Bohemian Rhapsody
In 1890, Chief Sitting Bull, whose Sioux forces had wiped out Gen. George Custer and his army at the “Battle of Little Big Horn” in Montana in 1876, died in North Dakota after being shot by police trying to arrest him. He was born in 1831 along the Grand River in South Dakota.
In 1944, a plane carrying bandleader Glenn Miller, a U.S. army major, disappeared over the English Channel during a flight to Paris. He was 40. The British Defence Ministry said 41 years later, in 1985, that Miller’s plane was probably accidentally hit by explosives jettisoned from British fighters.
In 1955, Johnny Cash’s first version of “Folsom Prison Blues” was released by Sun Records. He re-recorded the song in 1968 as part of the album he made live at Folsom. It was one of Cash’s most popular LPs.
In 1991, Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury made British pop history with a chart-topping single three weeks after he died of AIDS. The band’s 1975 single “Bohemian Rhapsody” was re-released as a tribute to Mercury, and proceeds from its sale went to AIDS research. It was the first time in Britain that a re-released former No. 1 regained the top spot. In February 1992, it was featured in “Wayne’s World” and would rise to No. 2 on the American Billboard charts. The studio had originally wanted to use a Guns N’ Roses song, but star Mike Myers threatened to quit the production unless “Bohemian Rhapsody” was featured. Mercury saw a rough cut of the head-banging scene weeks prior to his death and he approved of the song’s use.
In 1993, Montreal synchronized swimmer Sylvie Frechette was finally awarded an Olympic gold medal. At the 1992 Games in Barcelona, she was the victim of a judging error when an official pressed the wrong key. Canada appealed the mark after Frechette was awarded silver. The original gold-medal winner, American Kristen Babb-Sprague (with of Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Ed Sprague), got to keep her gold medal.
In 1994, the million-hectare Tarshenshini-Alsek wilderness in the northwestern corner of British Columbia was declared a world heritage site by UNESCO. Together with adjacent wilderness preserves in Alaska and the Yukon, the remote corner is now the largest international world heritage site in the world at 8.5 million hectares.
In 2006, hurricane-force winds knocked out power in southern British Columbia, leaving about a quarter-million people in the dark. An estimated 3,000 trees fell in Vancouver’s Stanley Park.