Today in history

1776 - British-born political writer Thomas Paine publishes his influential pamphlet, Common Sense.

1863 - London’s Metropolitan, the world’s first underground passenger railway, opens to the public.

1912 - The first flying boat, designed by Glenn Curtiss, makes its maiden flight at Hammondsport, New York.

1920 - The League of Nations is established as the Treaty of Versailles goes into effect.

1928 - Leon Trotsky, one of the chief architects of the Soviet Union, is ordered into exile by the Soviet government.

1929 - Tintin and his dog Snowy, cartoon creations of Belgian artist Herge (Georges Remi), make their first appearance.

1935 - Hollywood silent movie stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford are divorced.

1942 - Japanese invade Dutch East Indies in World War II.

1946 - The League of Nations is officially superseded by the United Nations.

1956 - Elvis Presley records his first songs for RCA, including subsequent No 1 hit Heartbreak Hotel.

1968 - John Gorton, government leader in the Senate, is sworn in as Australian prime minister, following the mystery disappearance of Harold Holt.

1971 - Death of French fashion designer Coco Chanel.

1997 - In Sofia, Bulgaria, tens of thousands of demonstrators demanding the end of Socialist rule storm into parliament, smashing windows and furniture and setting fire to a room.

1998 - The German government reaches an agreement to pay US$110 million to Holocaust survivors in eastern Europe.

2000 - America Online agrees to buy Time Warner for US$162 billion, making it the largest-ever corporate merger.

2006 - An inquiry finds that a team led by South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk faked two landmark papers on embryonic stem cells but did produce the world’s first cloned dog.

2010 - The Centaur, an Australian WWII hospital ship that was torpedoed and sunk by the Japanese in May 1943 off Queensland, is seen in underwater images for the first time.

2013 - More than 100 people are killed and 270 injured in several bomb blasts in Pakistan.

2016 - British singer David Bowie dies of cancer in New York, aged 69.

Today’s Birthdays:

Frank Sinatra Jr, US singer (1944-2016); Rod Stewart, British pop singer (1945-); George Foreman, US heavyweight boxing champion (1949-); Fran Walsh, New Zealand screenwriter (1959-); Jemaine Clement, New Zealand comedian of Flight of the Concordes fame (1974-).