A LOOK BACK AT LIFE ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

— In 541, Attila the Hun laid siege to Orleans, France. — In 1497, explorer John Cabot sighted the North American coast — either Newfoundland or Cape Breton. — In 1509, Henry VIII was crowned king of England to start a tumultuous 38-year reign. Best know for his six wives, Henry split the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church in his efforts to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. He changed religious ceremonies, made himself head of the Church of England and dissolved the monasteries. Despite his efforts to leave a male heir, he sired only one son, Edward, who lived only six years after Henry. — In 1534, French explorer Jacques Cartier discovered Prince Edward Island. — In 1611, English explorer Henry Hudson, his son and several sick men were set adrift by mutineers in what is now Hudson Bay. — In 1615, Fathers Jamany and Le Caron celebrated the first Roman Catholic mass in the Quebec. — In 1812, the French army, under Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, began its advance on Moscow. — In 1813, natives and British troops ambushed an invading American force at Beaver Dams in what is now Ontario’s Niagara region. They had been warned of the pending attack by Laura Secord, who had overheard some American soldiers discussing the plan while dining at her house two days earlier. She walked 30 kilometres from Queenston to Beaver Dams to warn the British. — In 1880, O Canada, with music by Calixa Lavallee and French lyrics by Judge A.B. Routhier, was performed for the first time at the Skaters’Pavilion in Quebec City. — In 1904, King Edward VII allowed the NorthWest Mounted Police (now the RCMP) to use the prefix Royal. — In 1918, airmail service was inaugurated in Canada with a biplane flight from Montreal to Toronto by Royal Air Force Capt. Brian Peck. — In 1944, RCAF Flight Lieutenant David Hornell won a posthumous Victoria Cross after his antisubmarine patrol plane tangled with a German Uboat near the Shetland Islands, off Scotland. Hornell and his crew sank the sub with depth charges but had to ditch their plane. They were rescued the next day from a life raft, but Hornell died of hypothermia. — In 1957, Front Page Challenge made its debut. Intended as a 13-week summer replacement program, continued on CBC until 1995. — In 1968, a Montreal St-Jean Baptiste Day celebration exploded into a riot in front of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Around 300 people were arrested and 130 were treated for injuries.Trudeau refused to leave the reviewing stand, even after a thrown bottle narrowly missed his head. He led the Liberals to victory in the next day’s federal election. — In 1987, the Montreal Alouettes football club folded. The franchise was revived in 1997. — In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court set aside three of Conrad Black’s mail fraud convictions and sent them back to a lower court.The ruling did not cover his conviction for obstruction of justice that carried a six-and-a-half year sentence.