Today in History

Today in History for July 14:

On this date:

In 1430, Joan of Arc, taken prisoner by the Burgundians in May, was handed over to Pierre Cauchon, the bishop of Beauvais.

In 1789, a Paris mob stormed the notorious Bastille prison and released seven political prisoners during the French Revolution. Bastille Day is now a national holiday in France.

In 1865, a team led by British mountain climber Edward Whymper became the first to reach the summit of the Matterhorn, on the Swiss-italian border. Four members of the team fell to their deaths during the descent when a rope broke.

In 1867, Alfred Nobel demonstrated dynamite for the first time at a quarry in Redhill, Surrey, England.

In 1881, American outlaw gunfighter William Bonney -- better known as “Billy the Kid” -- was shot to death by Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

In 1915, Sir Robert Borden became the first Canadian prime minister to attend a British cabinet meeting.

In 1924, former U.S. president Gerald Ford was born. He died Dec. 26, 2006.

In 1933, Robert Bourassa was born in Montreal. He served as Quebec’s premier from 1970-76 and again from 1985-94. He died of cancer in 1996.

In 1933, “Popeye the Sailor Man” appeared in his first cartoon.

In 1933, the National Socialist -- or Nazi -- party was declared the only legal political group in Germany. The proclamation paved the way for the establishment of Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship, which ruled until 1945. Hitler enforced the party’s policies of extreme nationalism and antisemitism through brown-shirted storm troopers, his elite SS Guard and the Gestapo, the secret police.

In 1960, British researcher Jane Goodall arrived at the Gombe Stream Reserve in the Tanganyika Territory (in present-day Tanzania) to begin her famous study of chimpanzees in the wild.

In 1965, “Mariner 4” circled Mars, taking the first close-up photographs of the red planet.

In 1966, eight student nurses were murdered in Chicago by Richard Speck. Sentenced to eight consecutive life prison terms, Speck died in 1991.

In 1968, a 24-day strike by St. Lawrence Seaway workers ended. The 1,200 members of the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Transport and General Workers ratified an agreement calling for a 19 per cent wage increase over three years.

In 1970, the freighter Eastcliffe Hall sank in the St. Lawrence River off Chrysler’s Park and Marina, with the loss of nine lives. An inquiry later blamed the accident on the drunken captain and the first mate.

In 1972, Donald

Macdonald, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, was elected the first noneuropean president of the 91-country International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.

In 1976, the House of Commons passed a bill to abolish the death penalty. After debating the issue for more than two months, the bill was approved by a 130-124 vote. At the time, there were 11 men on death row awaiting the noose, although the last hangings had occurred in 1962.

In 1978, Soviet dissident Anatoly Shcharansky was convicted of treasonous espionage and anti-soviet agitation, and was sentenced to 13 years at hard labour. He was released in 1986.

In 1978, the Inuit agreed to take 95,000 square kilometres of the western Arctic and $45 million in return for renouncing all claims to about 500,000 square kilometres, including the resource-rich Mackenzie River Delta.

In 1980, 23 patients died when fire swept through a nursing home in Mississauga, Ont.

In 1995, the Red Cross began recalling plasma products possibly contaminated with Creutzfeldt-jakob disease. It was Canada’s largest-ever recall of blood products.

In 1996, American driver Jeff Krosnoff and Calgary race marshal Gary Avrin were killed when Krosnoff’s car crashed during the 11th running of the Molson Indy in Toronto. Another marshal was injured.

In 1996, Hilda Watson, the first woman to lead a political party in Canada -- Yukon’s Progressive Conservative party in 1978 -- died in Haines Junction, Yukon at age 74.

In 1999, Major league umpires voted to resign Sept. 2 and not work the final month of the season. The strategy collapsed, with baseball owners accepting the resignations of 22 umpires.

In 2000, a tornado hit a campground at Pine Lake near Red Deer, Alta., where nearly 1,000 people from across Canada and around the world were holidaying. Eleven people died, including a twoyear-old child from Brampton, Ont. A 12th person died in hospital a month later.

In 2000, a Miami jury ruled five big U.S. tobacco companies must pay US$145 billion in punitive damages to a sick smoker in Florida. A circuit court judge upheld the award on Nov. 6.

In 2014, the Church of England overwhelmingly voted to allow women to become bishops, marking a 20-year process since ordination of the first female priests.

In 2015, after long, fractious negotiations, world powers and Iran struck an historic deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars in relief from international sanctions. The agreement

was aimed at averting the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and another U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. (In May 2018, President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the accord and abruptly restored harsh sanctions.)

In 2016, a large truck plowed through revellers gathered for Bastille Day fireworks in the French Riviera city of Nice, killing 85 people and injuring 300 others as it bore down for nearly two kilometres along the famed waterfront Promenade des Anglais. The carnage ended when the terrorist, a 31-year-old Tunisian-born Nice resident, died in a shootout with police.

In 2018, Angelique Kerber claimed her first Wimbledon women’s singles title with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over seventime champion Serena Williams, leaving Kerber just the French Open title to complete a career Grand Slam.

In 2018, English Premier League star Wayne Rooney made his Major League Soccer debut as a second-half substitute and assisted on the third goal in D.C. United’s 3-1 victory over the visiting Vancouver Whitecaps in the first game played at Audi Field.

In 2019, Simon Pagenaud (SEEMOHN’ Pah’-jehnoh) won the

Honda Indy for the first time in his career. Pagenaud topped the field on the 2.89-kilometre, 11-turn street course that winds around Exhibition Place on Toronto’s lakefront. It was a nearperfect weekend for the Frenchman, who started from the pole.

In 2019, Novak Djokovic (Noh’-vak Joh’-kuh-vich) has become the first man in 71 years to win Wimbledon after facing match points in the final, coming back to beat Roger Federer in an unprecedented fifth-set tiebreaker. The top-seeded Serb outlasted Federer 7-6 (5), 1-6, 7-6 (4), 4-6, 13-12 (3) in a match that lasted nearly five hours to win his fifth championship at the All England Club and second in a row. The triumph earned Djokovic his 16th Grand Slam trophy, moving him closer to the only men ahead of him in tennis history: Federer with 20, and Rafael Nadal with 18. This was the first year Wimbledon has used deciding-set tiebreakers.

(The Canadian Press)