TODAY IN HISTORY: Bill Barilko’s plane crashes

In 1498, in Rome, Italian artist Michelangelo was commissioned by Pope Alexander VI to carve the Pieta Mary lamenting over the dead body of Jesus Christ, whom she holds across her lap. The work was completed in 1501.

In 1768, James Cook left Britain to explore the Pacific for the first time. He was chosen by the Royal Society of London to visit Tahiti to observe and document the planet Venus to help scientists calculate the distance of the earth from the sun. He also had a sealed envelope with orders from the Royal Navy to be opened at the end of the scientific work. The navy wanted him to find a southern continent that mapmakers thought existed and claim it for England. He visited both Australia and New Zealand and concluded neither were this southern continent.

In 1843, the first typewriter was patented.

In 1850, Louis-Philippe, the last king of France, died. Chosen as king in 1830 following the overthrow of Charles X, Louis-Philippe reigned over an 18-year period in which the country prospered. Opposition to his government grew, however, and he was forced to escape to England after abdicating during the February Revolution of 1848.

In 1861, Toronto’s Yonge Street line, the first street railway in Canada, opened.

In 1910, humanitarian and Nobel Peace laureate Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in present-day Skopje, Macedonia. The Roman Catholic nun devoted her life to the destitute and died in Calcutta, India, on Sept. 5, 1997. (On Sept. 4, 2016, Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa a saint.)

In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing American women the right to vote, was certified in effect by Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby.

In 1939, the first televised major league baseball games were shown on experimental station W2XBS. A double-header between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. (The Reds won the first game, 5-2, the Dodgers the second, 6-1.)

In 1951, Toronto Maple Leaf defenceman Bill Barilko was killed in a plane crash during a weekend fishing trip in Northern Ontario. Barilko, who was 24, had scored the Stanley Cup-winning goal in overtime against the Montreal Canadiens four months earlier. The crash site was not found until 1962, five weeks after the Leafs won their first Cup since Barilko’s goal.

In 1958, the Board of Broadcast Governors was established to regulate broadcasting in Canada, independent of the CBC. The board was replaced 10 years later by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission.

In 1961, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker opened Canada’s Hockey Hall of Fame at the Canadian National Exhibition grounds in Toronto. The hall moved into a restored bank building in downtown Toronto in 1993.

In 1977, Bill 101, the Parti Quebecois language legislation, was passed in the Quebec national assembly. The bill declared French as the official language of the province and placed restrictions on English-language education.

In 2003, a scathing U.S. government inquiry report concluded that a chunk of foam that struck “Columbia’s” wing downed the shuttle, but the root cause of the fatal crash was the culture at NASA, which for two decades had sacrificed safety in the pursuit of budget efficiency and tight schedules.

In 2006, environmentalist Elizabeth May was elected the new national leader of the Green Party.

In 2008, Major League Baseball announced umpires would be allowed to check video on home run “boundary calls” starting Aug. 27.

In 2009, authorities in California solved the 18year-old disappearance of Jaycee Lee Dugard, who appeared at a parole office with her children and the Antioch couple accused of kidnapping her when she was 11. (In April 2011, Phillip and Nancy Garrido pleaded guilty to kidnapping and rape. Philip was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison and his wife, Nancy, was given a 36-year term.)

In 2011, in B.C., 54 per cent of the 1.6 million ballots cast voted to dump the HST in a historic mail-in referendum, forcing the provincial government to revert to the PST and having to pay back $1.6 billion to Ottawa. (It took effect April 1, 2013).