Today in History for Feb. 11:
In 1765, London wig-makers, dismayed that fewer men were wearing wigs, asked King George III to buy their products to spur sales. He declined.
In 1834, William Lyon Mackenzie was forcibly ejected from Upper Canada's legislature.
In 1847, inventor Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio. Perhaps the greatest inventor of all time, Edison is credited with more than 1,000 patents, including electric lighting and the phonograph, which he patented in 1878.
In 1858, French teenager Bernadette Soubirous reported the first of 18 visions of a lady dressed in white in a grotto near Lourdes. (The Catholic Church later accepted that the visions were of the Virgin Mary.)
In 1869, Patrick James Whalen, who murdered federal politician Thomas D'Arcy McGee the previous year in Ottawa, was hanged. Five-thousand people turned out in a snowstorm to witness Canada's second-last public execution.
In 1907, the Supreme Court of Alberta was established.
In 1920, the council of the League of Nations, forerunner of the United Nations, held its opening session in London.
In 1922, the first paper was published announcing the discovery of insulin to treat diabetes. The finding was made by University of Toronto researchers Dr. Frederick Banting and Charles Best, supervised by Dr. J.J.R. Macleod and assisted by James Collip.
In 1927, the casket of Egypt's King Tutankhamen was opened.
In 1929, the Lateran Treaty was signed by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and the Roman Catholic Holy See, recognizing Vatican City as a sovereign state. At a mere 44 hectares, it became the smallest country in the world.
In 1937, a six-week-old sit-down strike against General Motors ended, with the company agreeing to recognize the United Automobile Workers Union.
In 1945, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin signed the Yalta Agreement during the Second World War.
In 1956, former British diplomats -- and Soviet spies -- Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean turned up in Moscow after being missing for five years.
In 1965, American war planes bombed North Vietnam for the first time.
In 1967, the first Canada Winter Games opened in Quebec City.
In 1971, a treaty banning nuclear weapons from the ocean floor was signed by 63 countries in ceremonies in Washington, London and Moscow.
In 1975, Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to head a British political party when she won the Tory party leadership. Thatcher became prime minister when she led her party to victory in the 1979 general election and was re-elected twice. Nicknamed the "Iron Lady" by Moscow, the strong-willed Thatcher was forced to resign as party leader and prime minister in November 1990.
In 1978, a Pacific Western Airlines plane crashed while attempting to land in Cranbrook, B.C. The crash, which killed 43 people, was blamed on a snowplow left on the runway.
In 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power in Iran as Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar resigned and fled the country.
In 1985, police recovered most of the $68.5 million in stocks and bonds taken in a December 1984 robbery in Montreal. Seven people were arrested.
In 1986, Soviet dissident Anatoly Scharansky was released from the Soviet Union after nine years in captivity. The release was part of an East-West prisoner exchange. Scharansky joined his wife in Israel, changed his first name to Natan, and entered politics.
In 1989, the Reverend Barbara C. Harris became the first woman consecrated as a bishop in the Episcopal Church, in a ceremony held in Boston.
In 1990, Nelson Mandela, the world's most famous political prisoner, was freed by the South African government at the age of 71. The leader of the African National Congress spent 27 years in jail for treason. Mandela and South African President F.W. de Klerk shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for their work to scrap apartheid. Mandela succeeded de Klerk in 1994 and served as president until 1999.
In 1993, British Prime Minister John Major announced Queen Elizabeth would become liable for income tax on all personal revenue, including investment profits, beginning in April. The move ended a 56-year-old royal tax exemption.
In 1997, the Ontario Labour Relations Board certified a union at a Wal-Mart store in Windsor. It was the first store in the company's 35-year history to be unionized.
In 1999, the largest Canadian single-day snowfall was recorded when 145 centimetres fell in Tahtsa Lake, B.C., a remote area west of Prince George, within a 24-hour period.
In 2002, a major Olympic controversy was ignited at the Salt Lake City Games in pairs figure skating when a Russian couple was awarded the gold medal over Canadian skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier. After the French judge said she was pressured into voting for the Russians, Sale and Pelletier were also awarded gold medals.
