Today in History for Feb. 27:
On this date:
In 380, Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official faith of the Roman Empire.
In 425, Roman Emperor Theodosius II founded the first university in the western world in Constantinople (now Istanbul), Turkey.
In 1807, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Maine. He is best known for "The Song of Hiawatha."
In 1860, former Illinois Congressman Abraham Lincoln delivered a widely acclaimed speech in which he argued against the expansion of slavery into the western territories, telling listeners at Cooper Union in New York that "right makes might."
In 1899, Charles Best, the co-discoverer with Frederick Banting of insulin, was born in Maine. Best, the son of a Canadian-born physician, met Banting at the University of Toronto when he was assigned to work on a project with him. He died in 1978.
In 1917, women in Ontario won the right to vote in provincial elections.
In 1933, Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, burned down. The Nazis, charging a Communist plot, used the fire as a pretext for suspending civil liberties.
In 1945, the Canadian First Army occupied Calcar, Germany, as part of a major new offensive. American planes rained firebombs on Berlin, setting the city on fire.
In 1963, Mickey Mantle signed a $100,000 contract with the New York Yankees. At the time, it was the biggest contract ever signed in major league baseball.
In 1973, 300 members of the American Indian Movement occupied the hamlet of Wounded Knee in South Dakota. Wounded Knee was the site of a massacre of Sioux men, women and children in 1890. The occupation lasted until early May.
In 1977, Keith Richards of "The Rolling Stones" was arrested at the Harbour Castle Hotel in Toronto on heroin possession charges. He was eventually found guilty. In lieu of a jail sentence for Richards, "The Rolling Stones" played two CNIB (Canadian National Institute for the Blind) benefit concerts at the civic auditorium in Oshawa, east of Toronto, in April 1979.
In 1982, Wayne Williams was found guilty of murdering two of the 28 young Black people whose bodies were found in the Atlanta area over a 22-month period.
In 1986, former NHL goaltender Jacques Plante died at age 57. He was a six-time Vezina Trophy winner and is credited with introducing the goalie mask to the game. He won six Stanley Cups between 1952 and 1963, all with the Montreal Canadiens. When the Habs won their unprecedented five Cups in a row from 1956-1960, it was with Plante in the net. He recorded 82 shutouts in the NHL.
In 1991, U.S. President George H. Bush declared Gulf War allies had defeated Iraq's army and that the allies would suspend combat operations at midnight.
In 1992, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously upheld Canada's anti-pornography law. It ruled sexually explicit material is obscene and not protected by the freedom of expression guarantee in the Charter of Rights. The law had been criticized as too vague. But there were fears that overturning it would open Canada to a flood of sexually explicit, violent and degrading material.
In 1994, Sweden defeated Canada 3-2 in the first shootout for a hockey championship at the Winter Olympics, in Lillehammer, Norway.
In 1995, Britain's oldest investment bank was declared bankrupt. Barings Bank blamed its collapse on Singapore futures trader Nick Leeson. On March 5, ING Group of the Netherlands struck a deal to take over the bank.
In 1997, an Ontario court granted Eaton's bankruptcy protection from its creditors. The 127-year-old department store chain had more than $300 million in debts. When restructuring failed, Eaton's was declared insolvent and liquidated in August 1999. Seven stores were bought by Sears Canada and re-opened under the Eatons name in November 2000. They were later closed.
In 1997, divorce on demand became legal in Ireland.
In 1998, Alan Eagleson became the first person expelled from the Order of Canada. The former head of the NHL players' union had pleaded guilty to fraud the previous month and was fined and sentenced to prison.
In 1998, Indiana's 124-59 victory over Portland marked the first time in NBA history that one team scored more than twice as many points as the other.
In 2003, Fred Rogers, host of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" for more than 30 years, died in Pittsburgh of stomach cancer. He was 74.
In 2006, Effa Manley became the first woman elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The former Newark Eagles co-owner was among 17 people from the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues chosen by a special committee.
