Today in History for Jan. 23:
In AD 638, the Islamic calendar was created and first used.
In 1492, the Jewish Pentateuch was first printed.
In 1656, French religious philosopher Blaise Pascal published the first of his 18 "Provincial Letters," most of which attacked Roman Catholic Jesuits.
In 1831, the Lower Canada Assembly voted to extend legal rights to Jews.
In 1834, a fire destroyed the Chateau Saint-Louis in Quebec City. The Chateau was home to the governors of New France since being built by Samuel de Champlain.
In 1845, the U.S. Congress decided all national elections would be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
In 1849, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to receive a medical degree. The British native was awarded the degree by the Medical Institution of Geneva, N.Y.
In 1863, the Toronto Stock Exchange began daily trading sessions.
In 1888, natural gas was found at Kingsville, Ont.
In 1909, radio was first used to save lives at sea. A distress signal brought help when the "Republic" rammed and sank the "Florida" off the New England coast.
In 1920, the Dutch government refused Allied demands that Wilhelm II, Germany's former kaiser, be handed over so he could be tried as a war criminal.
In 1922, in Toronto, 14-year-old Leonard Thompson became the first diabetic to receive an insulin injection. Frederick Banting and J.J.R. MacLeod of the University of Toronto shared the next year's Nobel Prize for Medicine for the discovery of the treatment.
In 1941, Franz Von Werra became the only German prisoner of war to escape in Canada. Enroute to a northern Ontario prison camp, he escaped from a train near Prescott, Ont., and made it into the United States in a stolen rowboat. When he got back to Germany, Hitler awarded him the Iron Cross. Von Werra was later killed in action.
In 1949, fire destroyed much of Regina's public transit system. Thirty-eight buses and streetcars were destroyed in the fire at the city's transit barns.
In 1950, the Israeli Knesset approved a resolution affirming Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
In 1972, the Soviet consulate in Montreal was slightly damaged when four firebombs were thrown at the building.
In 1973, an accord was reached to end the Vietnam War. A few days later, a ceasefire was signed by the United States, North and South Vietnam and the Viet Cong but it was never implemented. Heavy fighting continued for two years until the North Vietnamese army captured the entire country. Canada accepted more than 100,000 Vietnamese refugees.
In 1975, the federal government announced plans to end tax concessions to Canadian companies advertising in foreign-owned publications.
In 1985, proceedings of the British House of Lords were televised for the first time.
In 1989, surrealist artist Salvador Dali died in his native Spain at age 84.
In 1991, Canada's greatest literary scholar, Northrop Frye, died in Toronto at age 78. Frye was a teacher. Margaret Atwood, Dennis Leary and Jay Macpherson were among his students and he wrote more than 20 books, including Northrop Frye on Shakespeare, which won a Governor General's Award in 1986. Colleague Marshall McLuhan once said of him, "Norrie is not struggling for his place in the sun. He is the sun."
In 1992, the Supreme Court said Ottawa could conduct environmental reviews on any project that had an environmental impact on any aspect of federal jurisdiction.
In 1995, Defence Minister David Collenette announced the disbanding of the Canadian Airborne Regiment. The regiment was rocked by several courts martial in the death of a Somali teen during a UN mission, charges of racism and accusations of illegal hazing rituals. It was the first time a Canadian regiment had been disbanded in such disgrace.
In 1995, after a 10-year battle, Guy Paul Morin was acquitted of the 1984 sex-slaying of his nine-year-old neighbour, Christine Jessop of Queensville, Ont. The Ontario Court of Appeal cleared Morin on the basis of new DNA evidence. He was acquitted at his first trial, but a Crown appeal led to a retrial and conviction. Following an Ontario government inquiry, the province awarded Morin and his parents $1.25 million in compensation in 1997.
In 1997, Madeleine Albright was sworn in as U.S. secretary of state. The former UN ambassador assumed the highest American diplomatic post held by a woman.
In 1998, the Royal Bank of Canada and the Bank of Montreal announced they planned to merge. A similar announcement came three months later from the Toronto Dominion Bank and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. But the federal government rejected both mergers the following December, citing competition concerns.
In 2001, Quebec Premier Bernard Landry referred to the Canadian flag as "a piece of red rag." He was responding to a federal offer of $18 million in renovation funding for a Quebec City zoo on condition that it include English signs and the Canadian flag.
In 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was abducted in Karachi, Pakistan, by a group demanding the return of prisoners from the Afghan campaign. He was later murdered.
