount Margaret and Mount Ida. On 30 May 1894, they moved southwest to Niagara Creek, where they found "a big fine reef" of gold. They returned to Coolgardie later in June to file their claims, having travelled about 1350km altogether. 

1971  -     Mariner 9, the first artificial satellite of Mars, is launched by the United States.

Mariner 9 was a NASA space probe orbiter and the first artificial satellite of Mars, which helped in the exploration of Mars. It was the ninth in the Mariner program, which was a series of unmanned interplanetary probes designed to investigate Mars, Venus and Mercury.

The United States launched Mariner 9, on 30 May 1971. Mariner 9 was the first spacecraft to orbit another planet: it entered orbit around Mars in November 1971 and began photographing the surface and analysing the atmosphere with its infrared and ultraviolet instruments. After waiting several months for dust storms to settle, the satellite sent back over 7000 pictures, revealing a planet very different to what was expected. The images revealed river beds, craters, massive extinct volcanoes such as Olympus Mons, the largest known volcano in the Solar System, canyons, including the Valles Marineris, a system of canyons over 4,000 kilometres long, evidence of wind and water erosion and deposition, weather fronts and even fogs.

Cheers - John