TODAY IN HISTORY: Wind whips up Fort Mac fire
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, British Columbia's worst mine disaster takes 150 lives after an explosion in a deep underground mine at Nanaimo. The casualties include 53 Chinese labourers, whose names were not recorded by the company.
In 1898, Golda Meir, future prime minister of Israel, was born in Kyiv, Russia.
In 1915, Dr. John McCrae of Guelph, Ont., wrote perhaps the most famous English poem of the First World War. He composed In Flanders Fields in 20 minutes while overlooking the grave of a fellow officer in Ypres, Belgium. The poem was first published the following December in the English magazine, Punch.
In 1916, Irish nationalist Padraic Pearse and two others were executed by the British for their roles in the Easter Rising.
In 1919, airline passenger service was inaugurated when Robert Hewitt flew two women from New York to Atlantic City, N.J.
In 1922, a University of Toronto team’s discovery of insulin as a treatment for diabetes was announced at a conference of American physicians in Washington.
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.
In 1942, the Nazis required Dutch Jews to wear a yellow Star of David.
In 1958, a trust and savings company at Brockville, Ont., was robbed of $3.3 million in bonds and securities.
In 1973, the New York Times reported that the beautiful mother's face on Ivory Soap packages belonged to porn star Marilyn Chambers.
In 1979, Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher was chosen to become Britain's first female prime minister as the Tories ousted the incumbent Labour party in a national election.
In 1980, Ferguson Jenkins of Chatham, Ont., became the fourth pitcher in major league history to win 100 games in both the National and American Leagues. Jenkins reached the milestone in a 3-2 Texas victory over Baltimore.
In 1990, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a woman can use battered wife syndrome as a defence against a murder charge.
In 2000, two Libyans went on trial before a special Scottish court in the Netherlands for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. One of the accused, Abdel Baset alMegrahi, was convicted the following year, while the other was acquitted. The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland killed all 259 people on board, including two Canadians, and 11 people on the ground.
In 2006, a U.S. federal jury rejected the death penalty for al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and decided he must spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole for his role in 9/11 — the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history.
In 2010, Shaw Communications announced it had reached an agreement to become the new owner of 11 of Canwest Global's over-the-air TV stations and specialty cable channels in a series of transactions totalling about $2 billion.
In 2016, a raging forest fire, whipped up by shifting winds, sliced through the middle of the northern oilsands capital of Fort McMurray, forcing all 80,000 residents to flee. More than 2,400 buildings were lost but firefighters managed to save almost 90 per cent of the city from destruction.