TODAY IN HISTORY: Cleopatra dies
In 30 BC, Cleopatra, the celebrated queen of Egypt, committed suicide.
In 1797, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and the author of Frankenstein, was born. She died in 1851.
In 1812, the first settlers, mostly Scottish, arrived at the Red River colony in Manitoba. Thomas Douglas, Earl of Selkirk, sent a former soldier, Miles Macdonell, to establish the colony on land he had received from the Hudson’s Bay Co. Macdonell was appointed governor of the new colony. Destroyed in a feud with the North West Co. in 1815, the colony was re-established by Selkirk in 1817.
In 1851, the legislative council of British Columbia held its first session.
In 1896, actor Raymond Massey was born in Toronto. His first movie was High Treason in 1929. He was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for his role of Abe Lincoln in the 1940 movie Abe Lincoln in Illinois. He died July 23, 1983.
In 1901, British engineer Cecil Booth patented the first commercially produced vacuum cleaner. His gigantic creation was mounted on wheels and parked outside the houses being cleaned. One of its first jobs was to clean the aisle carpet of Westminster Abbey for the 1902 coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. The King was so impressed he ordered vacuum cleaners for both Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.
In 1936, Donald Duck first appeared in comic-strip form.
In 1972, the New Democratic Party ended 20 years of Social Credit rule in B.C. when it took 39 seats in a provincial election. Dave Barrett replaced W.A.C. Bennett as premier.
In 1987, Ben Johnson became the fastest man in the world when he smashed the world record for the 100-metre dash at the world track and field championships in Rome. Johnson’s time of 9.83 seconds cut a tenth of a second off the previous record. A year later, Johnson was stripped of his gold medal in the same event at the Seoul Olympics when he tested positive for steroid use after posting a time of 9.79 seconds. (Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt set the 100-metre world record of 9.58 seconds at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin.)
In 1988, Vicki Keith completed a swim across Lake Ontario to become the first person to swim all five Great Lakes. She began swimming the lakes on July 1.
In 1990, U.S. President George Bush told a news conference that a “new world order” could emerge from the Persian Gulf crisis.
In 2000, a groundbreaking study published by the World Wide Fund for Nature said that unless levels of carbon dioxide being sent into the atmosphere were cut down, 46 per cent of life-sustaining habitats in Canada would be destroyed.