Today in history

1903 Ford Motor Co is incorporated.

1911 IBM had its beginnings as the Computing-tabulating- Recording Co is incorporated in New York State.

1920 Council of League of Nations holds first public meeting at St James Palace in London.

1940 France’s Maginot Line is abandoned to Germans in World War II.

1963 The world’s first female space traveller, Valentina Tereshkova, 26, is launched into orbit by the Soviet Union aboard Vostok 6. She spent 71 hours in flight, circling the Earth 48 times before returning safely.

1976 Bloody rioting erupts in Soweto, South Africa, when black students protest being taught in Afrikaans. About 600 die in months of racial upheaval.

1991 Tens of thousands of Filipinos flee the eruption of Mount Pinatubo along ash-clogged roads. About 700 people die in the eruption.

1996 Russian voters go to the polls in their first independent presidential election. The result was a runoff between eventual winner President Boris Yeltsin and communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov; Sports broadcaster Mel Allen dies in Greenwich, Connecticut, US, aged 83.

1998 Afghanistan’s Taliban religious army orders the closing of more than 100 private schools that had been educating girls.

2006 The House rejects a timetable for pulling US forces out of Iraq, 256-153; In Iraq, three 101st Airborne Division soldiers are killed in an attack, while two others were abducted. Their mutilated bodies were found three days later; In Martinez, California, Susan Polk, 48, is convicted of second-degree murder for stabbing to death her millionaire psychotherapist husband, Felix Polk, whom she had met as a 14-year-old girl in treatment; Lonelygirl15 ,a fictitious video blogger played by actress Jessica Lee Rose, makes her online debut.

2011 US Representative Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat, announces his resignation from Congress, bowing to the furor caused by his sexually-charged online dalliances with a former porn actress and other women; Osama bin Laden’s longtime second-in-command, Ayman al-zawahri, takes control of alqaida.

2015 Real estate mogul Donald Trump launches his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. He is now president. Today’s birthdays Geronimo, Apache Indian leader (1829-1909); Stan Laurel, US comic actor (1890-1965); Bobby Clark, US vaudevillian/comedian (1886-1960); Jean Peugeot, French car manufacturer (1896-1966); Barbara Mcclintock, US geneticist and Nobel laureate (1902-1992).