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In 1893, Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky died at age 44 of cholera after drinking contaminated water in St. Petersburg.

In 1901, Kate Greenaway, English writer and illustrator of children’s books, died. In 1906, the first long-distance telephone line was completed from Winnipeg to Regina.

In 1923, Col. Jacob Schick received a U.S. patent for the first electric shaver. In 1947, NBC’s “Meet The Press” went on the air.

In 1956, France and Britain ordered their invasion forces at the Suez

Canal to cease fire. Canadian External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson had presented a Suez peacekeeping plan, which was adopted by the UN and won Pearson the next year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1959, the Royal Canadian Humane Association awarded its Gold Medal to the citizens of Springhill, N.S.

The award is the Society’s highest recognition for bravery in life-saving. It was the first time the award had been made to a community. And it followed the disaster of Oct. 23rd, when 74 miners died after a deep underground “bump” in a coal mine. The last survivors were brought to the surface on Nov. 1.

In 1968, the first plastic cornea implant in a human eye was performed in Toronto.

In 1969, Ottawa announced a $50-million program to promote language training across the country. In 1970, Pierre Laporte suspension bridge, a new bridge over the St. Lawrence River connecting the north and south shore at Quebec City, was officially opened.

In 1970, Bernard Lortie was arrested in the kidnapping and murder the previous month of Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte. (In 1971, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but paroled less than a decade later.) In 1974, at the World Food

Conference in Rome, External Affairs Minister Allan MacEachen pledged $785 million in Canadian food aid over a period of three years. In 1978, the Shah of Iran put his country under military control after two days of heavy rioting by revolutionaries.

In 1984, Colin Thatcher, a former Saskatchewan cabinet minister, was found guilty in Saskatoon of murdering his ex-wife. He was sentenced to life in prison. He was granted full parole on Nov. 30, 2006. In 1987, a man demanding FBI protection from the Mafia held a cockpit fireaxe over an Air Canada pilot’s head but gave up after more than three hours. In the incident at San Francisco International Airport, James Barrett Drake of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., made rambling demands to be flown to Dublin or London.

In 1987, an iceberg 225 metres thick broke away from Antarctica. Scientists estimated the iceberg had enough water to supply a city the size of Los Angeles for nearly 700 years.

In 2007, Ottawa writer Elizabeth Hay won the Giller Prize, Canada’s richest literary award, for her book “Late Nights on Air.”