Today in History for Feb. 26:
On this date:
In 398, John Chrysostom, considered by scholars as the greatest preacher of the early church, was appointed bishop of Constantinople. His preaching earned him the name Chrysostom: "golden-mouth."
In 1802, French author Victor Hugo was born. The author of "Les Miserables" died in 1885.
In 1815, Napoleon escaped from the island of Elba. Within three weeks, France had rallied to its former emperor. The battle of Waterloo on June 18 ended Napoleon's last bid for power and the British government banished him to the Atlantic island of St. Helena. He died there in 1821 at the age of 52.
In 1867, the British House of Lords passed the British North America Act establishing the Dominion of Canada.
In 1870, an experimental air-driven subway, the Beach Pneumatic Transit, opened in New York City for public demonstrations. (The tunnel was only a block long, and the line had only one car.)
In 1905, the Panama Canal Commission recommended the construction of a sea-level canal, to cost more than $230 million.
In 1915, flame throwers were used in battle for the first time, by German troops against the French lines at Malancourt during the First World War.
In 1919, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signed a measure establishing Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.
In 1935, Babe Ruth was released by the New York Yankees and signed by the Boston Braves.
In 1935, the first practical version of radar was demonstrated by Scottish inventor Robert Watson-Watt.
In 1936, Adolf Hitler opened the first Volkswagen plant in eastern Germany.
In 1942, the federal government used the War Measures Act to order the removal of all Japanese-Canadians within 160 kilometres of the Pacific coast. About 22,000 people were stripped of all their non-portable possessions, interned and then deported to the B.C. Interior, Alberta and Manitoba.
In 1945, Sergeant Aubrey Cosens of the Queen's Own Rifles of Canada won a posthumous Victoria Cross during a Second World War battle in Mooshof, Germany.
In 1951, an amendment to the U.S. Constitution limited a president to two terms.
In 1952, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced his country had developed its own atomic bomb.
In 1960, Anne Heggtveit of Ottawa became the first Canadian to win an Olympic skiing gold medal. She won the slalom in Squaw Valley, Calif.
In 1979, a total solar eclipse cast a moving shadow 281 kilometres wide as it traveled across the U.S. into Canada. The next total solar eclipse visible from Canada is not until April 8, 2024.
In 1980, Egypt and Israel established diplomatic relations.
In 1986, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author Robert Penn Warren was named the first “poet laureate” of the U.S. by the Library of Congress.
In 1987, the general synod of the Church of England voted to allow women to become priests.
In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein announced that he had ordered his forces to withdraw from Kuwait.
In 1993, a bomb built by Islamic extremists exploded in the parking garage under New York's World Trade Center, killing six and injuring more than 1,000 people. Four were convicted the following year and sentenced to life in prison.
In 2001, Bernard Landry became leader of the Parti Quebecois when no other candidate filled the party requirement for candidacy by the deadline. He replaced outgoing premier Lucien Bouchard.
In 2004, a Delaware judge blocked Conrad Black's deal to sell control of Hollinger International Inc. to the Barclay brothers of Britain, who wished to add Hollinger's "London Telegraph" to their British media holdings. The Court ruled the Canadian-born Black "breached his fiduciary and contractual duties persistently and seriously," adding that his conduct "threatened grave injury" to Hollinger International and its stockholders. The judge threw out Black's attempts to change the bylaws of Hollinger International in a way that would have tightened his control of the board.
In 2004, Macedonia's President Boris Trajkovski died in a plane crash in southern Bosnia.
In 2006, the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, ended with Canada winning 24 medals (7-10-7), including five (1-2-2) by speed skater Cindy Klassen.
In 2007, the International Court of Justice ruled that Serbia failed to prevent the 1992-1995 mass slaughter of Bosnian Muslims but was not guilty of genocide. The case was the first time a state had faced trial for humanity's worst crime.
In 2009, the UN tribunal at The Hague acquitted former Serb President Milan Milutinovic of ordering a deadly campaign of terror against Kosovo Albanians in 1999. Five senior Serbian officials were convicted and were sentenced to prison terms of between 15 and 22 years.
In 2009, Wal-Mart announced plans to close its six Ontario Sam's Club locations.
In 2010, Canadian short-track speedskater Charles Hamelin won gold in the 500 metres at the Vancouver Games. Teammate Francois-Louis Tremblay picked up bronze. They then teamed up with Francois Hamelin, Guillaume Bastille and Olivier Jean to win the 5,000-metre relay.
In 2011, Christy Clark was elected leader of the B.C. Liberal party after her third-ballot-count victory over three high-profile cabinet ministers.
In 2012, a Toronto-bound Via train derailed in Burlington, Ont., killing three engineers and injuring 44 passengers and a Via employee. (A rail safety board report cited misread signals and excessive speed while changing tracks as causes.)
In 2012, neighbourhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot and killed unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla. Weeks without an arrest led to protests nationwide over racial profiling and controversial self-defence laws in Florida and other states. Zimmerman was arrested in April and charged with second-degree murder. (In July 2013, a jury found Zimmerman not guilty.)
In 2013, a hot air balloon carrying tourists over Luxor, Egypt, caught fire, and some passengers leaped to their deaths before the craft crashed in a field; 20 tourists perished. (One tourist and the balloon's pilot survived).
In 2016, former Alberta Progressive Conservative premier Don Getty, who in the 1950s quarterbacked the Edmonton Eskimos to a Grey Cup championship, died at age 82. He served as Alberta's 11th premier from 1985 to 1992.
In 2018, Toronto journalist Tanya Talaga won the $30,000 RBC Taylor Prize for non-fiction for "Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City," about seven Indigenous youth who died under suspicious circumstances while attending high school in Thunder Bay, Ont., from 2000 to 2011.
In 2018, Dellen Millard and Mark Smich were sentenced to 25 years in prison after being found guilty in the 2012 death of Laura Babcock murder. Her body was never found. The sentence was to be served consecutively as the pair was already serving a similar sentence after being convicted in the 2013 murder of Tim Bosma, a Hamilton man who went missing after going on a test drive with two men interested in buying his pickup truck.
In 2020, Maria Sharapova retired from professional tennis. The 32-year-old Russian, who moved to Florida as a child, burst onto the tennis scene at 17 when she won Wimbledon in 2004 by upsetting Serena Williams in the final.
In 2020, million-selling novelist Clive Cussler died at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., at the age of 88.
In 2020, the World Health Organization said the number of novel coronavirus cases reported outside China had exceeded the number of new cases in China for the first time.
In 2021, Health Canada approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for national use in people 18 and over, including seniors. It was the third COVID-19 vaccine given the green light by Canada, following those from Pfizer and Moderna.
In 2021, Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau repeated calls for an independent inquiry into the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi after the release of a U.S. intelligence assessment. Garneau said the government of Saudi Arabia needs to be open about Khashoggi's murder. The U.S. report concluded that Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, approved an operation to capture or kill Khashoggi in 2018.
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The Canadian Press
