TODAY IN HISTORY: 166-km Berlin Wall goes up

In 1521, Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortez captured present-day Mexico City from the Aztec Indians.

In 1792, French revolutionaries imprisoned the royal family.

In 1812, General Isaac Brock met Indian Chief Tecumseh to plan a campaign to drive Gen. William Hull back into the United States.

In 1863, John Sandfield Macdonald became prime minister of United Canada with A.A. Dorion. He was no relation to Sir John A. Macdonald, although he did work closely with Canada’s first prime minister.

In 1886, Sir John A. Macdonald drove in the last spike of the Esquimalt-Nanaimo railway in British Columbia.

In 1942, Walt Disney’s animated feature

“Bambi” premiered at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

In 1955, the Canso Causeway, linking Cape Breton Island to the Nova Scotia mainland, was opened. Built at an estimated cost of $22 million, the causeway took three years to complete.

In 1961, Berlin was divided by a concrete wall as East Germany sealed off the border between the Eastern and Western sectors in a move to control emigration to the West. The wall snaked 166 kilometres around the enclave of West Berlin and was backed by floodlights, barbed wire, trip wires, minefields and scattered guns. The wall came down in 1989.

In 1980, Canadian oceanographer Joseph MacInnis discovered the sunken yet well-preserved wreck of “HMS Breadalbane.” The threemasted, Scottish-built merchant ship had been crushed in ice at Beechey Island in the Arctic Ocean in 1853. It was the world’s northernmost known shipwreck.

In 1990, Gilles Duceppe became the first MP elected under the banner of the Bloc Quebecois.

In 1991, the Pentagon said more than 20 per cent of the U.S. soldiers killed in action during the Persian Gulf War died by American hands.

In 1992, a Manitoba court ruled that mandatory Christian prayer in the province’s schools was unconstitutional.

In 1995, New York Yankees legend Mickey Mantle died of cancer at age 63.

In 1999, German tennis great Steffi Graf, 30, announced her retirement after a 17-year stellar career.