TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

Jan. 10, 1863

The London Underground had its beginnings as the Metropolitan, the world’s first underground passenger railway, opened to the public with service between Paddington and Farringdon Street.

ALSO ON THIS DATE

1776

Thomas Paine anonymously published his influential pamphlet, “Common Sense,” which argued for American independence from British rule.

1860

The Pemberton Mill in Lawrence, Mass., collapsed and caught fire, killing up to 145 people, mostly female workers from Scotland and Ireland.

1861

Florida became the third state to secede from the Union.

1870

John D. Rockefeller incorporated Standard Oil.

1920

The League of Nations was established as the Treaty of Versailles went into effect.

1946

The first General Assembly of the United Nations convened in London. The first manmade contact with the moon was made as radar signals transmitted by the U.S. Army Signal Corps were bounced off the lunar surface.

1967

President Lyndon B. Johnson, in his State of the Union address, asked Congress to impose a surcharge on both corporate and individual income taxes to help pay for his “Great Society” programs as well as the war in Vietnam. That same day, Massachusetts Republican Edward W. Brooke, the first black person elected to the U.S. Senate by popular vote, took his seat.

1984

The United States and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations for the first time in more than a century.

1994

President Bill Clinton, attending a NATO summit meeting in Brussels, Belgium, announced completion of an agreement to remove all longrange nuclear missiles from the former Soviet republic of Ukraine.