Today in History for Jan. 8:
In 1324, explorer Marco Polo died at age 70.
In 1438, the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches met at the Council of Ferrara-Florence in an effort to form an alliance that would save Constantinople from the Turks. A temporary union was reached, but Constantinople fell anyway in 1453, ending the Byzantine Empire.
In 1642, astronomer Galileo Galilei died in Arcetri, Italy, at the age of 70.
In 1800, the first soup kitchens were opened in London, England, for the relief of the poor.
In 1815, because transatlantic communications were so slow, an American force commanded by Andrew Jackson defeated British troops at the Battle of New Orleans, two weeks after the Treaty of Ghent was signed in Belgium to end the War of 1812.
In 1869, the first suspension bridge over the Niagara Gorge was opened to traffic at Queenston, Ont.
In 1879, the first issue of "La Gazette d'Ottawa" was published.
In 1889, Dr. Herman Hollerith of New York patented the first electrically operated computer to process information. The company he formed to market the invention would become IBM.
In 1908, the first coin is struck at the new Royal Mint building in Ottawa, ending years of importing Canadian currency from England.
In 1912, the African National Congress was founded by Pixley Seme in Cape Province, South Africa. It was originally called the South African Native National Congress.
In 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson outlined his 14 points for a post-First World War peace settlement.
In 1926, Ibn Saud, founder of Saudi Arabia, was proclaimed king of the Hejaz.
In 1941, Lord Robert Baden-Powell, who founded the Boy Scout and Girl Guides movements, died at age 83.
In 1941, the federal government announced the RCMP would register all Japanese Canadians in British Columbia for security reasons. They were later moved inland to detention camps.
In 1948, William Lyon Mackenzie King became the Commonwealth's longest serving prime minister, with 7,825 days in office. He retired later in the year.
In 1954, the first crude oil reached Sarnia, Ont., through a pipeline from Edmonton.
In 1959, Gen. Charles de Gaulle was inaugurated as president of France's Fifth Republic.
In 1961, Canadian Gordon Lonsdale and four others were arrested for spying at the British Navy's Underwater Establishment in Portland, Dorset.
In 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy officiated at the unveiling of Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. It was the first time France had lent the painting to another country.
In 1969, a panel of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences agreed there was no evidence that UFO's are intelligently guided spacecraft from beyond Earth.
In 1976, Chinese Premier Chou En-lai died at the age of 78.
In 1982, Statistics sa国际传媒 announced that sa国际传媒's jobless rate at the end of 1981 was 8.6 per cent -- matching a post-war record.
In 1986, all Libyan assets in the United States were frozen by President Ronald Reagan because of what he called Libya's support of international terrorism.
In 1986, the Rev. Frank Stone, a Roman Catholic priest and pioneer in religious broadcasting, founder of Toronto's Catholic Information Centre and co-founder of Inter-Church Communication and Religious Television Associates, died in Toronto at age 80.
In 1990, sa国际传媒 formally joined the Organization of American States as its 33rd member. Jean-Paul Hubert was appointed ambassador to the OAS.
In 1991, the federally funded Citizen's Forum on sa国际传媒's Future held its first satellite town hall meeting. Two dozen people, from Saint John, N.B., to Vancouver, participated. The Forum, headed by Keith Spicer, was mandated to take the pulse of the country. It lasted eight months, cost $27 million and identified seven major areas of concern: national identity, the economy, native peoples, Quebec, provincial equality, multiculturalism and political leadership.
In 1996, former French president Francois Mitterand died at age 79. The Socialist leader guided France through 14 turbulent years spanning the end of the Cold War.
In 1996, Fisheries Minister Brian Tobin announced he was quitting federal politics to run for the job of Newfoundland premier. The popular Tobin was the only candidate to replace Clyde Wells as provincial Liberal leader. Tobin returned to the federal cabinet as industry minister in 2000 but retired from federal politics in January 2002.
In 1998, a state of emergency was declared in more than 18 Ontario municipalities, including Ottawa-Carleton, and in Montreal due to the worst ice storm in living memory. The storm, which began Jan. 5, knocked out power to 1.3 million households in Quebec and Eastern Ontario, some of them until early February. It also caused more than two dozen deaths and over $1-billion in insurance claims.
In 2002, Dave Thomas, who founded the Wendy's hamburger restaurant chain, died at age 69.
In 2003, Billy Van, a comic actor who starred in CBC television's "Nightcap" in the 1960s and the "Hilarious House of Frightenstein" in the 1970s, died in Toronto at age 68.
In 2003, a U.S. Airways Express commuter plane crashed at the Charlotte, N.C., airport, killing all 21 people on board.
In 2003, a Turkish Airlines jet crashed in Turkey, killing 75 people.
In 2004, Libya agreed to compensate family members of victims of a 1989 bombing of a French passenger plane over the Niger desert that killed 170 people.
In 2007, Graham James, the junior coach convicted in 1997 of sexually abusing his players in a case that rocked the hockey world from house leagues to the NHL, was pardoned by the National Parole Board. It didn't become public knowledge though until April 2010, when a previously unknown accuser contacted Winnipeg police.
In 2009, three Canadians set a world record for the fastest journey across Antarctica to the South Pole. Ray Zahab, Kevin Valley and Richard Weber arrived at the South Pole after trekking 1,130 km on skis, snowshoes and on foot through the frozen continent. It took the men 33 days, 23 hours and 30 minutes to complete the journey from Hercules Inlet on the Ronne Ice Shelf to the pole.
