TODAY IN HISTORY: Puppeteer Shari Lewis dies at 65
ON THIS DATE IN 1610, English explorer Henry Hudson discovered Hudson Bay.
In 1786, James Strange claimed Vancouver Island for Britain.
In 1858, British Columbia was constituted as a Crown colony.
In 1862, Victoria, B.C., was incorporated as a city.
In 1862, Canadian poet Duncan Campbell Scott was born in Ottawa.
In 1870, London opened the world’s first subway system.
In 1878, John McDougall was appointed Canada’s first auditor-general.
In 1887, Hodge Rowell patents barbed wire.
In 1892, movie mogul Jack L. Warner was born in London, Ont. He died Sept. 9, 1978.
In 1918, a general strike that began in Winnipeg broke out across Canada.
In 1922, telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell died in Baddeck, N.S., age 75.
In 1934, Adolf Hitler was installed as dictator
In 1958, Princess Margaret opened the Ottawa City Hall on Green Island at the mouth of the Rideau River.
In 1963, the federal government passed legislation that changed parliamentary procedures for handling divorces — the first such changes since Confederation.
In 1970, the Soviet freighter “Sergey Yesinen” collided with a B.C. ferry, the “Queen of Victoria,” near Vancouver. Three people aboard the ferry were killed.
In 1973, the first Commonwealth heads of government conference to be held in Canada began in Ottawa.
In 1985, the Reichmann brothers, Canadian financiers, bought control of Gulf Canada Ltd. for $2.8 billion.
In 1989, a team of Ottawa doctors led by Wilbert Keon successfully completed Canada’s first newborn infant heart transplant.
In 1991, a replica of an ancient Viking ship arrived from Norway at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland to commemorate a Viking landing in the area 1,000 years earlier.
In 1992, Silken Laumann completed one of the most remarkable comebacks in Olympic history when she won a bronze medal in women’s single sculls in Barcelona.
In 1998, puppeteer Shari Lewis, who entertained generations of kids with “Lamb Chop,” “Charlie Horse” and “Hush Puppy,” died of cancer in Los Angeles. She was 65.
In 2001, the CRTC ruled that television networks and newspapers owned by the same corporate parent can work together as long as both keep separate management.
In 2004, the Quebec Labour Relations Board certified the first union at a Wal-Mart store in in North America.
In 2005, an Air France passenger jet carrying 309 people skidded off the runway in a fierce thunderstorm at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. All on board escaped before the jet burst into flames.
In 2009, arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber was extradited to Germany to face criminal charges after losing a decade-long court battle to remain in Canada.
In 2017, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 22,000 for the first time.
In 2018, a 60-year-old German tourist was shot in the head while driving with his family on a highway near Morley in Alberta.
In 2018, two paramedics accused of failing to properly care for a 19-year-old Good Samaritan in Hamilton, Ont., were charged with failure to provide the necessities of life to Yosif Al-Hasnawi.
In 2019, Calgary MP Deepak Obhrai, the fun-loving elder statesman of the Conservative caucus who championed tolerance and human rights, died just weeks after discovering an aggressive form of liver cancer.