‘Pile-O’-Bones’ renamed Regina, made capital
In 1613, Newfoundland’s first English child was born.
In 1625, King James I died. In 1604, at the Hampton Court Conference, he authorized the translation project that produced the 1611 King James Version of the Bible. Charles I acceded to the English throne.
In 1667, English poet John Milton published “Paradise Lost,” his epic of humankind’s creation and fall.
In 1834, William Lyon Mackenzie was elected the first mayor of Toronto, the capital of Upper Canada.
In 1836, the first Mormon temple was built in Kirtland, Ohio.
In 1845, German researcher Wilhelm Roentgen, who discovered the x-ray, was born. He won the first Nobel prize for physics in 1901.
In 1855, Halifax inventor Abraham Gesner received a U.S. patent for distilling kerosene.
In 1883, Pile-O’-Bones, later renamed Regina, was made capital of the Northwest Territories, which then included Alberta, Saskatchewan and what became the Northwest Territories.
In 1885, the U.S. Congress approved spending $30,000 to buy camels for use by the American army in Texas.
In 1913, the French-language daily “Le Droit” began publication in Ottawa.
In 1918, Lt. Alan McLeod of the Royal Flying Corps won a Victoria Cross during the First World War. He safely landed his burning bomber in France and dragged his crewmate to safety. But the 18-year-old from Stonewall, Man., died of influenza seven months later in a Winnipeg hospital.
In 1933, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations.
In 1953, Canada’s External Affairs minister Lester B. Pearson formally presented the United Nations with seven main doors for its headquarters in New York. The doors, which cost $75,000, were a gift from the people of Canada. The nickel-silver doors had actually been installed the previous October when the UN headquarters was completed.
In 1958, Nikita Khrushchev became Soviet premier, in addition to head of the Communist Party.
In 1964, the most violent earthquake known to have struck North America hit southern Alaska. The magnitude-8.3 quake affected over 500,000 square kilometres and killed 131 people.
In 1966, an instrument package was launched from Churchill, Man., to study the aurora borealis. It was the first all-Canadian space project.
In 1968, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, died when his plane crashed during a training flight. Gagarin, who travelled in space in 1961, was 34.
In 1973, Marlon Brando turned down the best actor Oscar for “The Godfather” to protest Hollywood’s treatment of natives.
In 1977, in the world’s worst airplane disaster, 582 people died when two jumbo jets collided and burned on a runway at Tenerife in the Canary Islands. (The worst single-plane disaster was the 1985 crash of a Japan Air Lines jet, which killed 520.)
In 1980, 123 workers died when a North Sea floating oil field platform, the Alexander Kielland, capsized during a storm.