TODAY IN HISTORY:

Menéndez murders

In 1691, Henry Kelsey of the Hudson’s Bay Co. was the first white man to see what is now Saskatchewan. Kelsey was an explorer whose exact route into the Prairies is not known.

In 1741, Danish explorer Vitus Bering became the first European to visit Alaska.

In 1820, the coronation of George IV was celebrated in Canada, 11 months before the ceremony in London.

In 1858, the colony of British Columbia was established as the Hudson’s Bay Company relinquished control of Vancouver Island to local authorities.

In 1866, U.S. President Andrew Johnson formally declared the Civil War over, months after fighting had stopped.

In 1882, the first CPR train arrived in Regina.

In 1887, pitcher Dan Casey of the Phillies struck out in the ninth inning of a game against the Giants - inspiring Ernest Thayer’s poem, “Casey at the Bat.”

In 1914, the Germans invaded Brussels during the First World War.

In 1918, the Allies began their final First World War offensive against Germany.

In 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid tribute to the Royal Air Force, saying, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

In 1960, six mice and two dogs survived an Earth orbit aboard a Soviet “Sputnik” spacecraft.

In 1968, more than 200,000 Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia. The Soviets demanded an end to reforms initiated under Czech leader Alexander Dubcek. Czechoslovakia promised to abandon the reforms and accepted an indefinite Soviet military occupation.

In 1976, Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” about an ore carrier that sank on Lake Superior, 10 months earlier, was released as a single. The song, from his album “Summertime Dream,” made it to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 in Canada. At five minutes, 57 seconds (single edit), it was abnormally long for top-40 radio. Lightfoot won a Juno Award for his songwriting.

In 1979, American Diana Nyad became the first person to complete the 100-kilometre swim from Bahamas to Florida.

In 1980, Italian Rienhold Messner became the first man to scale Mount Everest without oxygen, radio or supply relays.

In 1989, entertainment executive Jose Menéndez and his wife, Kitty, were shot to death in their Beverly Hills mansion by their sons, Lyle and Erik. The brothers endured years of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their father. (They were later sentenced to life in prison without parole and remain in jail to this day.)

In 1995, at least 300 passengers were killed when an express train near Firozabad in northern India rammed into another train that had stopped suddenly after hitting a cow.

In 2000, Tiger Woods won the PGA Championship at Louisville, Ky., becoming the first golfer since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win three major golf championships in a season and the first to defend the PGA Championship since 1937. Woods added the Masters title the following April to become the first player to hold all four major titles at the same time.

In 2016, The Tragically Hip played their final show to a soldout crowd at the K-Rock Centre in the band’s hometown of Kingston, Ont. It was broadcast live by the CBC and more than 400 public screenings were held across the country. In late 2015, frontman Gord Downie was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and died Oct. 17, 2017. (The Hip’s 10-city tour raised more than $1 million for brain cancer research.)