Today in History

in Texas City, Texas. Another ship, the “High Flyer,” exploded the following day. The blasts and resulting fires killed nearly 600 people.

In 1949, Hall of Fame thoroughbred jockey Sandy Hawley was born in Oshawa, Ont. He rode in 31,456 races, winning 6,450 of them and more than $88 million in purse earnings.

In 1962, Walter Cronkite made his debut as anchor of “The CBS Evening News,” succeeding Douglas Edwards. Cronkite lasted 19 years at the anchor desk before Dan Rather succeeded him in 1981.

In 1976, a plan aimed at ending civil war in Lebanon was announced in Damascus following a meeting between Syrian President Hafez Assad and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat.

In 1992, David Milgaard was released from a Manitoba prison after serving nearly 23 years for the 1969 murder of Saskatoon nursing aide Gail Miller. The Saskatchewan government declined to retry Milgaard after the Supreme Court of Canada ordered a new trial. DNA evidence cleared Milgaard in 1997, and he later received $7 million in compensation from the federal and Saskatchewan governments.

In 1995, a deal was reached to end a turbot fishing dispute between Canada and the European Union. The agreement gave Spain a higher turbot quota in the North Atlantic in return for tougher quota enforcement measures.

In 1999, Wayne Gretzky announced that he was retiring from pro hockey after 20 phenomenal NHL seasons. The announcement, at a packed news conference at Madison Square Garden in New York, came less than a day after an emotional farewell game on Canadian soil at the Corel Centre in Kanata, Ont.

In 2002, Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok and his cabinet resigned en masse over a report condemning the government’s actions during the 1995 Bosnian War.

In 2003, Jack Donohue, the former Canadian national basketball coach who led teams to Olympic and world championships, died at age 71.

In 2007, Seung-hui Cho, a mentally-disturbed student, killed two people in a dormitory at Virginia Tech University and then two hours later, opened fire in a classroom building on campus before taking his own life. In all, 32 people were killed in the worst school shooting rampage in U.S. history. Montrealborn Jocelyne Couture-nowak, a teacher, was among the victims.

In 2011, Allan Blakeney, a former Saskatchewan premier who was instrumental in the creation of Canada’s publicly funded health care system and the patriation of the Constitution, died following short battle with cancer. He was 85.

In 2014, more than 300 passengers, mostly teenagers on a school trip, were killed in the sinking of a ferry off South Korea, causing nationwide grief and fury. Officials blamed crew members’ negligence, untimely rescue efforts and corruption by the ship’s owners for the tragedy. (In November, the captain was sentenced to 36 years in prison for negligence and abandoning passengers, but acquitted of homicide. The ship’s chief engineer was sentenced to 30 years in prison and 13 other crew members to up to 20 years in prison.)

In 2016, a powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Ecuador, killing more than 650 people, including four Canadians, and injuring thousands.

In 2018, Canadian figure skater Patrick Chan announced his retirement after more than a decade on the world stage. He won Olympic gold as part of the team event at Pyeongchang, a pair of silver medals at the Sochi Games, three world titles and was the national champion a record 10 times.

In 2018, Harry Anderson, the actor best known for playing an off-the-wall judge working the night shift of a Manhattan court room in the TV comedy series “Night Court,” was found dead in his North Carolina home. He was 65.

In 2019, Premier Rachel Notley and her NDP government was knocked from the saddle by Jason Kenney whose United Conservatives won a majority in the Alberta election. The UCP, formed two years earlier by a merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Wildrose parties, claimed the lion’s share of rural seats and captured many seats in Calgary. Notley’s NDP held on to its traditional base in Edmonton, which it swept in 2015, but was pushed out in many of the surrounding municipalities, rural ridings and Calgary constituencies it captured four years earlier. Kenney is a former federal Conservative cabinet minister under Stephen Harper. He successfully leveraged voter angst over Alberta’s sluggish economy with a jobs, jobs, jobs message and a promise to wage war on all who oppose its oil and gas industry.

(The Canadian Press)