TODAY IN HISTORY: “Summer in the City” tops the charts

In 1521, Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortez captured present-day Mexico City from the Aztec Indians. In 1792, French revolutionaries imprisoned the royal family.

In 1886, Sir John A. Macdonald drove in the last spike of the Esquimault-Nanaimo railway in British Columbia. In 1910, Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, died in London at the age of 90.

In 1955, the Canso Causeway, linking Cape Breton Island to the Nova Scotia mainland, was opened. Built at an estimated cost of $22 million, the causeway took three years to complete.

In 1960, the first group of Canadian Army Signallers assigned to UN troops in the Congo left Canada. In 1961, the city of Berlin was divided by a concrete wall as East Germany sealed off the border between the Eastern and Western sectors in a move to control emigration to the West. The wall snaked 166 kilometres around the enclave of West Berlin and was backed by floodlights, barbed wire, trip wires, minefields and scattered guns. On Nov. 9, 1989, East German authorities unexpectedly opened the borders. The wall was then dismantled and the two Germanys were unified.

In 1966, "Summer in the City" by The Lovin’ Spoonful was the No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It was the group’s only No. 1 record although lead singer John Sebastian would hit No. 1 as a solo artist in 1976 with the theme song to “Welcome Back Kotter.”

In 1980, Canadian oceanographer Joseph MacInnis discovered the sunken yet well-preserved wreck of HMS Breadalbane. The three-masted, Scottish-built merchant ship had been crushed in ice at Beechey Island in the Arctic Ocean in 1853. It was the world's northernmost known shipwreck.

In 1992, a Manitoba court ruled that mandatory Christian prayer in the province's schools was unconstitutional. Manitoba was Canada's last bastion of compulsory school prayer.

In 1993, at least 114 people died when a 134-room hotel collapsed in Thailand, 250 kilometres northeast of Bangkok.

In 1995, New York Yankees legend and Baseball Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle died of cancer at age 63.

In 2011, the 102-year-old Stormdale Covered Bridge near Hartland, N.B., was completely destroyed after a stolen truck was parked on the span and set ablaze.

In 2013, a Senate committee ordered Sen. Pamela Wallin to pay back an additional $83,000 in ineligible travel expense claims, on top of the $38,000 she had already repaid. After further reviews, she had to reimburse the Senate a grand total of $138,970.

In 2019, the U.S. Justice Department announced two guards assigned to watch Jeffrey Epstein the night he apparently killed himself in a New York jail had been placed on leave and the warden had been removed. The announcement came amid mounting evidence that the chronically understaffed Metropolitan Correctional Center may have bungled its responsibility to keep the 66-year-old Epstein from harming himself while he awaited trial on charges of sexually abusing teenage girls. Epstein was taken off a suicide watch in July for reasons that had not been explained, and was not checked for hours even though he was supposed to have been checked every 30 minutes. In 2021, the federal government announced a shift in its position on vaccine mandates. Ottawa would now require federal employees, workers in federally regulated industries and many travellers to be vaccinated against COVID-19.