In 2009, a new Greek government was sworn in after month-long, country-wide riots, the worst civil unrest Greece had seen in decades.
In 2011, a gunman killed six people and gravely wounded U.S. Rep. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in an assassination attempt at her meet-and-greet with constituents at a shopping centre in Tucson, Ariz. A U.S. federal judge, an aide to Giffords and a nine-year-old girl were among those killed. A dozen others were injured. The attack ended when bystanders tackled the gunman.
In 2013, after more than 13 years of legal wrangling, the Federal Court ruled that the more than 600,000 Aboriginal Peoples estimated to be living off-reserve are "Indians" under a section of the Constitution Act, and fall under federal jurisdiction. (The federal government appealed but in 2016 the Supreme Court of sa国际传媒 upheld the ruling.)
In 2015, an associate to the two al-Qaida-linked gunmen in the Charlie Hebdo newspaper massacre opened fire on a policewoman in southern Paris, killing her and injuring a street sweeper. The next day, he took 18 hostages at a kosher market, killing four of them, before security forces stormed in and fatally shot him.
In 2018, federal ethics commissioner Mary Dawson cleared Finance Minister Bill Morneau of allegations that he and his father benefited from insider information to save half a million dollars on the 2015 sale of shares in their family-built company Morneau Shepell Incorporated - a sale that came just days before a major tax announcement that critics say triggered a dip in the stock market.
In 2018, quarterback Tua Tagovailoa came off the bench to spark a second-half comeback and threw a game-ending 41-yard TD pass to DeVonta Smith that gave No. 4 Alabama a 26-23 overtime victory against No. 3 Georgia in the U.S. College Football Playoff national championship.
In 2018, actor Donnelly Rhodes, best-known in sa国际传媒 for his roles in "Sidestreet" and "Da Vinci's Inquest," died of cancer. He was 80. Rhodes received numerous accolades, including a Gemini award for his leading role in the drama "Da Vinci's Inquest" in 2002 and a Gemini Earle Grey Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2006. Rhodes was also recognized by the sa国际传媒 Entertainment Hall of Fame with a star on Granville Street's Star Walk in Vancouver.
In 2019, the driver of the transport truck involved in a deadly crash with the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team's bus pleaded guilty to all charges against him. Jaskirat Singh Sidhu was charged with 16 counts of dangerous driving causing death and 13 charges of dangerous driving causing bodily harm. The Broncos were on their way to a playoff game in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League when their bus and Sidhu's rig collided not far from Tisdale, Sask., in April 2018.
In 2019, General Motors rejected proposals from Unifor on ways to keep the GM assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont. open beyond the planned 2019 closure. The company said the options, including extending the life of the Chevy Impala and Cadillac XTS produced at the plant or shifting production slated for Mexico to the plant, were not economically viable. GM said the union should instead work with the company on timing and transition plans for the approximately 3,000 workers who were set to lose their jobs.
In 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump urged congressional Democrats to fund his long-promised border wall in a sombre televised address to the nation that was heavy with dark immigration rhetoric but offered little in the way of concessions or new ideas to break the standoff that had shuttered large swaths of the government. Speaking to the nation from the Oval Office for the first time, Trump argued the wall was needed to resolve a security and humanitarian "crisis," blaming illegal immigration for what he said was a scourge of drugs and violence in the U.S.
In 2020, officials in South Korea said a Chinese woman may have brought back an unidentified form of viral pneumonia that had sickened dozens in mainland China and Hong Kong. The 36-year-old woman, who worked for a South Korean company, was diagnosed with pneumonia following two business trips to China in December. The disease had sent 59 people to hospital in the Chinese city of Wuhan and seven were in critical condition. It would later come to be known as COVID-19.
In 2020, Iran fired 22 ballistic missiles at an airbase near Baghdad and American troops in the city of Irbi. Iranian state TV said the missiles were revenge for the US killing of General Qassem Soleimani.
In 2020, at least 57 Canadians and dozens more who were on their way to Canadian destinations were among the 176 people killed when a Ukrainian passenger plane en route to Kyiv crashed minutes after takeoff from Tehran's main airport. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said sa国际传媒 would work with its international partners to thoroughly investigate the cause of the crash.
In 2020, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan stepped back as senior royals and said they would work to become financially independent. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex said they plan to balance their time between the UK and North America and focus on their charitable endeavours.
In 2021, British director Michael Apted died at age 79. A representative for the Directors Guild of America said his family informed the organization that he died the previous night. Apted's most important works are the nine "Up'' films, which followed the lives of 14 diverse British children from age seven to 63. It was the idea of the late Canadian filmmaker Paul Almond.
In 2021, a new variant of COVID-19 that first surfaced in South Africa was found in Alberta -- the first Canadian case reported in the country.
In 2023, supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro who refused to accept his electoral defeat stormed the country's Congress, Supreme Court and presidential palace, in a scene reminiscent of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Thousands of demonstrators bypassed security barricades, climbed on the roofs, broke windows and invaded the three buildings. Some were calling for a military intervention to restore the far-right Bolsonaro to power. The chaos came just a week after the inauguration of his leftist rival, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Hundreds of people were arrested in the aftermath.
In 2024, the Toronto Maple Leafs signed forward William Nylander to the largest contract in franchise history by total value. The US$92-million extension would keep the 27-year-old under contract for eight more seasons.
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The Canadian Press