TODAY IN HISTORY: Snowbird killed
In 1884, Mark Twain’s novel “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was first published, in Canada as well as England.
In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for helping mediate an end to the Russo-Japanese War.
In 1964, U.S. civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1967, singer Otis Redding and four members of his band were killed when their twin-engine plane crashed into a lake near Madison, Wis. He was 26. Redding came along at a time when black R&B artists were making inroads into the top40. But it was not until after his death that one of his records made the top of the charts. “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” was a No. 1 hit in early 1968.
In 1968, Charles Lavern Beasley, Canada’s first plane hijacker, was sentenced to six years in prison. Beasley, 22, of Dallas, Texas, hijacked an Air Canada Viscount enroute to Toronto from Saint John, N.B., on Sept. 11, 1968. Describing himself as an American black power militant sought by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Beasley demanded to be taken to Cuba. He surrendered to police after the plane landed at Montreal’s Dorval Airport.
In 1993, the Channel Tunnel, reconnecting Britain and France after an Ice Age rift, was finally completed and handed over to the operating company. The 50-kilometre tunnel, dubbed “Chunnel,” with two rail tunnels, a service and an escape tunnel in the middle, was completed more than a year late at a cost of more than $20 billion.
In 1994, Pearl Jam’s third album “Vitalogy” entered the Billboard album chart at No. 55 based entirely on sales of the vinyl LP. The vinyl edition had been released two weeks before the cassette and CD versions.
In 1995, Darren Robinson, a 450-pound rapper who found stardom with The Fat Boys, died of a heart attack in Rosedale, N.Y., at age 28. He was known as the “human beat box” for his percussive grunts.
In 1998, a Snowbird Tutor jet crashed in Moose Jaw after its wing clipped another, killing pilot Capt. Michael VandenBos.
In 2007, Conrad Black was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail, fined US$125,000 and ordered to forfeit US$6.1 million for his role in the misappropriation of millions of dollars from Hollinger, the newspaper empire he once headed.
In 2007, suspended NFL quarterback Michael Vick was sentenced by a federal judge in Richmond, Va., to 23 months in prison for bankrolling a dogfighting operation and killing dogs that underperformed.