Canada’s oldest army regiment formed

In 1778, British Captain James Cook sailed from Nootka Sound, tracing the coast of British Columbia and Alaska.

In 1860, the Second Batallion Volunteer Militia Rifles of Canada was formed from six independent militia units. It later became the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada, the oldest regiment in the Canadian regular army.

In 1865, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, was surrounded by federal troops near Bowling Green, Va., and killed.

In 1900, Charles Richter was born in Hamilton, Ohio. Along with German-born seismologist Beno Gutenberg he invented the earthquake magnitude scale.

In 1918, women in Nova Scotia were granted the right to vote.

In 1922, Jeanne Sauve was born in Prud’homme, Sask. She became a journalist, a federal cabinet minister, the first woman Speaker of the House of Commons and the first woman governor general. She died on Jan. 26, 1993.

In 1923, Prince Albert, Duke of York, married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. He later became King George VI, while she became Queen Elizabeth and – after her husband’s death in 1952 – the Queen Mother.

In 1942, more than 1,500 people died in the world’s worst mining disaster in Japanese-occupied China.

In 1956, the first Godzilla movie, “Godzilla, King of the Monsters,” premiered in New York.

In 1964, the African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.

In 1968, beneath the Nevada desert, the U.S. exploded a one-megaton nuclear device called “The Boxcar.”

In 1977, the disco haven, Studio 54, opened in New York. It became the centre of the jet-set disco society in the late ‘70s, attracting the likes of Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger.

In 1986, the worst nuclear accident in history occurred at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union. An experiment went awry, causing an explosion and fire that sent radioactivity into the atmosphere; 40,000 people were forced from the area and at least 31 died.

In 1992, worshippers in Moscow openly celebrated the Russian Orthodox Easter, a first in 74 years.

In 2003, Rosemary Brown, the first black woman to be elected to a major political office in Canada, died at age 72.

In 2004, the Newfoundland and Labrador government introduced tough back-to-work legislation to end a 27-day strike by about 20,000 government, health-care and schoolboard workers, the largest public service strike in the province’s history.

In 2005, Syria pulled its troops and intelligence agents from Lebanon -- ending a 29-year military presence in Lebanon.