In 2003, Majors William Umbach and Harry Schmidt, two American pilots who mistakenly bombed Canadian troops in Afghanistan on April 17, 2002, apologized to the families of the dead and wounded on the final day of a hearing at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., to decide if they should face a court martial. (In June, the U.S. Air Force decided not to court martial them.)
In 2003, McDonald's reported its first quarterly loss ever, a US$345 million deficit and said it planned to close 719 under-performing restaurants, mostly in Japan and the United States.
In 2004, Cambodia confirmed an outbreak of bird flu, bringing the number of Asian nations hit by the disease to six. Cambodia, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam all had bird flu outbreaks.
In 2004, Robert J. (Bob) Keeshan, who delighted millions of children for three decades as television's Captain Kangaroo, died in Vermont, at age 76.
In 2005, Viktor Yushchenko was sworn in as Ukraine's president.
In 2005, comedian Johnny Carson, long-time host of television's late-night "The Tonight Show," died at age 79.
In 2006, Conservatives led by Stephen Harper won a slim minority in the federal election, ending 12 years of Liberal government. The Tories won 124 seats, the Liberals 103, the NDP 29, the Bloc Quebecois 51 and one independent won a seat in Quebec. Paul Martin immediately announced plans to resign as Liberal leader.
In 2007, new rules kicked in requiring Canadians flying into the U.S. to have a passport.
In 2009, the United States became the first country to approve a clinical trial of embryonic stem cells in human patients.
In 2011, Jack LaLanne, the fitness guru who inspired television viewers to trim down and pump iron for decades before exercise became a national obsession, died of respiratory failure due to pneumonia at his California home. He was 96.
In 2014, fire raged through a residence for senior citizens in L'Isle-Verte, Que., killing 32 people. The owners of the facility were part of a $3.8-million civil lawsuit later filed against the town alleging it failed to implement emergency plans that might have lowered the death toll.
In 2018, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck off Alaska's Kodiak Island in the early morning, prompting a tsunami warning for the state's southern coast, coastal B.C. and Hawaii, but was cancelled a few hours later.
In 2018, Canada and the other 10 members of the old Trans-Pacific Partnership agreed to a revised trade agreement that will forge ahead without the United States, exactly one year after President Donald Trump withdrew his country from the 12-nation pact. (It was signed in Chile on March 8 and was renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP.).
In 2018, Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock, two-time Olympic champion Danielle Goyette and former NHL forward Ryan Smyth were named Order of Hockey in Canada honourees.
In 2018, at 33 years, 24 days old, Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James surpassed Kobe Bryant as the youngest player in NBA history to score 30,000 career regular-season points.
In 2019, Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president in a defiant speech before masses of anti-government demonstrators who took to the streets to demand the ouster of President Nicolas Maduro. Canada, the U.S. and several other countries announced they were recognizing Guaido's claim.
In 2020, the U-S Senate approved the rules for President Donald Trump's impeachment trial in a party-line vote. Those rules largely mirror the ones used for the trial for President Bill Clinton in 1999. The Democrats failed to win over any Republicans on their arguments for issuing subpoenas for documents.
In 2020, Monty Python's Terry Jones, who faced a long battle with a rare form of dementia, died at the age of 77. His family said it was a long, extremely brave but always good-humoured battle. Jones, Eric Idle, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Graham Chapman and Terry Gilliam formed Monty Python's Flying Circus in the late 60s and revolutionized British comedy.
In 2022, Canada's Foreign Ministry advised staff serving around the world to watch for mysterious illness symptoms following unexplained health incidents among diplomats in Cuba. Canadian diplomats and family members posted to Havana have reported a number of difficulties since 2017, including cognitive and vision problems, noise sensitivity, mood changes and nosebleeds. Eight Canadian diplomats and their family members who became mysteriously ill while posted to Cuba were suing Ottawa in Federal Court for millions of dollars in damages.
In 2024, a Northwestern Air Lease charter flight taking off from the airport in Forth Smith, N.W.T., bound for the Diavik Diamond Mine, hit the ground and caught fire, killing six people (four mine workers and two crew members) and injuring another passenger airlifted to hospital in Yellowknife.
In 2024, a judge ruled the Liberal government's use of the Emergencies Act in early 2022, during the multi-week protests against COVID-19 restrictions in Ottawa and at key border points, was unreasonable under the law and led to the infringement of constitutional rights for Canadians. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said the federal government would appeal the Federal Court decision.
In 2024, shots were fired and a Molotov cocktail was thrown inside Edmonton's City Hall. No one was injured in the incident. Twenty-eight-year-old Bezhani Sarvar faced several charges including arson, possessing incendiary materials and discharging a firearm into a building.
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The Canadian Press