TODAY IN HISTORY: Lennon says, “The Beatles more popular than Jesus”

In 1586, a plot to kill Queen Elizabeth I was uncovered. Anthony Babington, supporter of Mary, Queen of Scots, planned to kill Elizabeth and her ministers and assume power with the aid of English Roman Catholics and Spanish soldiers. The plot was discovered when letters to Mary were intercepted and one conspirator confessed. Babington and six others were executed for high treason.

In 1769, Prince Edward Island, then called the Island of St. Jean, was made a separate colony from Nova Scotia.

In 1821, the “Saturday Evening Post” magazine was founded.

In 1870, the Red Cross Society was founded in Britain.

In 1892, English medical missionary Wilfred Grenfell arrived in Labrador. For 42 years he laboured among the fisherfolk, helping build hospitals and orphanages as well as churches.

In 1892, Andrew Borden and his wife Abby were the victims of an axe murderer in Fall River, Mass. Their daughter Lizzie was acquitted of the slayings but was immortalized in the rhyme, “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks. And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.”

In 1900, Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, was born. In 1923, she married Prince Albert, the Duke of York, who became King George VI in 1936. They earned the love and respect of millions of Britons when they refused to leave London during the Nazi Blitz. In the early days of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler described her as the most dangerous woman in Europe for her effect on British morale.

In 1914, Canada automatically entered the First World War when Britain declared war on Germany after the Germans invaded Belgium.

In 1914, British Columbia acquired its own navy for a few days when the government of Premier Richard McBride paid $1.5 million to a Seattle shipyard for two submarines. The submarines were intended to protect Vancouver and Victoria from German cruisers in the Pacific Ocean. On Aug. 7, the federal government took over the submarines for the British admiralty.

In 1936, Toronto runner Phil Edwards became the first Canadian to win five Olympic medals. Edwards added the 800-metre bronze medal at the Berlin Games to his three bronzes in 1932 — in the 800, 1,500 and four-by-400 relay — and his 1928 bronze in the same relay.

In 1939, Gen. Francisco Franco’s party was proclaimed the sole government in Spain.

In 1942, tea and coffee war rationing went into effect in Canada.

In 1944, Nazi police raided the secret annex of a house in Amsterdam and arrested eight people, including 14-year-old Anne Frank. The diary Anne kept while in hiding gained international fame after her death in 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

In 1944, Calgary-born Royal Air Force Squadron-Leader Ian Bazalgette won a posthumous Victoria Cross. He died during a successful bombing raid on German positions in France.

In 1945, Byron Nelson won the last of his record 11 consecutive victories on the PGA Tour, taking the Canadian Open in Toronto.

In 1952, fire broke out in the library of Parliament. Thousands of books in the library, one of Canada’s most valuable collections, were damaged by water that was used to douse the fire. The building had to be completely renovated and it was not officially reopened until 1956.

In 1960, the Commons approved the Canadian Bill of Rights. It guaranteed freedom of speech, religion and the press — provisions eventually enshrined in the constitution’s Charter of Rights in 1982. It was given royal assent Aug. 10.

In 1966, John Lennon’s comment that “The Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ” was widely reported in North America. The statement, actually made to a reporter several months earlier, caused a public outcry and several bonfires of “Beatle” records were burned. Lennon later apologized.

In 1983, Bettino Craxi took office as Italy’s first socialist prime minister.

In 1983, in the “Fowl Ball” incident, New York Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield was charged by Toronto police after killing a seagull with a thrown baseball. A charge of unnecessary cruelty to an animal was later dropped.

In 1984, Alex Baumann of Sudbury, Ont., won his second swimming gold medal at the Los Angeles Olympics. Baumann added the 200-metre individual medley title to the 400-metre individual medley he won five days earlier. The 20-year-old set world records in both races.

In 1997, Jeanne Calment, listed by the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest person in the world, died in Arles, France, at age 122.