TODAY IN HISTORY

The first shipment of lumber from British Columbia to Australia marked the beginning of a big export trade.

In 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated and Germany was proclaimed a republic, two days before the end of the First World War.

In 1928, the Imperial Privy Council ruled that gold and silver in land still held by the Hudson’s Bay Company belonged to the Dominion government and not to the company.

In 1938, more than 30,000 Jews were arrested and synagogues and Jewish businesses were destroyed throughout Germany in what has become known as “Kristallnacht,” or “Night of the Broken Glass.” Around 2,000-2,500 deaths were directly or indirectly attributable to the pogrom.

In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition Palestine.

In 1951, the first U.S. underground atomic bomb explosion took place in Frenchman Flat, Nev.

In 1965, a failure of a relay device of Ontario Hydro’s Queenston generating station triggered a massive power failure. The outage extended from the Atlantic coast of the United States to Chicago, and from southern Ontario to Florida, lasting up to 12 hours.

In 1989, the East German government stunned the world by deciding to open its frontiers. East Germans had their first chance to travel to the west in 28 years, since the Berlin Wall was erected. Officials waived the requirement for visas to travel to West Berlin and thousands streamed across the gates to West Berlin. An East German border trooper joked that the wall would soon be broken into pieces. He was right.