Gday...

1770  -     Lieutenant James Cook names Palm Island, off Australia's eastern coast.

Lieutenant James Cook was not the first to discover Australia, as he was preceded by numerous Portuguese and Dutch explorers. However, he was the first to sight and map the eastern coastline. Cook's ship, the 'Endeavour', departed Plymouth, England, on 26 August 1768. After completing the objective of his mission, which was to observe the transit of Venus from the vantage point of Tahiti, Cook went on to search for Terra Australis Incognita, the great continent which some believed to extend round the pole. After spending nearly a year charting the coastline of New Zealand, which had been documented by Abel Tasman in 1642, he set sail west.

In mid-April 1770, Cook's crew first sighted land, although it was not known whether the land belonged to an island or a continent. The land was in fact the far southeastern corner of the Australian continent, and Cook went on to chart the eastern coast of what was then known as New Holland, claiming it for Great Britain under the name of New South Wales.

Cook named many points of interest along the way. On 7 June 1770, four days after sighting the Whitsunday Passage off Queensland's coast, Lieutenant James Cook sighted and named Palm Island. The island was named after the many cabbage tree palms growing there.

1825  -     Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) officially separates from New South Wales.

Tasmania was first discovered by Abel Tasman on 24 November 1642. Tasman discovered the previously unknown island on his voyage past the "Great South Land", or "New Holland", as the Dutch called Australia. He named it "Antony Van Diemen's Land" in honour of the High Magistrate, or Governor-General of Batavia.

When the First Fleet arrived in 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip claimed the entire eastern coast for the British Empire, including Tasmania, though it was not yet proven to be separate from the mainland. In January 1799 Bass and Flinders completed their circumnavigation of Tasmania, proving it to be an island. Tasmania was settled as a separate colony in 1803, but continued to be administered by the Governor of New South Wales. On 7 June 1825, Van Diemen's Land was separated administratively from New South Wales, and Hobart Town was declared the capital of the colony. As the actual founding documents have not been located, there remains some conflict regarding the date, as some sources state this as occurring on 14 June 1825.

1942  -     The Battle of Midway, between American and Japanese forces, ends with a US victory. 

The Battle of Midway was a naval battle of World War II, during which land and carrier-based American planes engaged a Japanese fleet on its way to invade the Midway Islands. The battle, which continued for four days, finished on 7 June 1942 with a decisive victory for the US, and marked a turning point for the war in the Pacific.

The purpose of the Battle of Midway was to eliminate the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific. The Japanese intended to lure the American carrier fleet into a trap and destroy it by staging a feint toward Alaska. This would be followed by an invasion of Midway by a Japanese strike force. The US Pacific Fleet was expected to arrive at Midway in response to the invasion, whereby it would be destroyed by the superior Japanese fleet waiting unseen to the west. This would effectively finish off the US Pacific Fleet, and guarantee Japanese naval supremacy in the Pacific, whilst enabling the expansion of Japan's defensive perimeter further from the Japanese Home Islands. The success of this operation was also considered preparatory for further operations against Fiji and Samoa, as well as an anticipated invasion of Hawaii.

American Intelligence determined that the Japanese were preparing to launch a massive offensive against an objective, and that the objective was the Midway Atoll, 1,600 km northwest of Hawaii. Because of US anticipation of the ambush, Japan lost four carriers, a cruiser, 292 aircraft and suffered 2,500 casualties, severely depleting its naval forces. The USA lost a carrier, a destroyer, 145 aircraft and suffered 307 casualties.

Cheers - John