Today in History for Feb. 15:
On this date:
In 399 B.C., Socrates, the Greek philosopher, is thought to have been sentenced to death.
In 1386, Lithuanian king Jagiello was baptized. His conversion, the condition of an alliance with Poland, marked the end of established paganism in Europe.
In 1564, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa.
In 1625, Samuel de Champlain was made the representative of the viceroy to Canada. He was also asked to find a route to China.
In 1764, the city of St. Louis was established by Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau.
In 1781, at Coteau du Lac, on the St. Lawrence River, William Twiss completed construction of North America's first lock canal.
In 1820, American suffragist and Christian temperance crusader Susan B. Anthony was born in Adams, Mass.
In 1879, U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes signed a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court.
In 1880, the first quintuplets recorded in Canada were born at Pictou, N.S. Three lived one day, the other two survived two days.
In 1898, the U.S. battleship "Maine" mysteriously blew up in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260 crew members and bringing the United States closer to war with Spain.
In 1922, the first session of the permanent court of international justice was held at The Hague.
In 1925, Yale University received the original Gutenberg Bible, printed in 15th-century Germany. It was bought in New York for $106,000.
In 1930, Cairine Wilson became Canada's first woman senator.
In 1933, U.S. President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt in Miami that mortally wounded Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak. Gunman Giuseppe Zangara was executed more than four weeks later.
In 1942, the British colony Singapore surrendered to the Japanese during the Second World War.
In 1946, the federal government said a Soviet spy ring existed in Canada. The revelations -- from Igor Gouzenko, a former clerk at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa -- led to charges against 21 people. Eleven were convicted.
In 1950, Canadian price controls, introduced during the Second World War, were lifted on all goods.
In 1961, the entire United States figure skating team died in a plane crash in Brussels. The 18 skaters -- accompanied by judges, coaches and backers -- were heading to Prague for the world championships, which were cancelled.
In 1965, the very first Canadian Maple Leaf flag was unfurled at an Ottawa ceremony. Days later it was given to Lucien Lamoureux, who served as Speaker of the House of Commons and in several diplomatic posts before retiring to Belgium in the 1980s. The historic flag stayed in Belgium in possession of Lamoureux's widow until 2005, when she turned it over to Canadian officials in time for Canada Day ceremonies at Parliament Hill on July 1, 2005.
In 1980, Iran complained at the UN that Canada had abused diplomatic privilege by hiding six Americans, then smuggling them out of Iran. The so-called "Canadian Caper" took place after radical Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and a 444-day hostage incident ensued.
In 1981, John Fisher, a broadcaster known as "Mr. Canada," died in Florida at age 67.
In 1982, the oil rig "Ocean Ranger" sank in a storm 315 kilometres east of St. John's, Nfld. All 84 crew members died, most of them from Newfoundland. An American inquiry found the rig's U.S. owners had failed to provide adequate training and safety equipment.
In 1986, the Philippine national assembly proclaimed Ferdinand Marcos president for another six years, capping an election marked by charges of fraud. Challenger Corazon Aquino announced a non-violent protest campaign. On Feb. 26, Marcos and his family fled the Philippines and Aquino was sworn in as president.
In 1989, the Soviet Union announced its last troops had left Afghanistan, after more than nine years of military intervention.
In 1990, 20,000 whites demonstrated in Pretoria to protest the freeing of Nelson Mandela and the legalization of the African National Congress.
In 1991, Canada formally joined Mexico and the U.S. in talks on a continental free-trade deal. An agreement was reached the next year.
In 1996, at a Flag Day ceremony in Hull, Que., prime minister Jean Chretien was wandering through a crowd of people when he was confronted by a tuque-clad protester (Bill Clennett). Chretien grabbed him by the throat and pushed him into the arms of police officers. The incident was dubbed "The Shawinigan Handshake," named in honour of Chretien's hometown.
In 2003, millions of people marched in massive peace rallies in Canada, Germany, Italy, Russia, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Africa, Britain and many other European countries to protest against the U.S.-led impending war on Iraq.
In 2007, far-right activist Ernst Zundel was convicted of 14 counts of incitement for Holocaust denial and sentenced to the maximum five years in prison in Germany.
