TODAY IN HISTORY: Harper wins byelection
In 1110, Crusaders captured Beirut, causing a bloodbath.
In 1607, the English colony at Jamestown, Va., was settled.
In 1881, a revised New Testament went on sale. By day's end, 800,000 copies had been sold.
In 1898, the Yukon Territory was organized with Dawson City as its capital.
In 1918, the first U.S. airmail stamps, featuring a picture of an airplane, were introduced. On some of the stamps, the airplane was printed upside-down, making them collector's items.
In 1940, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and her daughter Juliana fled the Nazis from The Hague to London during the Second World War. Princess Juliana brought her children to Canada for safety. Every spring, Ottawa receives a gift of 15,000 tulips from the Netherlands.
In 1940, in his first speech as British prime minister, Winston Churchill told the Commons, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
In 1954, Canada and the U.S. agreed to build the St. Lawrence Seaway. The project included building seven locks, deepening navigation channels and constructing a power facility near Cornwall, Ont. As well, bridges and tunnels were built and parts of two Ontario communities were relocated.
In 1977, the Roman Catholic Church approved a decree which allowed it to recognize marriages of men who had undergone vasectomies.
In 1981, Pope John Paul was shot in St. Peter's Square by Turkish assailant Mehmet Ali Agca. The pontiff recovered from serious abdominal wounds and resumed his duties. Agca, an escaped convict, was sentenced to life in prison. He was released on Jan. 18, 2010.
In 1985, a police helicopter dropped a bomb on a Philadelphia rowhouse, ending a 24-hour armed confrontation with the radical group MOVE. The explosion sparked a fire that destroyed 61 homes. Eleven people — six adult MOVE members and five children — were killed.
In 1991, South African activist Winnie Mandela and two co-defendants were convicted of abducting four young black men and keeping them at her Soweto home.
In 1992, three astronauts from the space shuttle Endeavour captured a wayward satellite during the first-ever three-person spacewalk.
In 1998, Dr. Maurice Generoux, the first Canadian doctor convicted of assisted suicide, was sentenced to two years in jail and three years probation. Generoux, a Toronto AIDS specialist, prescribed lethal doses of sleeping pills to two healthy but depressed HIV-infected men. One man killed himself with an overdose; the other patient overdosed but survived.
In 2002, Stephen Harper, then the new leader of the Canadian Alliance, won a byelection in Calgary Southwest.
In 2003, insolvent Air Canada cut routes and grounded 40 planes as a result of a steep drop in traffic due to the SARS outbreak that came on the heels of war in Iraq.