TODAY IN HISTORY: Penticton soldier killed

In 1329, Scotland's national hero, Robert the Bruce, died of leprosy he had contracted during his campaigns against the English.

In 1576, English explorer Martin Frobisher set out on a voyage during which he named Frobisher Bay after himself.

In 1654, Louis XIV was crowned King of France.

In 1753, Britain's King George II gave his assent to an Act of Parliament establishing the British Museum.

In 1862, the United States and Britain executed a treaty for suppression of the slave trade.

In 1886, Elzear-Alexandre Taschereau was appointed Canada's first cardinal by Pope Leo XIII.

In 1887, Wilfrid Laurier was elected leader of the federal Liberal Party.

In 1909, The Violin Maker of Cremona, a short film directed by D.W. Griffith and featuring Canadian Mary Pickford in her first notable screen role, was released.

In 1917, Allied engineers, many of them Canadians, won their greatest victory of the

First World War at Messines, Belgium. They used underground explosives to destroy the German trench system, allowing infantry to capture a ridge overlooking the town of Ypres in about three hours.

In 1929, the Papal state, non-existent since 1870, was revived as the Vatican state.

In 1939, King George VI became the first reigning British monarch to visit the United States. He and Queen Elizabeth crossed the border from Canada at Niagara Falls.

In 1942, what's regarded as the most decisive battle in the Pacific during the Second World War ended in a major American victory over the Japanese in the Battle of Midway.

In 1956, a series of rockfalls sent two-thirds of a huge power plant tumbling into the Niagara River gorge, about a kilometre below the falls. The plant had been built in 1895 on the site of an earlier power plant, and the sides of the gorge had been walled in. Over the years, water had seeped behind the walls and undermined the rock face behind the plant. One worker was killed when the southern part of the plant fell into the water.

In 1966, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada voted in favour of the ordination of women ministers.

In 1993, a New York judge handed down a ruling in the Woody Allen-Mia Farrow custody case. Farrow won custody of a biological son, Satchel, and adopted children Dylan and Moses.

In 2000, a U.S. federal judge ordered the breakup of Microsoft. (An appeals court overturned the order; the Justice Department, under the Bush administration, said it would no longer seek a breakup of Microsoft.)

In 2001, a landslide victory in Britain’s general election made Prime Minister Tony Blair the first Labour leader to win successive majority governments.

In 2002, the Quebec government extended full parental rights to homosexual couples.

In 2008, Capt. Jonathan Snyder of Penticton, 26, with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry based in Edmonton, died after falling down a deep well during night patrol in the Kandahar province in Afghanistan.