ON THIS DAY

1429:

Seventeen-year-old St Joan of Arc leads French forces to lift the English siege of Orleans, in the Hundred Years War.

Australia is granted its own coat of arms. Germans sink British liner Lusitania off Irish coast, and more than 1100 people perish.

May 7-8, Germany surrenders in World War II and the Third Reich ceases to exist.

Legislators in Johannesburg take oaths of office as blacks and whites sit down together to govern for the first time in South Africa.

Veteran reporter Australia Richard Carleton, 62, dies of a heart attack while covering the Beaconsfield miners story in Tasmania.

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer (1840-1893); Eva Peron, Argentine leader (1919-1952);Peter Carey, Australian writer (1943-); Robbie Knievel, US daredevil (1962-); Mark Furze, Australian actor (1986-).

1908: 1915: 1945: 1994: 2006: TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: