TODAY IN HISTORY

In 495, Pope St. Gelasius I decreed that his spiritual power as supreme pontiff was superior to the temporal power of Emperor Anastasius. It was called the Gelasian Decree.

In 1074, St. Theodosius Pechersky, abbot and founder of Russian monasticism, died in the caves of Kyiv.

In 1455, Jews were forced to flee Spain.

In 1469, political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy.

In 1512, the fifth Lateran Council was convened by Pope Julius II in Rome with reforms on the agenda which would be rebuked by Martin Luther and others, spawning the Protestant Reformation.

In 1802, Washington, D.C., was incorporated as a city.

In 1811, the Hudson’s Bay Co. agreed to the purchase by Lord Selkirk of 300,000 square kilometres between Lake Winnipeg and the headwaters of the Red River. The colony was named Assiniboia, or the Red River Colony. In 1887, an explosion in a coal mine at Nanaimo, B.C., killed 150 people.

In 1898, Golda Meir, future prime minister of Israel, was born in Kyiv, Russia.

In 1916, Irish nationalist Padraic Pearse and two others were executed by the British for their roles in the Easter Rising.In 1922, women in P.E.I. were given the right to vote.

In 1937, U.S. author Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for “Gone With The Wind.”