IT HAPPENED ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

— In 1783, Britain declared a formal cessation of hostilities with its former colony, the United States. — In 1789, George Washington was elected the first president of the United States. — In 1846, Mormon settlers left Nauvoo, Mo., to begin the settlement of the American West. — In 1858, gold was discovered along B.C.’s Fraser River, attracting thousands to Canada's West Coast. — In 1866, Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science, is alleged to have cured her injuries by opening a Bible. — In 1905, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian and Lutheran pastor who joined a plot to kill Adolf Hitler and was later arrested and hanged by the Nazis, was born in the former German city of Breslau, now Wroclaw, Poland. — In 1915, the first Canadian contingent landed in Europe during the First World War. — In 1938, German dictator Adolf Hitler assumed personal command of his country's army. — In 1945, the Allied leaders met at Yalta, in the Crimea, to plan the final defeat of Nazi Germany. The conference included Britain’s Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt of the U.S. and the Soviet Union’s Josef Stalin. — In 1947, the lowest recorded temperature in Canadian history occurred at Snag, Yukon, –62.8 C. — In 1974, newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. — In 1997, a Los Angeles-area civil jury found O.J. Simpson criminally responsible for the 1994 murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. The jury later ordered the former football star to pay the victims’ families $32.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. — In 1998, B.C. became the first jurisdiction in North America to give gay and lesbian couples the same privileges as heterosexuals for child support, custody and access. — In 2005, Atlanta Thrashers star Dany Heatley was sentenced to three years probation and ordered to give 150 speeches about the dangers of speeding after pleading guilty in the death of teammate Dan Snyder in a car accident. Heatley pleaded guilty to four of the six charges he faced. In exchange for the plea, the only felony charge — first-degree vehicular homicide — was dropped, along with a charge of reckless driving. — In 2012, Florence Green, last known surviving veteran of the First World War, died at age 110. She served with the Women's Royal Air Force as a waitress at an air base in eastern England. — In 2013, the Royal Canadian Mint officially ceased distribution of the penny to Canada's financial institutions. — In 2013, using DNA from a direct descendent of his eldest sister, scientists confirmed that remains unearthed under a parking lot in the city of Leicester in 2012 were those of England’s King Richard III, who was killed in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field. The DNA came from Canadian Michael Ibsen. — In 2014, RCMP charged former senator Mac Harb and suspended senator Patrick Brazeau with fraud and breach of trust in relation to their travel and living expense claims. In 2016, the Crown withdrew the charges against both.