TODAY IN HISTORY:
In 1711, the first running at Britain’s famous Ascot horse track was held. Ascot was founded by Queen Anne after she came across a natural clearing while out riding near the village of East Cote, now called Ascot. Anne ordered a course should be laid out at the site for horses to gallop at full stretch.
In 1767, England held its last burning at the stake.
In 1772, a mysterious cloud, charged with lightning, lashed the island of Java, killing 2,100 people.
In 1877, the first moons of the planet Mars were discovered by American scientist Asaph Hall.
In 1884, the boundary between Ontario and Manitoba was settled — but wasn’t implemented until 1889.
In 1900, King Victor Emmanuel took Italy’s throne.
In 1906, Eugene Lauste patented a sound-onfilm process.
In 1906, Montreal recorded its first automobile fatality.
In 1908, Canadians Walter Ewing and George Beattie won the gold and silver medals in trap shooting at the Olympic Games in London. It would take 90 years for another Canadian onetwo finish in an Olympic event — speed skaters Catriona Le May Doan and Susan Auch in the 1998 women’s 500 metres in Nagano, Japan.
In 1909, the first recorded use of the “SOS” distress signal in North America was by the steamship “SS Arapahoe,” which had broken down off North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras.
In 1934, the first federal prisoners arrived at the island prison Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.
In 1956, abstract painter Jackson Pollock, 44, died in an car accident on Long Island, N.Y.
In 1965, rioting and looting broke out in the predominantly black Watts section of Los Angeles after white police officers arrested a black man suspected of drunk driving. More than 30 people were killed and hundreds injured in the week that followed.
In 1976, the Olympiad for the Physically Disabled, in which over 1,500 athletes from 38 countries took part, ended in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke.
In 1984, during a voice test for a paid political radio address from his California ranch, U.S. President Ronald Reagan joked that he had signed legislation that would “outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”