TODAY IN HISTORY: Manitoba women win vote

In AD 398, John Chrysostom, the greatest preacher of his age, was consecrated bishop of Constantinople.

In 1302, poet Dante Alighieri, author of The Divine Comedy, was charged with financial corruption by the Catholic Church and fined. Later that same year, he was condemned to death by burning and fled into exile from Florence.

In 1880, Thomas Edison received a U.S. patent for his electric incandescent lamp.

In 1888, the National Geographic Society was founded.

In 1916, Manitoba became the first province to grant women the right to vote, two years after suffragette leader Nellie McClung staged a mock parliament in which men had to ask women for the right to vote. Saskatchewan followed on March 14 and Alberta on April 17 the same year. Ottawa gave women the franchise in 1918.

In 1926, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated the first working television in London.

In 1943, some 50 bombers struck Wilhelmshaven in the first all-American air raid against Germany during the Second World War.

In 1944, the Soviet Union announced the complete end of the deadly German siege of Leningrad, which had lasted for more than two years.

In 1945, the Soviet army liberated the Auschwitz death camp in southern Poland, where the Nazis had murdered 1.5 million people.

In 1951, a new era of atomic testing began in the Nevada desert as a U.S. Air Force plane dropped a one-kiloton bomb on Frenchman Flats.

In 1961, the city of Montreal authorized the building of a subway.

In 1965, Queen Elizabeth signed a Royal Proclamation permitting Canada's new Maple Leaf flag to be flown. It was flown for the first time on Feb. 15.

In 1967, Canada, the U.S., the Soviet Union and 59 other countries signed a treaty limiting military activities in space.

In 1967, three American astronauts (Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee) were killed in a flash fire during a routine test aboard the Apollo 1 spacecraft at Cape Kennedy, Fla.

In 1973, a ceasefire went into effect in Vietnam after the signing of a peace treaty in Paris.

In 1977, the Vatican reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church’s ban on female priests, declaring a priest must bear a “natural resemblance” to Christ, who “was and remains a man.”

In 1980, the Israeli-Egyptian border was opened for the first time since 1948.

In 1984, Wayne Gretzky's NHL record streak of 51 games with at least one point ended as his Edmonton Oilers lost 4-2 to the visiting Los Angeles Kings.

In 1986, fierce winds and a stubborn hatch bolt forced NASA to again scrub the launch of the space shuttle Challenger. The shuttle lifted off the next day, with catastrophic results. It broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing seven crew members.