TODAY IN HISTORY: Podborski wins World Cup
In 1496, King Henry VII of England granted a charter to John Cabot and his three sons, permitting them to claim any and all lands they might discover.
In 1844, the seat of government for the united Upper and Lower Canada was moved from Kingston, Ont., to Montreal.
In 1844, the first issue of “The Globe,” edited and published by George Brown, appeared in Toronto. In 1942, a U.S.-Canada defence board approved the construction of the Alaska Highway.
In 1946, Winston Churchill gave his Iron Curtain speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. Said Churchill, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”
In 1955, Elvis Presley made his TV debut on the regional show “The Louisiana Hayride.”
In 1966, “The Ballad of the Green Berets” by Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The album did even better, topping the LP chart for 13 weeks.
In 1970, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty went into effect after 43 countries ratified it.
In 1976, the British pound fell below US$2 for the first time.
In 1979, NASA’s “Voyager 1” space probe flew past Jupiter, sending back photographs of the planet and its moons.
In 1982, Steve Podborski of Toronto became the first North American to win the World Cup men’s downhill skiing championship. He achieved the title with three wins and two seconds in the 10race event.
In 1983, at Mount Tremblant, Que., Laurie Graham of Inglewood, Ont., won the first World Cup women’s downhill skiing championship ever held in Canada.
In 1989, critics raved as Toronto singer-songwriter Mary Margaret O’Hara made her UK debut at the Duke of York Theatre. The Daily Telegraph’s Tim de Lisle said she “sings like nobody else, a true blues voice, summoning depths of defeat and despair with an easy, almost casual delivery.”
In 1990, to the cheers of hundreds of onlookers, workers in Bucharest, Romania, succeeded in removing a seven-metre, six-tonne bronze statue of Vladimir Lenin from its foundation.
In 1998, Chuck Berry performed for an hour at the opening of a Hard Rock Cafe in Dubai. The 71-year-old rocker even managed to crouch down in his famous “duck walk.” The Hard Rock Cafe building in the United Arab Emirates is a 35-metre-tall replica of the Empire State Building in New York.
In 1998, new DNA tests cleared the late Dr. Sam Sheppard in the 1954 murder of his wife, a case that inspired the television series and movie “The Fugitive.”
In 1999, Paul Okalik was elected by his fellow MLAs as the first premier of Nunavut.
In 2006, at the 78th Academy Awards, “Crash” won three awards, including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay for Canadian directorwriter Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco. Ang Lee
DEAR EDITOR:
To Summerland Council, please stop the solar project.
As it has now come to light that the cost numbers and GHG emissions numbers are inaccurate, we need to stop the solar project and hold another public hearing and be completely transparent with all the data being presented.
The general public is becoming much more aware of this project, and I believe a welladvertised public engagement hearing is needed.
The Summerland roads are in terrible shape and many need repairing and repainted with new traffic lines. I’ll bet the $1.6 million to be spent on this solar project would fix up a lot of roads, and the District might even need a new or newer truck or two.
Mayor and council, please reconsider and rescind the Summerland solar project for the financial benefit to all residents.
Brian Wilkey Summerland