Today in history
1830 — Louis Philippe is elected King of France and becomes known as the Citizen King.
1858 — Ottawa is chosen by Queen Victoria as capital of the Dominion of Canada.
1869 — The first picture of a solar eclipse is taken.
1888 — Theophilus Van Kannel of Philadelphia receives a patent for the revolving door.
1941 — Soviet planes carry out their first bombing raids against Berlin, Germany, in World War II.
1947 — Balsa wood raft Kon-tiki, which had carried a six-man crew 6919 kiolmetres across the Pacific Ocean from South America, crashes into a Polynesian reef.
1957 — Death of United States comedian-actor Oliver Hardy, of the duo Laurel and Hardy.
1959 — US launches Explorer-6 which sent back a picture of the Earth.
1960 — Ivory Coast becomes independent of France.
1971 — Three US Apollo 15 astronauts make safe splashdown in Pacific Ocean after their Moon visit.
1974 — French stuntman Philippe Petit walks a tightrope strung between the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Centre.
1988 — About 30 people are feared dead after three boats carrying almost 200 people capsize in Bangladesh during an earthquake.
1989 — New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange resigns.
1996 — About 71 people die after flash floods in Spain crash through the Pyrenees Mountain camp jammed with hundreds of holiday makers.
1998 — Terrorist bombs at US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania kill 224 people.
2000 — American and Swiss scientists flag the possibility of life in the universe after discovering nine planets that orbit stars outside our solar system.
2001 — Cambodia’s Constitutional Council approves legislation to create a court to try former leaders of the Khmer Rouge for their 1970s ‘‘killing fields’’ reign of terror.
2003 — Muslim terrorist Amrozi is sentenced to death in Indonesia for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
2004 — Arab satellite channel Aljazeera is shut for 30 days after the Iraq government accuses the network of inciting violence.
2014 — Russia retaliates for sanctions over the crisis in Ukraine by banning most food imports from the West. Today’s Birthdays: Mata Hari (Margaret Gertrude Zeller), Dutch dancer-spy (1876-1917); Greg Chappell, Australian cricketer (1948-); David Duchovny, US actor (1960-); Charlize Theron, South African actress (1975-).