Today in History

toxic gas erupted from a volcanic lake in the West African nation of Cameroon.

In 1987, Geraldine Kenney-wallace, a chemist and physicist, was named the first chairwoman of the Science Council of Canada.

In 1987, Canada’s youngest liver transplant recipient died in a London, Ont., hospital. Sixteen-month-old Amanda Jane Cathro of Edmonton died after two liver transplants.

In 1990, the United Church of Canada’s third General Council voted 302-74 to reaffirm a controversial 1988 statement on homosexuality, which allowed gays and lesbians to be considered for ordination. After three days of debate, about 400 delegates voted to stick to the policy which had split Canada’s largest Protestant denomination.

In 1996, Mary Two Axe Earley, a native rights activist who pressured the government into changing a section of the Indian Act that discriminated against native women, died at age 84.

In 1996, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld two B.C. Court of Appeal decisions that the native right to catch fish for food and ceremonial purposes did not include the right to sell, unless the practice previously existed.

In 1998, former apartheid ruler P.W. Botha of South Africa was given a one-year suspended jail sentence, after being found guilty of ignoring a subpoena to testify about apartheid atrocities.

In 1999, B.C. Premier Glen Clark resigned over allegations he was improperly involved in a casino licence application.

In 2000, Russian authorities confirmed that 118 men on the stricken submarine “Kursk” were dead. Norwegian divers found the submarine completely flooded. Kursk had been trapped since Aug. 12th at the bottom of the Barents Sea after an accident during naval exercises.

In 2001, Montreal was named the permanent home of the IOC’S World Anti-doping Agency, edging out Lausanne, Switzerland and Vienna, Austria.

In 2003, Canadian troops began their first official patrol of Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul.

In 2006, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s trial began in Baghdad on charges of genocide for a military campaign against ethnic Kurds in 1988. He was found guilty on Nov. 5th and hanged on Dec. 30th.

In 2010, in the Australian federal election, both Labor and the Liberal Party-led opposition each received 72 seats. Four of the six independents later sided with the Labor Party for the country’s first minority government since the Second World War.

In 2011, a tornado with 280 km/h winds raged through the Lake Huron community of Goderich, Ont., dubbed Canada’s prettiest town. Many downtown businesses, century-old buildings and several churches were destroyed. One person was killed and at least 37 people were injured.

In 2011, Libyan rebels raced into Tripoli and met little resistance as Moammar Gadhafi’s defenders melted away and his 42-year rule rapidly crumbled. The euphoric fighters celebrated with residents of the capital in Green Square, the symbolic heart of the regime.

In 2013, a poison gas attack by the Syrian government on the rebel-held suburbs of Damascus killed 1,400 civilians, including 400 children. The U.S. pressed for military strikes in response but marathon negotiations between U.S. and Russian diplomats produced an agreement on securing and destroying Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile by the mid2014.

In 2017, at 10:16 a.m PT, the first total solar eclipse to sweep coast-to-coast across the U.S. in 99 years began in Oregon, with the path of totality travelling diagonally across 14 states to South Carolina. In Canada, Victoria got the best view of the rare celestial event, with 90 per cent coverage, Vancouver 86 per cent, Calgary 77 per cent and Toronto 70 per cent. The rest of North America was treated to a partial eclipse, as were Central American and the top of South America.

In 2017, a Los Angeles jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay US$417 million to a woman who claimed in a lawsuit that the talc in its iconic baby powder causes ovarian cancer when applied regularly for feminine hygiene. It marked the largest sum awarded in a series of talcum powder lawsuit verdicts against the company, which announced it would appeal.

In 2017, Globe and Mail publisher Phillip Crawley said the national newspaper planned to halt its daily print edition for Atlantic Canada on Nov. 30.

In 2017, reversing his past calls for a speedy exit, President Donald Trump recommitted the United States to the 16-year-old war in Afghanistan, declaring U.S. troops must “fight to win.” He pointedly declined to disclose how many more troops would be dispatched to wage America’s longest war.

In 2018, the Manitoba government asked the RCMP to investigate allegations that workers on northern hydro developments decades earlier had sexually abused Indigenous women. The allegations were contained in a report from the province’s arm’s-length Clean Environment Commission.

In 2018, the British Columbia Court of Appeal ordered a new trial for the former leader of a religious sect who was acquitted of taking a 15-year-old girl across the U.S. border for a sexual purpose. The Crown had appealed the verdict in the case of James Oler, the former leader of a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints community in Bountiful, B.C., which practices polygamy.

In 2018, an Air Canada-led consortium reached a $450-million deal to acquire the Aeroplan loyalty program from Aimia Inc. The group, which included TD Bank, CIBC and Visa Canada, also agreed to assume the approximately $1.9-billion liability associated with Aeroplan miles customers had accumulated.

In 2018, the Trump administration moved to dismantle a big piece of U.S. President Barack Obama’s environmental legacy, proposing to scale back restrictions on climate-changing emissions from coal-fired power plants even as it acknowledged it could cause more premature death and illness.

In 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to eight criminal charges including tax evasion and unlawful campaign contributions related to payments made to women who claim to have had affairs with Trump. The court appearance came on the same day that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, was found guilty on eight of 18 counts of tax and bank fraud.

(The Canadian Press)