Today in History

1688 – William of Orange’s army lands at Torbay, southern England, beginning the ‘‘Glorious Revolution’’ that led to him and wife Mary supplanting King James II.

1791 – The first grapevine in the colony of New South Wales is planted at Parramatta.

1837 – Details of the first practical shorthand system, designed by Isaac Pitman, are published for the first time.

1861 – Dunedin becomes the first New Zealand centre with a daily newspaper on publication of the first issue of the Otago Daily Times.

1920 – The League of Nations holds its first meeting, in Geneva.

1923 – Rampant inflation in Germany reaches a peak, its currency standing at four trillion marks to the US dollar.

1956 – Elvis Presley makes his movie debut in Love Me Tender.

1989 – Sachin Tendulkar, left, makes his test cricket debut for India, aged 16.

1990 – Nato and Warsaw Pact nations agree in principle on a treaty drastically slashing their stocks of conventional weapons.

2007 – Cyclone Sidr lashes the southwestern coast of Bangladesh with 240kmh winds killing at least 3100 people.

2012 – Oil giant BP agrees to plead guilty to a raft of criminal charges and pay a record US$4.5 billion in settlement for the deadly 2010 disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

2017 – Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Salvator Mundi sells for US$450.3 million at auction in New York, a world record for any artwork.

2018 – David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sells for US$90.3 million in New York, a record for a living artist.

Birthdays

William Pitt the Elder, UK politician (1708-1778); Sir Wallace (Bill) Rowling, NZ politician (1927-95); JG Ballard, UK author (1930-2009); Petula Clark, UK singer (1932-); Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Norwegianborn singer in Abba (1945-).