TODAY IN HISTORY: Biblical rain hits Vancouver

In A.D. 548, the Jerusalem church observed Christmas on this date for the last time as the Western church moved to celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ on Dec. 25.

In 1412, St. Joan of Arc was born at Domremy in the French countryside.

In 1540, England’s King Henry VIII married his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. (The marriage lasted about six months.)

In 1643, Paul de Chomedy, Sieur de Maisonneuve, planted a cross on Mount Royal in what is now Montreal. It was his way of offering thanks that the settlement of Ville-Marie was saved from flooding.

In 1786, the first sitting of the New Brunswick legislature took place in Saint John.

In 1832, artist Gustave Dore, known for his drawings and lithographs for the Bible, “Dante’s Inferno” and other works, was born in Strasbourg, France.

In 1838, Samuel Morse made the first public demonstration of his telegraph in Morristown, N.J.

In 1877, Canada’s first flour mill, MacLean’s, began operation in Manitoba.

In 1884, Gregor Mendel, an Augustine monk who pioneered the study of heredity by crossing garden peas, died in Brno in present-day Czech Republic.

In 1898, the first telephone message was sent to land from a submerged submarine.

In 1912, New Mexico was made the 47th U.S. state.

In 1918, while diving to escape German fighters, Canadian pilot Captain J. Hedley was sucked from his seat and out of the plane. When the plane levelled out, the aviator was sitting safely near the tail. The slipstream had pulled him back to the plane.

In 1920, provincial farm political groups organized the Progressive Party in Winnipeg.

In 1936, Barbara Hanley became Canada’s first woman mayor when she was elected in the Northern Ontario town of Webbwood.

In 1938, Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychoanalysis, arrived in London at age 82 with several of his students after fleeing the Nazi persecution of Jews in Vienna.

In 1941, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his “Four Freedoms” speech in which he outlined his goals of freedom of speech and worship, freedom from want and fear.

In 1953, Vancouver’s longest wet spell on record began. The city had rain for 29 straight days. (Victoria received rain 33 days in a row in 1986.)

In 1960, 34 people were killed when a National Airlines DC-6 disintegrated en route from New York to Miami, apparently because of a bomb.

In 1966, The Drum, the first newspaper of its kind in the Arctic, began publishing in English, Inuit and Kutchin.

In 1971, Dr. C.H. Li and Dr. Philip R. Lee, both of the University of California, announced the first artificial synthesis of human growth hormone.

In 1974, the Global Television Network (now CanWest-Global), Canada’s third English-language television network, began programming in Ontario.

In 1978, the Sun Life Assurance Company set off a storm of controversy in Quebec when it announced plans to move its head office from Montreal to Toronto.

In 1982, truck driver William G. Bonin was convicted in Los Angeles of 10 of the “Freeway Killer” slayings of young men and boys. (Bonin was later convicted of four other killings; he was executed in 1996.)

In 1989, Saskatchewan painter Illingworth Kerr died in Calgary at age 83.

In 1992, a Quebec judge ruled that a 25-year-old woman known only as Nancy B. had the right to die. She had a rare neurological disease for which there was no cure and was paralyzed from the neck down. After a 30-day appeal period, she was removed from life support on Feb. 13.

In 1993, celebrated Russian ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev died in Paris of AIDS at age 54. He had electrified audiences for three decades after defecting from the Soviet Union in 1961.

In 1994, American figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on the leg by an assailant at Cobo Arena in Detroit. Four men, including Jeff Gillooly, ex-husband of Kerrigan’s rival, Tonya Harding, were later sentenced to prison for their roles in the attack. Harding, who denied advance knowledge of the attack, received probation after pleading guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution.

In 1997, the federal government apologized for suggesting Brian Mulroney was involved in criminal activity in what came to be known as the Airbus Affair. The apology was part of an out-of-court settlement of the former Tory prime minister’s $50-million libel suit against the government.

In 2004, China killed thousands of civet cats to curb SARS.

In 2012, seven months after the Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver, Ryan Dickinson, 20, became the first person convicted in the rampage. Dickinson pleaded guilty to participating in a riot and was later sentenced to 17 months in jail.