In 2003, Steve Stavro sold his interest in Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, the holding company that owns the Toronto Maple Leafs, Raptors and the Air Canada Centre, to Bell Globemedia.
In 2008, "The Halifax Daily News" ceased publication as the owner of the money-losing tabloid, Montreal-based Transcontinental Media, moved ahead with a plan to replace the paper with a free daily.
In 2009, Zimbabwe Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was sworn in as the country's prime minister after months of political squabbling with President Robert Mugabe over the terms of a coalition government.
In 2010, dozens of avalanches on Salang Pass in the Hindu Kush mountains of northern Afghanistan killed 167 people, including two women from Hamilton, Ont.
In 2011, after 18 days of pro-democracy protests by hundreds of thousands, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned after 30 years of rule and handed control to the military.
In 2012, one-time pop music queen Whitney Houston was found dead in a Los Angeles hotel bathtub on the eve of the Grammy Awards. A coroner’s report concluded the 48-year-old died from drowning but that heart disease and chronic cocaine use were contributing factors.
In 2013, the Vatican announced that 85-year-old Pope Benedict XVI would resign Feb. 28, the first pontiff to do so since Gregory XII in 1415, citing his age and poor health.
In 2015, Francesco Schettino, the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 16 years in prison. He was accused of causing the 2012 shipwreck that claimed 32 lives and of abandoning the luxury liner while many of the 4,200 passengers and crew were still aboard.
In 2015, longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent Bob Simon, who was among a handful of elite journalists who have covered most major overseas conflicts and news stories since the late 1960s, was killed in a car crash in New York. He was 73.
In 2016, in what was hailed as one of the biggest eureka moments in the history of physics, scientists announced they had finally detected gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space and time that Albert Einstein predicted in 1916 as part of his general theory of relativity. Astronomers will now be able to "hear" the universe in action.
In 2018, Canada won its first medals at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics - defending Olympic champ Justine Dufour-Lapointe won silver in the ladies' freestyle moguls event; snowboarders Max Parrot and Mark McMorris claimed silver and bronze, respectively, in men's slopestyle; speedskater Ted-Jan Bloemen took silver in the men's 5,000 metres, Canada's first medal in that distance since 1932.
In 2018, Canada won its first gold medals at the Pyeongchang Games - in the team figure skating competition and freestyle skier Mikael Kingsbury in the men's moguls. Snowboarder Laurie Blouin earned silver in the women's slopestyle.
In 2020, the Queen's eldest grandson and his Canadian wife announced their divorce after 12 years of marriage. Peter Phillips is Princess Anne's son. He and his wife Autumn said their separation is sad but amicable, and they planned to share custody of their two daughters, aged nine and seven.
In 2020, the Toronto Raptors set a Canadian record with their 15th consecutive win, the longest single-season streak from a major Canadian-based professional team.
In 2020, the World Health Organization said the novel coronavirus would be called COVID-19 to avoid stigmatizing any country, city, group of people, or animal, that may be linked to it.
In 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump nominated Aldona Z. Wos, a North Carolina Republican, doctor and former diplomat, to be the ambassador to Canada. The post had been vacant since August when ambassador Kelly Craft left to become the U-S representative to the United Nations.
In 2020, a primped and poised standard poodle, Siba, won best in show at the Westminster Kennel Club, even with the crowd at Madison Square Garden chanting for Daniel, a popular golden retriever.
In 2021, the Supreme Court of Canada said it would not hear Senator Mike Duffy's case. Duffy had been trying to challenge a ruling that prevented him from suing the Senate for suspending him following a high-profile investigation of his expense claims. The P.E.I. senator was acquitted on 31 criminal charges in 2016. Two years later, a court ruled the Senate's decision to suspend Duffy was protected by parliamentary privilege, effectively blocking his bid to sue for $7.8 million in damages.
In 2021, the federal government approved Air Canada's $190-million purchase of Transat after the COVID-19 pandemic diminished the deal's value. Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said the deal would give greater stability to Canada's air transport market.
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(The Canadian Press)
The Canadian Press
