Today in History

Victoria Cross while serving with the Canadian Expeditionary Force at Courcelette, France, during the First World War.

In 1920, a bomb blast in New York’s financial district killed 33 people and injured 100. The case was never solved.

In 1934, the first Mickey Mouse comic strip appeared.

In 1940, the United States began compulsory military registration of all men between the ages of 21 and 35.

In 1944, the British government lifted its five-year wartime blackout of London.

In 1945, Britain accepted Japan’s formal surrender of Hong Kong following the Second World War.

In 1957, a four-month strike ended at the Aluminum Co. of Canada plant at Arvida, Que.

In 1963, Malaysia became an independent state.

In 1964, the Columbia River Treaty, signed by Canada and the United States, came into effect. Canada built three dams for water storage to produce maximum flood control and power downstream. The United States made a lump sum prepayment of $254.4 million for the power benefit in the first 30 years. The downstream benefits reverted to Canada in 1994. The agreement sparked controversy over the environmental damage caused by the dams, especially to the salmon runs.

In 1974, U.S. President Gerald Ford announced clemency for military deserters and draft dodgers.

In 1974, the first female recruit was sworn in as a member of the RCMP. Thirty-two women began training in Regina on Sept. 23, 1974, and later became the force’s first female troop. Today, women undergo the same training as male constables and are assigned duties on the same basis.

In 1978, an earthquake in northeastern Iran killed more than 25,000 people.

In 1987, at a conference in Montreal sponsored by the UN Environmental Program, 24 countries and the European Community signed an agreement to protect Earth’s fragile ozone shield. There were 49 countries who expressed their approval but for various reasons didn’t sign the protocol. The agreement called for the control and the reduction of the use of chlorofluorocarbons or CFCS.

In 1993, the federal Health Department launched the Krever inquiry to look into Canada’s tainted blood supplies. Justice Horace Krever spent four years in his investigation and made 50 recommendations when he issued his report in 1997. Among them was that there be no-fault compensation for the thousands of Canadians who were infected with HIV and Hepatitis C from tainted blood and blood products in the mid-1980s to 1990.

In 1994, a U.S. jury ordered Exxon Corp. to pay US$5 billion as punishment for causing a major oil spill at Prince William Sound, Alaska. It also ruled that Joseph Hazelwood, captain of the “Valdez’’ when it ran aground in 1989, should pay $5,000.

In 1996, the new Ontario College of Teachers, a self-regulatory professional body, was officially launched. It began operation the following spring with legislative authority to license teachers, accredit training programs and co-ordinate and monitor professional training.

In 1996, the Canada Information Office, a new $20 million-a-year federal information agency, began operation.

In 1996, Carole Lafrance of Montreal became the first woman chair of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

In 1998, for the first time, a robotic device controlled by a heart surgeon performed coronary bypass surgery at a clinic in Munich. The procedure is performed without cutting open a patient’s chest and reduces recovery time by weeks.

In 2003, MPS narrowly defeated a Canadian Alliance motion that called on Parliament to preserve the definition of marriage as “the union of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others.” (Speaker Peter Milliken had to cast the deciding vote after an amended version of the motion resulted in a perfect tie.) The Canadian Alliance introduced the motion in the House of Commons in an effort to block the legalization of gay marriage.

In 2004, the National Hockey League lockout went into effect. It lasted 310 days and forced the cancellation of the 2004-05 season. It was the first time the Stanley Cup was not awarded since 1919.

In 2004, a court decision made Manitoba the fifth jurisdiction in Canada to allow samesex marriages.

In 2004, hurricane Ivan slammed into the U.S. Gulf Coast with winds of 210 km/h, packing deadly tornadoes and a powerful punch of waves and rain that swamped communities from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, killing at least 22 people.

In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Edinburgh, Scotland, for a four-day state visit to Britain, the first state visit by a pope to the U.K. He was received by Queen Elizabeth II, symbolically significant because of the historic divide between the officially Protestant nation and the Catholic Church.

In 2011, a 1940s-era plane crashed into a box-seat area in front of the grandstand during an air show in Reno killing the pilot and 10 spectators, including a recently retired Air Canada pilot and his wife. Seventy others were injured in the deadliest air racing disaster in U.S. history.

In 2012, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency warned against the consumption of several brands of ground beef from XL Foods of Brooks, Alta., because of possible E.coli contamination. The plant later had its operating licence suspended and the recall was increased to include 1,800 products sold across North America in one of the biggest beef recalls in Canadian history. Eighteen cases of E.coli illness were later reported in four provinces.

In 2013, engineers began a successful 19hour salvage operation to gingerly right the listed cruise ship Costa Concordia onto an underwater platform. Thirty-two people died when the ship hit a reef near Italy’s Giglio Island in January 2012. (Crews later fastened huge tanks to its flanks, like water wings, to float it, and in July 2014 it began its final voyage to a scrap yard in Genoa.)

In 2013, U.S. Defence Department contractor and former navy reservist Aaron Alexis opened fire at the Washington Navy Yard, killing 12 people before he was slain in a gunbattle with police.

In 2018, Canelo Alvarez won the middleweight title in a majority decision over Gennady Golovkin to hand the longtime champion his first loss as a pro.

(The Canadian Press)