In 2008, 63-year-old business tycoon Steve Fossett was declared dead by a judge in Cook County, Ill., five months after his small plane vanished after taking off from an airstrip near Yerington, Nev. His remains were discovered in late October 2008 in California's Sierra Nevada.
In 2010, former Montreal financial adviser Earl Jones was sentenced to 11 years in prison, after pleading guilty to two fraud charges related to his $50-million Ponzi scheme.
In 2012, the Harper government used its majority in the House of Commons to pass legislation to scrap the controversial long-gun registry by a vote of 159-130, with the support of two maverick New Democrats. (In April, a Quebec court stepped in at the 11th hour and ordered a delay in the destruction of registry data from that province just as legislation to kill the registry sailed through the Senate and was set to receive royal assent. In June 2013, the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled against the province.)
In 2013, the Manitoba Court of Appeal increased the prison sentence of former junior hockey coach Graham James to five years from two after his 2012 conviction of sexually abusing NHL star Theo Fleury and his younger cousin, Todd Holt, when they played for him as teenagers.
In 2013, a 10-ton meteor streaked across the sky and exploded over Russia's Ural Mountains, with its sonic booms shattering countless windows, damaging buildings and vehicles and injuring over 1,500 people.
In 2013, a court martial panel found now-retired warrant officer Paul Ravensdale guilty of four charges but acquitted him of manslaughter in a training accident in Afghanistan that killed one soldier and injured four others in 2010. Ravensdale was later issued a six-month suspended sentence, fined $2,000 and demoted to sergeant.
In 2014, long-track speedskater Denny Morrison took silver in the men's 1,000 metres at the Sochi Olympics. Teammate Gilmore Junio had given up his spot, saying Morrison was a better bet for that distance.
In 2017, the European Union ratified its free trade deal with Canada, almost eight years in the making and overcoming mounting anti-trade populism in Europe. The next day Justin Trudeau became the first Canadian prime minister to address the European Parliament.
In 2018, Ted-Jan Bloemen won Canada's first gold medal in the men's 10,000 metres in long-track speedskating in an Olympic-record time of 12 minutes 39.77 seconds, 3.47 seconds off his world record time in that distance. Also, the Canadian luge relay team won the silver medal; Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford capped their final Olympics with a bronze medal in pairs figure skating.
In 2019, an 11-year-old girl who was allegedly abducted by her father and the subject of an Amber Alert was found dead in a home west of Toronto. The girl's body was found in a home in Brampton, and the father, 41-year-old Roopesh Rajkumar, was arrested by provincial police a short time later about 130 kilometres north. Peel Regional Police issued the alert after Rajkumar failed to return his daughter, Riya, to her mother. Police said he would be charged with first degree murder.
In 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Jody Wilson-Raybould would still be justice minister if it hadn't been for the resignation of former Treasury Board president Scott Brison - downplaying suggestions she was moved for not giving into political arm-twisting. Trudeau said Brison's decision to leave politics resulted in his having to "move things around" on the team, including shuffling Wilson-Raybould into the veterans-affairs portfolio.
In 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump declared a national emergency in an effort to get funding for a border wall with Mexico. Trump painted a dark picture of the U-S-Mexico border as "a major entry point for criminals, gang members, and illicit narcotics" and one that threatened "core national security interests." The Trump administration immediately began to dig in for fights on multiple fronts as the president's effort to go around Congress to fund his long-promised border wall faced bipartisan criticism and multiple legal challenges.
In 2019, five people were killed and five police officers were shot and wounded in a mass shooting at a warehouse in the Chicago suburb of Aurora, Illinois. The 45-year-old gunman, an employee of the company, was shot and killed.
In 2020, U.S. Defence Secretary Mark Esper announced a truce agreement between the United States and the Taliban, saying it could lead to the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.
In 2021, the World Health Organization gave the green light to the COVID-19 vaccine made by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, allowing the company's partners to ship millions of doses to countries around the world as part of a UN-backed program to tame the pandemic.
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(The Canadian Press)
The Canadian Press
