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.

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 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 after a 139-hour trip. The first eastbound train left the next day.

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

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 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 1995, the bell was recovered from the ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank on Nov. 10, 1975, in Lake Superior.