TODAY IN HISTORY: Winfield’s fowl ball

In 1983, in the “Fowl Ball” incident, New York Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield was charged by Toronto police after killing a seagull with a thrown baseball. A charge of unnecessary cruelty to an animal was later dropped.

In 1586, a plot to kill Queen Elizabeth I was uncovered. Anthony Babington, supporter of Mary, Queen of Scots, planned to kill Elizabeth and her ministers and assume power with the aid of English Roman Catholics and Spanish soldiers. The plot was discovered when letters to Mary were intercepted and one conspirator confessed. Babington and six others were executed for high treason.

In 1892, English medical missionary Wilfred Grenfell arrived in Labrador. For 42 years he laboured among the fisherfolk, helping build hospitals and orphanages as well as churches.

In 1892, Andrew Borden and his wife Abby were the victims of an axe murderer in Fall River, Mass. Their daughter Lizzie was acquitted of the slayings but was immortalized in the rhyme, “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks. And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.”

In 1914, Canada automatically entered the First World War when Britain declared war on Germany after the Germans invaded Belgium.

In 1914, British Columbia acquired its own navy for a few days when the government of Premier Richard McBride paid

$1.5 million to a Seattle shipyard for two submarines. The submarines were intended to protect Vancouver and Victoria from German cruisers in the Pacific Ocean. On Aug. 7, the federal government took over the submarines for the British admiralty.

In 1936, Toronto runner Phil Edwards became the first Canadian to win five Olympic medals. Edwards added the 800-metre bronze medal at the Berlin Games to his three bronzes in 1932 — in the 800, 1,500 and four-by-400 relay — and his 1928 bronze in the same relay.

In 1939, Gen. Francisco Franco’s party was proclaimed the sole government in Spain.

In 1942, tea and coffee war rationing went into effect in Canada.

In 1944, Nazi police raided the secret annex of a house in Amsterdam and arrested eight people, including 14-year-old Anne Frank. The diary Anne kept while in hiding gained international fame after her death in 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

In 1966, John Lennon’s comment that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ was widely reported in North America. The statement, actually made to a reporter several months earlier, caused a public outcry and several bonfires of Beatle records were burned. Lennon later apologized.

In 1986, Expo chairman Jim Pattison gave retiring B.C. Premier Bill Bennett John Lennon's $2.3 million rainbow-coloured Rolls Royce. Bennett commented — “I guess we'll have to have it repainted.” Canadian singer-arranger-composer David Foster played his first solo concert at a tribute to Bennett.

In 1990, three bandits, armed with handguns and a phoney hand grenade, made off with $300,000 in merchandising receipts from a “New Kids on the Block” concert at Montreal's Olympic Stadium. Police considered the holdup an inside job because the robbers had security passes to reach a backstage area.

In 1997, Jeanne Calment, listed by the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest person in the world, died in Arles, France, at age 122.

In 2019, a gunman in body armour opened fire in a popular entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio, killing nine people, including his own sister, and wounded dozens of others. The gunman — 24-yearold Connor Betts — was killed by police within 30 seconds of the first shots being fired. Police said there was nothing to suggest there was a bias motive behind the crime.