Today in history

In 1609, explorer Samuel de Champlain sailed into what was later named Lake Champlain in New York.

In 1631, the world's first employment agency opened in Paris.

In 1634, Trois-rivieres, Que., was founded by a fur trader known as La Violette, who was later flogged for selling liquor to natives.

In 1648, Antoine Daniel, Jesuit missionary to the Hurons, was murdered by the Iroquois.

In 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia by representatives of all 13 American colonies. It incorporated the “Theory of Natural Rights” -- stating that “all men are created equal” -- that they possess the “inalienable rights” of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

In 1802, the United States Military Academy officially opened at West Point, N.Y.

In 1816, distiller-businessman Hiram Walker was born in East Douglas, Mass.. His Windsor, Ont., company introduced Canadian Club Whisky in 1884. Walker died in 1899. In 1817, work began on the Erie Canal. In 1848, the “Communist Manifesto,” written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, was first published.

In 1849, four Montreal English newspapers supported the Annexation Association, a group of Tories proposing that Canada join the U.S.

In 1862, English clergyman Charles L. Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, began working during a boat trip on the story of “Alice in Wonderland” for his friend Alice Pleasance Liddell.

In 1870, James Moffatt, the Scottish New Testament scholar, was born. Moffatt translated the New (1913) and Old (1924) Testaments into the colloquial English of his day. They were first published together in 1935.

In 1884, France presented the Statue of Liberty to the United States.

In 1886, Cree Chief Poundmaker died shortly after being released from prison. He had served one year of a three-year sentence for felony and treason for his role in the Northwest Rebellion of 1885.

In 1886, the first Canadian Pacific Railway passenger train from Montreal reached Port Moody, B.C., after a 139-hour trip. The first eastbound train left the next day.

In 1892, Canadian painter Kenneth Forbes was born in Toronto.

In 1898, 560 people died near Sable Island, off Nova Scotia, when a French ship and an English ship collided.

In 1901, a civil government was established in the Philippines by the United States, with William Howard Taft as governor general. In 1904, construction of the Panama Canal began. In 1919, Jack Dempsey won the world heavyweight boxing title by defeating Jess Willard in Toledo, Ohio.

In 1924, Caesar Gardini first concocted the salad which bears his name at his restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico. He mixed romaine lettuce, coddled egg, Parmesan cheese, Worcestershire sauce and garlic-flavoured croutons for a party of Hollywood movie stars.

In 1934, Marie Curie, the Polish-born discoverer of radium and two-time Nobel Prize winner, died.

In 1937, the first successful helicopter flight was conducted in Bremen, Germany.

In 1939, in a farewell speech at New York's Yankee Stadium, Lou Gehrig called himself “the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.” The longtime Yankee first baseman died two years later of the degenerative disease that bears his name.

In 1940, the Jehovah's Witnesses were declared an illegal organization under wartime regulations. The movement, founded in Pittsburgh in the 1870s, spread to Canada a few years later. During both world wars, Witnesses were persecuted because of their evangelical fervour, dislike of patriotic exercises and conscientious objection to military service.

In 1945, Canadian troops entered Berlin as part of the British garrison force following the Second World War.

In 1946, the independent Republic of the Philippines was created, bringing to an end almost half a century of U.S. control. In 1965, Cannington Manor near Carlyle, Sask., an agricultural college for the sons of wealthy Englishmen established in the 1880's, opened as a provincial historic park.

In 1976, Israeli commandos made a pre-dawn raid on Uganda's Entebbe airport, freeing more than 100 Israeli hostages held there by terrorists following the hijacking of an Air France jet. Killed during the raid were three hostages, all seven hijackers, a number of Ugandan soldiers and one Israeli commando.

In 1987, a French court convicted former Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie of crimes against humanity during the German occupation of France during the Second World War. Barbie, known as the “Butcher of Lyon,” received a life sentence and died in prison in 1991.

In 1989, federal Tory cabinet minister Bernard Valcourt was injured while motorcycling in New Brunswick, his home province. Later charged with impaired driving, Valcourt was dropped from cabinet.

In 1991, at the first legal meeting of the African National Congress, Nelson Mandela was elected president.

In 1995, Prime Minister John Major was re-elected leader of Britain's ruling Conservative Party.

In 1995, the bell was recovered from the ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank on Nov. 10, 1975, in Lake Superior with the loss of 29 lives.

In 1997, the “Mars Pathfinder” explorer bounced to a safe landing on the Red planet. Over the next week, “Sojourner” transmitted data proving liquid water -- essential for life -- once existed on the surface of Mars.

In 1999, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung arrived in Ottawa for a three-day visit to Canada.

In 2004, a 20-tonne slab of granite, inscribed to honour “the enduring spirit of freedom,” was laid at the World Trade Center site as the cornerstone of the Freedom Tower skyscraper that will replace the destroyed twin towers.

In 2005, Karla Homolka was released from prison after serving her 12-year sentence for the sex-slayings of two teenagers.

In 2007, six Canadian soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were killed when their armoured vehicle was demolished by a powerful roadside bomb 20 kilometres southwest of Kandahar city, Afghanistan, bringing the Afghan mission death toll to 66. The soldiers were Matthew Dawe, Cole Bartsch, Lane Watkins, Colin Bason, Jordan Anderson, and Jefferson Francis.

In 2008, Telecom giant BCE Inc. said it had signed a final agreement with the group headed by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan to take the company private in the largest transaction of its kind in the world, at $51.7 billion. The deal was challenged by bondholders, who fought it all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. The top court approved it on June 20, removing one substantial barrier.

In 2009, Master Cpl. Charles-philippe Michaud died after being wounded on June 23 in a roadside bomb blast southwest of Kandahar City in the Panjwaii district, Afghanistan. Michaud was serving with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal 22nd Regiment (also known as the Van Doos), based at CFB Valcartier, near Quebec City.

In 2009, the Statue of Liberty's crown was reopened to tourists for the first time since Sept. 11, 2001.

In 2010, the Queen presented the Queen's Plate trophy to jockey Rosa da Silva in the winner's circle after staking “Big Red Mike” to a wire-to-wire victory in the $1 million race at Woodbine Racetrack. It was the Queen's fourth appearance at the Toronto track, but first since 1997.

In 2012, physicists at the world's biggest atom smasher in Geneva hailed the discovery of “the missing cornerstone of physics,” cheering the apparent end of a decades-long quest for a new subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, or “God particle,” which could help explain why all matter has mass and crack open a new realm of physics. (Physicists confirmed in March 2013 that it was a version of the long-sought subatomic particle.)

In 2016, the final leg of the five-year voyage ended when NASA'S solar-powered Juno spacecraft fired its main rocket engine and gracefully slipped into orbit around Jupiter.