Today in history

1895: Death of Thomas Henry Huxley, British biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his defence of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and the person who coined the term 'agnosticism'

• 1895: Death of Thomas Henry Huxley, British biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his defence of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and the person who coined the term 'agnosticism'.

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• 1900: Birth of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry French aviator and author whose most famous book The Little Prince is a poetic illustrated tale in which he imagined himself to be stranded in the desert where he met The Little Prince, a young boy from a tiny asteroid. He was one of the pioneers of international postal flights, an aviator in the days when aircraft had few instruments and he later complained that those who flew the more advanced aircraft were more like accountants than pilots. He was also an inspiration for Indian pioneer aviator and industrialist JRD Tata and gifted Tata a copy of his book The Little Prince.

• 1995: Microsoft agreed to pay IBM a multimillion-dollar licensing fee for many basic software functions. The one-time fee would cover more than one thousand patents IBM held on software basics, such as the movement of a cursor based on the tab key. This was the first time IBM had demanded fees for its software patents.

• 1995: The space shuttle Atlantis and the Russian space station Mir docked, forming the largest man-made satellite ever to orbit the earth.

• 1997: Hakan Sukur of Turkey scored the fastest goal in a soccer World Cup when he scored in 11 seconds in the match against South Korea to decide third place.