A LOOK BACK AT LIFE ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

— In 1629, Spain’s King Philip III sent England’s King Charles I an elephant and five camels. Included were instructions that the elephant be given a gallon of wine each day. — In 1792, John Graves Simcoe was sworn in as the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, now Ontario. — In 1822, Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the leading English romantic poets, drowned off Leghorn while sailing. — In 1883, workers laid a record 9.6-kilometres of Canadian Pacific Railway track in one day. — In 1889, John L. Sullivan beat Jake Kilgrain in the 75th round of a heavyweight boxing title fight in Richburg, Miss. It was the last championship bout fought without gloves. — In 1889, the Wall Street Journal was first published. — In 1892, a fire in St. John's, Nfld., left 10,000 people homeless. — In 1896, Liberal Leader Sir Wilfrid Laurier became the first French-Canadian prime minister. During his 15 years in office, Laurier led the country through a period of prosperity aided by an aggressive immigration policy. —In 1906, Winnipeg started offering Sunday streetcar service despite church opposition. — In 1912, American Jim Thorpe replied, “Thanks, King,” when told by Swedish King Gustav at the Olympic Games in Stockholm that he was the greatest athlete in the world. Thorpe won both the pentathlon and decathlon at the Games. But he was stripped of his medals the next year after it was learned he had played pro baseball. — In 1917, artist Tom Thomson drowned during a canoe trip in Ontario’s Algonquin Park. Born in 1877, Thomson was one of the most brilliant painters in Canadian history. —In 1947, demolition began in New York to make way for the headquarters of the United Nations. — In 1950, American General Douglas MacArthur was named commander-in-chief of United Nations forces in Korea. — In 1965, a bomb sent a Canadian Pacific Airlines plane crashing into B.C.’s Gustafsen Lake, killing 52 people. — In 1974, the Liberals under Pierre Trudeau won 141 of 264 seats in a federal election. — In 1985, at age 17, Boris Becker became the youngest player and the first German to win the Wimbledon men's singles title. — In 1989, Carlos Menem became Argentina's president in the country's first transfer of power from one democratically elected civilian leader to another in six decades. — In 1994, the world's longest-ruling Communist leader, Kim Il Sung of North Korea, died at 82.