Gday...

1841  -     Australian explorer Eyre reaches King's River, just short of his final destination of King George's Sound on his epic journey from east to west, only to find the river too high to cross on horseback.

Edward John Eyre's westward journey across the Australian continent began at Streaky Bay on 3 November 1841. He and his Aboriginal guide, Wylie, had faced starvation after the other two Aborigines in the party shot and killed Eyre's overseer, John Baxter, and made off with most of the supplies. Early in June they received respite when they came across a French Whaling ship, the "Mississippi", captained by John Rossiter. They stayed with the ship for nearly two weeks, but with King George's Sound only another 300 miles away, Eyre was anxious to push on. His final hurdle before reaching the Sound came in the form of the deep King River, on 6 July 1841. Unwilling to wait for the tide to recede, Eyre and Wylie left their horses and supplies on the river bank and crossed on foot, holding above their heads their most necessary items for survival.

1885  -     Louis Pasteur's rabies vaccine is tested successfully on nine-year-old Joseph Meister.

The rabies vaccine was invented by French chemist Louis Pasteur. Pasteur was born on 27 December 1822 in Dole, Jura, France. Known as the founder of microbiology, he moved into this field when he discovered the role of bacteria in fermentation. His experiments with bacteria conclusively disproved the theory of spontaneous generation and led to the theory that infection is caused by germs.

Recognising that infectious diseases are caused by microorganisms, Pasteur's research soon led others to investigate sterilisation, disinfection, vaccines, and eventually antibiotics. Pasteur created and tested vaccines for diphtheria, cholera, yellow fever, plague, rabies, anthrax, and tuberculosis.

The rabies vaccine was first tested on nine-year-old Joseph Meister, on 6 July 1885. After being bitten by a rabid dog, Meister was treated by Pasteur with a rabies virus grown in rabbits and weakened by drying, a treatment he had earlier tried on dogs. The treatment was successful and Joseph did not develop rabies. Meister later went on to become a caretaker at the Pasteur Institute.

1942  -     WWII diarist Anne Frank and her family are forced into hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam. 

Anne Frank was a German Jew who, as a teenager, was forced to go into hiding during the Holocaust of World War II. Born on 12 June 1929, she suffered through persecution of the Jews in WWII. On 6 July 1942, Anne was forced to go into hiding as German troops invaded and occupied the Netherlands. She, her family and four other people spent two years in an annex of rooms above her fathers office in Amsterdam. After two years of living in this way, they were betrayed to the Nazis and deported to concentration camps. Anne Frank died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, just two months before the end of the war. Her legacy is her diary, originally given to her as a simple autograph/notebook for her thirteenth birthday. In it she recorded not only the personal details of her life, but also her observations of living under Nazi occupation until the final entry of 1 August 1944.  

1943  -     The last of the heavy Japanese bombing attacks on Darwin occurs, though less serious attacks continue.

Darwin, capital city of Australia's Northern Territory, was just a small town with a civilian population of less than 2000 during World War II. Nonetheless, it was a strategically-placed naval port and airbase. The first of an estimated 64 air raids against Darwin during 1942-43 occurred on 19 February 1942. At least 243 civilians and military personnel were killed, not counting the indigenous Australians whose deaths were not counted, as the Japanese launched two waves of planes comprising 242 bombers and fighters.

Following the February raid, other parts of Australia including Darwin, northwest Western Australia and even regions of far north Queensland were subject to over one hundred more raids. Airport base areas attacked included Townsville, Katherine, Wyndham, Derby and Port Hedland, while Milingimbi, Exmouth Gulf and Horn Island were also targetted. 63 more Japanese raids occurred against Darwin and its immediate surroundings, some of them heavier than others. On 6 July 1943, the last of the heavy air attacks against Darwin occurred. The attack was directed against the US Liberator base at Fenton, located about 150 kilometres south of Darwin. Three pilots were killed, while three bombers damaged and eight Spitfires and a Liberator were destroyed.

Three more minor attacks were carried out in August. The final attack on Australian soil occurred on 12 November 1943. There was only minor damage around the town of Darwin, and no casualties.

1988  -     167 people are killed in the world's worst offshore oil disaster when the Piper Alpha oil drilling platform explodes and catches fire in the North Sea off Scotland.

The Piper Alpha was a North Sea oil production platform operated by Occidental Petroleum (Caledonia) Ltd. The rig was situated about 193km off the north-east coast of Scotland. In its time, it produced approximately 10 percent of the oil and gas production from the North Sea. The platform began production in 1976, first as an oil platform and then later converted to gas production. In 1988, it was the centre of a network of pipes from other rigs pumping to the shore. It was also the location of the world's worst offshore oil disaster.

On 6 July 1988, leakage from a buildup of natural gas condensate ignited, causing a massive explosion. The explosion then ignited secondary oil fires, melting the riser of an upstream gas pipeline. The released gas caused a second, larger explosion which engulfed the entire platform, with the resultant fire reaching over 100m into the air and visible from 100km away. Out of the 225 who worked on the platform, 167 people were killed. An investigation into the disaster blamed the design of the platform, such as the absence of blast walls, and safety procedures on the rig, including evacuation plans.

1997  -     The robot buggy 'Sojourner' is released from the space probe, Mars Pathfinder, to begin exploring Mars.

The Mars Pathfinder, a space probe launched on 4 December 1996 by NASA aboard a Delta II rocket, was the first of a series of missions to Mars that included rovers, or robotic exploration vehicles. It landed on Mars on 4 July 1997. It consisted of a lander and a lightweight wheeled robot, or rover, called Sojourner. The rover, named after the famous American abolitionist Sojourner Truth, was designed to execute different experiments on the Martian surface.

There were initially difficulties in releasing the rover from the lander. Scientists from NASA worked to remotely free the robot from the probe when it was obstructed first by a partially deflated airbag, then by communication difficulties between computers on board the probe and the 'Sojourner'. It was finally released from the probe two days later, on 6 July 1997. The Sojourner, weighing approximately 10kg and mounted with a camera, travelled on 6 wheels designed to move independently in order to cope with the Mars terrain. The first information the Sojourner recorded was a surface temperature of minus 93 degrees C.

The final data transmission from Mars was on 27 September 1997. During that time, the Mars Pathfinder returned 16,500 images from the lander and 550 images from the rover, as well as more than 15 chemical analyses of rocks and soil and extensive data on winds and other weather factors. Contact with the lander was eventually lost on sol (Mars solar day) 83. The exact reason for the final failure of the lander is not certain, but it was probably due to a failure of a battery, resulting in night-time cooling of the spacecraft that rendered it inoperable. NASA ceased its efforts to recontact Pathfinder on 10 March 1998.

Cheers - John