Today in history

In 1942, General Bernard Montgomery was named commander of the British Eighth Army in Egypt. Under Montgomery, the Allied armies started a massive offensive from El Alamein, which pushed the Germans out of North Africa during the Second World War.

In 1944, a three-day battle began in which Major David Currie of the South Alberta Reconnaissance Regiment won the Victoria Cross. The Saskatchewan native led a successful effort to stop German troops from breaking through Canadian lines at St-lambert-surdives, France. Currie later served for 17 years as the House of Commons' sergeant at arms. He died in 1986.

In 1954, Canada and the United States agreed to jointly build the St. Lawrence Seaway.

In 1956, the Alexander Graham Bell Museum was dedicated at Baddeck, N.S.

In 1960, the first commercially-produced oral contraceptive, “Enovid 10,” was launched.

In 1964, South Africa was banned from the Olympic Games because of its apartheid policies. It returned to competition in 1992.

In 1968, more than 100 women and children were killed when a landslide swept two sightseeing buses into a river on Japan's Honshu Island.

In 1970, the top architectural award at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan, was given to the Canadian pavilion, designed by Arthur Erickson of Vancouver.

In 1981, the Kent royal commission on Canada's newspaper industry recommended that action be taken to curb concentrated ownership of Canadian newspapers. The commission said media giants should be forced to divest themselves of holdings in some regions. The Trudeau government rejected the suggestion.

In 1991, hardline Soviet communists launched a coup aimed at toppling President Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev and members of his family were effectively imprisoned until the coup collapsed three days later in the face of a popular uprising led by Boris Yeltsin. The coup attempt led to the end of the Soviet Union four months later.

In 1992, director John Sturges died of emphysema at age 82. He specialized in making action films such as “The Magnificent Seven,” “The Great Escape,” and “Bad Day at Black Rock.”

In 1997, war criminal Konrad Kalejs was deported from Canada to Australia after an immigration adjudicator ruled he had committed crimes against humanity during the Second World War.

In 1998, Winnipeg businessman Izzy Asper announced a $950-million deal to buy 11 television stations owned by WIC Western International Communications Ltd., making his Canwest Global Communications Canada's biggest private broadcaster by revenue.

In 2003, the death toll from a heat wave in France reached 10,000. (Nearly 15,000 eventually perished.)

In 2006, the Quebec government was ordered to give more than $13 million to nearly 45,000 women who had to pay for abortions. Justice Nicole Benard of Quebec Superior Court said the government misinterpreted its own medicare law by paying only a portion of the cost of abortions performed in certain women's health centres and private clinics.

In 2008, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf resigned nine years after seizing power in a coup, amid impeachment charges based on claims he violated the constitution.

In 2008, Oak Bay, a Victoria, B.C. suburb, became the first municipality in Canada to legalize low-speed electric cars.

In 2009, former president Kim Dae-jung, South Korea's most fervent champion of peace and democracy, died in Seoul at age 85. He won the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to foster reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula.

In 2010, Indian Affairs Minister John Duncan issued a government apology to Inuit families who were uprooted from their homeland in northern Quebec and moved to desolate spots in the High Arctic during the 1950s.

In 2011, the Canadian air wing in Kandahar ended formal operations after 32 months in theatre. It had continued to operate following the departure of battle group soldiers in July.

In 2016, Jamaica's Usain Bolt won a record third consecutive gold medal in the 200-metre sprint. Canada's Andre De Grasse won the silver medal, becoming the first Canadian to win two individual track medals in the same Olympics since Alex Wilson in 1932.