TODAY IN HISTORY: Assassination of Mohandas Gandhi

In 1649, King Charles I was beheaded.

In 1730, Russian Czar Peter II died of smallpox on his wedding day.

In 1917, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded “Darktown Strutters’ Ball.” Some historians consider this to be the earliest commercially made jazz record. It was written by Shelton Brooks, who was born in Amherstburg, Ont. The song was inspired by a ball at the 1915 Pacific-Panama Exposition in San Francisco.

In 1923, the Grand Trunk Railway was taken over by the Canadian government, beginning the organization of what is now CN Rail.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany.

In 1948, India’s leader Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated on his way to prayer in New Delhi by a Hindu fanatic who objected to his tolerance for Muslims. Also known as Mahatma Gandhi, the man who led his country to independence from British rule, was 78.

In 1962, two members of “The Flying Wallendas” high-wire act were killed when their sevenperson pyramid collapsed during a performance in Detroit.

In 1969, The Beatles gave their last public performance. It was a free lunchtime concert on the roof of the building that housed their Apple Corps Ltd. headquarters.

In 1972, 13 Roman Catholic civil rights marchers were shot to death by British soldiers in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on what became known as “Bloody Sunday.”

In 1973, KISS performed their first show, in New York.

In 1999, Toronto-based tenor Ben Heppner made his Carnegie Hall debut before an enthusiastic audience that called him back for five encores.

In 2013, Research In Motion announced it was changing its corporate name to BlackBerry as it officially launched its longawaited BlackBerry 10 operating system and two new smartphones. The launch did not end the Waterloo, Ont.-based company’s financial woes.

In 2014, an appeals court in Florence upheld a guilty verdict against American Amanda

Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito for the 2007 murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher in the Italian university town of Perugia. (In March 2015, the Italian Supreme Court overturned the conviction, bringing an end to the high-profile case.)

In 2019, Canadian members of Parliament passed a unanimous motion condemning Netflix for using images of the LacMegantic rail disaster in fictional dramas and demanding financial compensation for the Quebec community for use of the tragic images without consent. Footage from the 2013 rail explosion that killed 47 people was used in the hit movie Bird Box and the series Travelers.

In 2020, the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over the new coronavirus, because of the possible spread of the disease to other countries. DirectorGeneral Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus added that the decision was not a vote of nonconfidence in China, and that the WHO continued to have confidence in China’s capacity to control the outbreak.