IT HAPPENED ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

— In 1674, the second census of Canada showed a population of 6,705. — In 1897, the world officially learned of the Yukon's Klondike gold strike when miners arrived by ship in San Francisco with suitcases and boxes full of gold. Thousands began to book passages north after the miners spread tales of fortunes waiting to be made. Gold had been discovered the previous August on a tributary of the Klondike River. — In 1917, the Royal Family adopted the name Windsor, giving up all German titles and the dynastic names of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. — In 1918, the last Russian Czar Nicholas II, along with his entire family and their servants, were shot by the Bolsheviks in the cellar of their residence in Ekaterinburg. — In 1936, the Spanish civil war began with an army revolt. — In 1938, pilot Douglas Corrigan took off from New York for a flight to California. He landed in Dublin, Ireland, and earned the nickname “Wrong-way Corrigan.” — In 1955, Arco, India, became the first community in the world to derive all power from atomic energy. — In 1955, Disneyland opened in Anaheim, Calif. — In 1959, the Canadian government formed the Emergency Measures Organization to deal with the possibility of a nuclear attack. — In 1959, in Tanzania, a skull estimated to be 1.75 million years old was uncovered. The so-called “missing link” established Africa, rather than Asia, as the location of the beginnings of homo sapiens. — In 1973, a coup in Afghanistan overthrew King Mohammed Zahir Shah. — In 1976, Canada's first Olympic Games opened in Montreal. — In 1981, 113 people died when two concrete sky bridges in a hotel courtyard in Kansas City, Mo., collapsed onto a ballroom full of dancers.