TODAY IN HISTORY: Space dogs survive orbit
In 1099, the armies of the First Crusade defeated the Saracens at the “Battle of Ascalon,” a historic Palestinian city on the Mediterranean coast, one month after they had captured Jerusalem.
In 1561, Mary Queen of Scots returned from France to her homeland and became the Roman Catholic monarch of a country rapidly becoming Presbyterian.
In 1692, five women were hanged for witchcraft in Salem, Mass. Their trials had begun after a book by Cotton Mather, a Congressionalist pastor in Boston, stirred up the clergy and their parishioners following its publication in 1689. The hysteria in Salem was the basis for American playwright Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.” In 1693, the governor of Massachusetts ordered the release of all those held on witchcraft charges.
In 1809, the first Canadian-built steamboat, “The Accommodation,” was launched on the St. Lawrence River at Montreal. Owned by the brewer and banker John Molson, it carried 10 passengers to Quebec City from Montreal on its maiden voyage, which took place at the end of October.
In 1914, Canada declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary at the start of the First World War.
In 1921, “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry was born.
In 1942, 5,000 Canadian troops, supported by the British, carried out the disastrous raid on the French port of Dieppe. It was termed a dress rehearsal for the eventual invasion of Nazi-occupied France. For Canada, it was the costliest day of the Second World War. More than 3,300 troops were killed, wounded or captured. Despite the losses, many military strategists regarded the raid as a valuable lesson for later seaborne landings. Two Canadians and one British soldier won Victoria Crosses that day.
In 1960, two dogs, Belka and Strelka, survived an Earth orbit aboard a Soviet “Sputnik” spacecraft, becoming the first living creatures to circle the Earth and come back alive.
In 1977, comedian Groucho Marx died in Los Angeles. He was 86.
In 1980, a Saudi Arabian jetliner made a fiery emergency landing at the Riyadh airport; 301 people were killed.
In 1982, Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the second woman to be launched into space.
In 1998, the McDonald’s restaurant in Squamish, B.C., became the first outlet of the fast-food giant in North America to be unionized as the CAW was certified. Just a year later, employees voted to oust the union.
In 2003, 23 people, including two Canadian aid workers and the UN’s special envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, were killed in a truck bombing outside UN headquarters in Baghdad. About 100 people were wounded. It was the
In 2004, Google began trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market, ending the day up US$15.34 to US$100.34. It offered 19 million shares and raised US$1.6 billion.
In 2005, in the first of thousands of lawsuits against drug giant Merck & Co. in United States and Canada, a U.S. jury awarded US$253 million to the family of man who died after taking the painkiller Vioxx. (Texas caps on punitive damages reduced that figure to about $26 million; a Texas court overturned the verdict in May 2008.)
In 2012, Tony Scott, director of such Hollywood hits as “Top Gun,” “Days of Thunder” and “Beverly Hills Cop II,” died after jumping from a towering suspension bridge spanning Los Angeles harbour. He was 68.
In 2015, hackers leaked millions of email addresses of clients of adultery website AshleyMadison.com after it refused to bow to their demands to close the site. Hundreds of accounts were connected to federal, provincial and municipal workers across Canada, as well as to the RCMP and the military. A second data dump occurred the next day.
In 2017, Dick Gregory, the comedian and activist and who broke racial barriers in the 1960s and used his humour to spread messages of social justice and nutritional health, died of a severe bacterial infection. He was 84.