TODAY IN HISTORY: The World was created
In 3641 BC, according to the calculations of the Mayans, the world was created.
In 1763, Canada passed from French control into the British Empire with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The treaty, which ended the Seven Years War, stripped France of all her possessions north of what became the United States, except for the islands of St-Pierre and Miquelon. Those islands, just south of Newfoundland, remain under French control.
In 1802, Alexander Mackenzie was knighted for being first to cross the North American continent by land, in 1793.
In 1840, Britain’s Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
In 1841, Upper and Lower Canada were united as the Province of Canada, with Kingston as capital.
In 1846, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormons, left Illinois and began an exodus to the American West, now Utah. They were led by Brigham Young, newly elected as their leader.
In 1906, Prince Rupert was chosen from 15,000 entries as the name of the Grand Trunk Railway's Pacific terminal. Eleanor Macdonald of Winnipeg won $250 for suggesting the name.
In 1933, the first singing telegram was introduced by the Postal Telegraph Company in New York.
In 1947, peace treaties between the Allies and some Axis powers were signed in Paris. Canada signed treaties with Italy, Romania, Hungary and Finland.
In 1956, Wilbert Coffin was hanged in Montreal for the murders of three American hunters, killed in the Gaspe in 1953; many believed he was innocent.
In 1983, the federal government agreed in principle to allow the testing of American weapons over Canadian territory.
In 1996, a machine scored its first victory under classic chess tournament rules as an IBM computer called Deep Blue beat champion Gary Kasparov.
In 2003, Inderjit Singh Reyat pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the 1985 Air India bombing that killed 329 people, and was sentenced to five years in prison. He admitted to acquiring material for a bomb that police alleged caused the mid-air explosion. Reyat had completed a 10-year sentence for his role in a second bombing the same day that killed two baggage handlers at Japan’s Narita airport. In January 2011, he was sentenced to nine years in prison for perjury. Reyat was convicted of lying at the trial of the two men who were accused and then acquitted of the Air India bombing. (In 2017, the Parole Board of Canada allowed him to leave a halfway house where he was required to stay following his release from prison in 2016.)
In 2003, The World Health Organization's Beijing office received an email describing a “strange contagious disease” in Guangdong province that killed dozens within one week. The disease was later identified as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. In 2004, France's National Assembly voted overwhelmingly to banish religious emblems such as Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses from state schools, a measure meant to keep tensions between Muslim and Jewish minorities out of public classrooms.