In 2008, William F. Buckley Jr., the author and conservative commentator, was found dead at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 82.
In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama announced plans for an end to the American combat mission in Iraq by the end of August 2010 and full withdrawal by 2011.
In 2009, Denver's "Rocky Mountain News" published its last edition, just shy of its 150th anniversary.
In 2009, low temperature records were set across Manitoba with the coldest town, Fisher Branch, recording –37.5 C.
In 2010, a 8.8-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed nearly 500 people and damaged some 500,000 homes in coastal towns of Chile. An estimated two million people were left homeless.
In 2010, Canada's men's curling team - skip Kevin Martin, third John Morris, second Marc Kennedy and lead Ben Hebert - capped an unbeaten performance (13-0) at the Vancouver Olympics with a 6-3 win over Norway in the gold medal game; veteran Canadian snowboarder Jasey-Jay Anderson won gold in the parallel giant slalom.
In 2011, Canada opener Nitish Kumar, at just 16 years, 283 days, became the youngest player to play at cricket's World Cup.
In 2013, disgraced theatre impresario Garth Drabinsky, convicted in 2009 for a book-cooking scheme that ultimately resulted in the demise of Livent Inc., was stripped of his Order of Canada. A federal court judge later dismissed Drabinsky's application for a judicial review.
In 2015, Leonard Nimoy, the actor known and loved by generations of "Star Trek" fans as the pointy-eared half-human, half-Vulcan, purely logical science officer Mr. Spock, died of end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at his Los Angeles home. He was 83.
In 2015, the Ontario Securities Commission permanently banned former media baron Conrad Black and his ex-colleague, former Hollinger International Inc. CFO John Boultbee, from acting as a corporate director or officer of a public company in Ontario.
In 2019, Former justice minister and attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould got a chance to "speak her truth" to the House Justice Committee, claiming she experienced “consistent and sustained” pressure from a number of officials to get her to interfere in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin which would’ve allowed them to avoid a criminal trial. She said her continued refusal led to "veiled threats” which she characterized as inappropriate.
In 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un kicked off their second summit in Hanoi, Vietnam.
In 2019, Tensions heated up between nuclear-armed rivals Pakistan and India. Pakistan said its Air Force shot down two Indian warplanes that crossed the disputed Kashmir boundary and captured one of the pilots. The dramatic escalation into airstrikes came hours after Pakistan said mortar shells fired by Indian troops from across the frontier killed six civilians.
In 2019, Michael Cohen, U.S. President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, testified before Congress that Trump knew ahead of time and embraced the news that WikiLeaks had emails damaging to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Cohen testified that Trump is a "racist," a "conman" and a "cheat."
In 2020, Japan announced the closure of schools nationwide to help control the spread of the novel coronavirus. Ontario announced its sixth confirmed case, also marking the province's first instance of human-to-human transmission. Quebec reported its first presumptive case of the virus in a woman from the Montreal region who had just returned home from travelling to Iran.
In 2020, Saudi Arabia closed off the holiest sites in Islam to foreign pilgrims due to the novel coronavirus. The decision disrupted travel for thousands of Muslims headed to the kingdom and was expected to affect millions more ahead of the fasting month of Ramadan and the hajj pilgrimage. Such a move wasn't even taken during the 1918 flu epidemic that killed tens of millions of people.
In 2020, the Senate voted to suspend Senator Lynn Beyak for a second time over letters posted on her website considered derogatory to Indigenous Peoples. Senators approved a report from the upper house's ethics committee that recommended Beyak be suspended without pay for the duration of the current parliamentary session. The Ontario senator was kicked out of the Conservative caucus and eventually suspended without pay in May 2019 after refusing to remove the letters from her website.
In 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden scored his first big-money victory since being elected when the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed a $1.9-trillion pandemic relief bill he championed. The bill, which passed on a near party-line vote, would steer cash to individuals, businesses and states affected by COVID-19.
----
The Canadian Press
