TODAY IN HISTORY: National Gallery opens doors

In 1867,

Canal.

In 1869, the Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was organized.

In 1876, Julius Wolff of Eastport, Maine, became the first person to can sardines.

In 1877, the first news dispatch was sent by telephone. The story about a lecture and phone demonstration by Alexander Graham Bell appeared the next day in the Boston Globe.

In 1909, Chiricahua Apache leader Geronimo (also known as Goyathlay, or “One Who Yawns”) died at Fort Sill, Okla., at age 79.

In 1919, former prime minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier died of a stroke in Ottawa at age 77. The first Canadian prime minister of French ancestry, Laurier spent 45 uninterrupted years in the House of Commons. He served as prime minister from 1896 to 1911, the longest unbroken tenure in Canadian history.

the first ship passed through the Suez

In 1932, following a 48-day manhunt, Albert Johnson, known as the Mad Trapper, was shot dead by the RCMP in the northern Yukon. Johnson, whose background remains a mystery, had eluded police after wounding an officer investigating a complaint about trap lines. Another Mountie was killed during the chase.

In 1960, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker opened the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

In 1965, Prime Minister Lester Pearson announced that old-age pensions would be made payable at age 65 instead of 70, with the change to be phased in over five years.

In 1982, Gordon Kesler won a provincial byelection in Alberta to become the first elected member of the separatist Western Canada Concept party.

In 1982, the British Parliament approved in principle the proposed Canadian Constitution.

In 1983, the Newfoundland Supreme Court ruled the province owned offshore resources as far as the territorial limit, but not to the edge of the continental shelf.

In 2000, the federal government scrapped the $1,000 bill, saying it was used mainly for moneylaundering.

In 2003, Winnipeg-based Great-West Lifeco Inc. struck a deal to acquire Canada Life in a $7.3 billion transaction that would create the country's largest insurance company. The combined company would have $156 billion in assets and provide individual and group policies covering 11 million Canadians — one-third of the population.

In 2010, the 57-metre training vessel SV Concordia, a Canadian-owned tall ship, went down some 500 km off the Brazilian coast. All 64 people on board, including 42 Canadian high school and university students, managed to get onto life rafts. They drifted in storm-tossed seas for 40 hours before being rescued by three passing merchant ships.