TODAY IN HISTORY: Customers fly supersonic
In 1543, astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus died in Frombork, Poland. He proposed the heliocentric, sun-centred, system whereby the planets orbit around the sun. He was born Feb. 19, 1473, in Torum, Poland.
In 1686, Gabriel Fahrenheit, the German inventor of the temperature scale that bears his name, was born in Gdansk. He died in The Hague on Sept. 16, 1736.
In 1738, the Methodist Church was established in England.
In 1819, Queen Victoria was born at Kensington Palace, London. She was the only daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent, fourth son of George III. She became the heir to the throne because the three uncles who were ahead of her in succession –George IV, Frederick, Duke of York, and William IV – had no surviving legitimate children.
In 1833, William Logie of Montreal became the first person to receive a medical degree in Canada. It was awarded by McGill University.
In 1844, Samuel Morse transmitted the words, “What hath God wrought!” from Washington to Baltimore as he formally opened the first telegraph line in the United States.
In 1881, the excursion steamboat “Victoria” sank on the Thames River near London, Ont., with the loss of 181 lives.
In 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge opened in New York. It was the world’s first steel-wire suspension bridge.
In 1902, Victoria Day was first observed throughout Canada – 16 months after the death of Queen Victoria.
In 1912, Charles Saunders made Canada’s first parachute jump in Vancouver.
In 1918, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, now Statistics Canada, was established.
In 1918, women attained full voting rights in Canadian federal elections.
In 1930, Amy Johnson landed her “Gypsy Moth” plane at Darwin in northern Australia, the first woman to fly solo from England.
In 1932, Parliament passed a bill establishing the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
In 1935, the first major league baseball game played at night took place in Cincinnati. The Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1.
In 1941, the German battleship “Bismarck” sank the British battle-cruiser “Hood” off Greenland with the loss of more than 1,400 lives. The Royal Navy retaliated three days later by sinking the “Bismarck.”
In 1944, Major John Mahony of New Westminster, B.C. won the Victoria Cross for overcoming wounds to lead his army company across the Melfa River in Italy during the Second World War.
In 1959, the first home with a built-in nuclear bomb shelter was exhibited in Pennsylvania.
In 1967, the doors of Parliament’s Centre Block in Ottawa were locked for the first time. More than 10,000 Ontario and Quebec dairy farmers gathered to demand higher milk prices.
In 1976, the British and French Concordes made their first commercial flights from London and Paris, respectively, to Washington’s Dulles International Airport in just under four hours.
In 1977, in a surprise move, the Kremlin ousted Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny from the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo.