Today in History for Aug. 15:
On this date:
In 1057, Macbeth, King of Scots, was killed in battle by Malcolm, the eldest son of King Duncan, whom Macbeth had slain.
In 1096, the armies of the First Crusade set out from Europe to deliver Jerusalem from the occupying forces of Islamic Turks.
In 1534, the Jesuit order of Catholic priests was founded.
In 1534, explorer Jacques Cartier began his return to France after his first voyage to Canada.
In 1766, the first issue of the Nova Scotia Gazette was published.
In 1769, Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France, was born in Ajaccio, Corsica. He died in exile on the Atlantic island of St. Helena in 1821.
In 1771, British writer Sir Walter Scott was born.
In 1812, the first European steam passage service was announced, between Glasgow and Greenock, Scotland.
In 1866, the College of Ottawa became a university.
In 1914, the first ship passed through the Panama Canal.
In 1916, the first self-propelled tank appeared at the First World War's Battle of the Somme. The British Mark I tank was known as "Big Willie."
In 1919, the Prince of Wales, who abdicated before his coronation as King Edward VIII, arrived in Canada for an official tour. His duties while in Canada included the official opening of a bridge in Quebec and placing the cornerstone for one of the towers in Canada's new Parliament Buildings in Ottawa.
In 1935, American humourist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post were killed when their plane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska.
In 1937, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King named the Rowell-Sirois commission to examine the economics of Confederation and the federal-provincial division of powers. The commission released its report in 1940 and recommended that Ottawa take control of taxation from the provinces. The federal government would be responsible for unemployment insurance, pensions and provincial debts. Although agreement with the majority of provinces was not achieved, Ottawa unilaterally implemented some of the report's proposals.
In 1944, the invasion of southern France began during the Second World War when Allied troops landed on several beaches between Nice and Marseilles.
In 1947, India became independent after some 200 years of British rule.
In 1948, the Republic of South Korea was proclaimed with Syngman Rhee as president, ending the U.S. military government.
In 1950, Princess Anne, the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth, was born.
In 1950, the Canada Steamship Lines cruise ship "Quebec" burned at the wharf in Tadoussac, Que., and seven people died.
In 1965, five days of rioting in Watts, a black area of Los Angeles, ended, leaving 32 people dead and 826 injured.
In 1969, the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair began on Max Yasgur's farm near Woodstock, New York.
In 1971, hurricane Beth swept across Nova Scotia, dropping 296 millimetres of rain on Halifax and washing away highways and bridges.
In 1972, Toronto Maple Leafs owner Harold Ballard was convicted of fraud and theft. He was later sentenced to three years in prison.
In 1973, the Canadian yacht "Greenpeace III" was boarded and seized by French sailors while Greenpeace members were protesting French nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll in the Pacific. The Greenpeace captain, David McTaggart, was injured during the seizure. The yacht had entered a security zone round the test site and ignored orders to leave.
In 1975, president Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh, who had led the country to independence four years earlier, was killed in an army coup.
In 1988, marathon swimmer Vicki Keith became the first person to swim across Lake Superior. In less than two months, the 27-year-old swimming instructor from Kingston, Ont., crossed lakes Erie, Huron, Michigan and Superior and Ontario. She raised over $200,000 for Variety Village during her Great Lakes marathon.
In 1991, an oil exploration barge in the storm-tossed South China Sea sank, killing at least 31 workers.
In 1993, Pope John Paul II concluded his four-day visit to the United States by denouncing the culture of death - abortion and euthanasia.
In 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama apologized for his country's aggression. It was Japan's first such apology.
In 1998, a car bomb killed 28 people and injured more than 200 in Omagh, 80 kilometres west of Belfast in the single deadliest blast in decades of conflict in Northern Ireland. Real IRA, a renegade republican splinter group, claimed responsibility.
In 2000, North and South Korean families separated since the 1950-1953 Korean War, were reunited for the first time in 50 years in the two capitals, Seoul and Pyongyang.
In 2005, Israel began its historic pullout from the Gaza Strip, 38 years after it captured the area in the 1967 Mideast War. Over the next three weeks, all 21 Jewish settlements from Gaza and four from the West Bank were removed, marking the first time Israel abandoned Jewish communities in lands the Palestinians claimed for their future state.
In 2007, a magnitude-8 earthquake levelled homes near Lima, Peru, causing more than 540 deaths.
In 2009, on the 64th anniversary of VJ-Day, a monument honouring Canada’s veterans of the Battle of Hong Kong was formally unveiled in Ottawa. During the bitter fighting, 290 Canadians were killed and 483 wounded.
In 2018, for the second straight year, the B.C. government declared a provincial state of emergency due to hundreds of wildfires burning across the province. More than 3,000 people were under evacuation orders with nearly another 19,000 on evacuation alert. By the end of August, more than 2,000 fires had been reported - scorching a record of nearly 13,000 square kilometres.
In 2020, the longtime leader of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, who played a prominent role in the 1990 Oka crisis and rail blockades earlier this year, died at 70. The council said Grand Chief Joseph Tokwiro Norton suffered a fall at his home and died later in hospital surrounded by his family.
In 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump said his younger brother, Robert Trump, died at 71. The president visited his brother at a New York City hospital after White House officials said he had become seriously ill. Robert Trump was a businessman known for an even keel. The youngest of the Trump siblings remained close to the former U.S. president.
In 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a federal election would go ahead on Sept. 20. He made the announcement shortly after meeting with Gov. Gen. Mary Simon, who agreed to dissolve Parliament and trigger the 36-day campaign.
In 2021, the World Health Organization said a patient had tested positive for Ebola in Abidjan, an Ivory Coast city of more than four million people. The 18-year-old woman with Ebola had arrived Thursday by bus from neighbouring Guinea, where authorities had declared an end to another Ebola outbreak back in June. The WHO said it was not immediately known whether the Ivory Coast case is linked to the earlier outbreak in Guinea.
In 2022, veteran news anchor Lisa LaFlamme said Bell Media had ended her contract at CTV National News after 35 years with the network. LaFlamme said in a video posted to social media that she was "blindsided'' by the decision. She said she was told in late June that Bell had made a "business decision'' to end her contract and she was still saddened by the decision. In a separate announcement, Bell Media said Omar Sachedina would replace LaFlamme starting on Sept. 5 in a move it says was due to "changing viewer habits.''
In 2022, the Taliban marked one year since they seized the Afghan capital of Kabul. The rapid takeover triggered a hasty escape of the nation's western-backed leaders, sent the economy into a tailspin and fundamentally transformed the country. Taliban fighters staged small victory parades on foot, bicycles and motorcycles in the streets of the capital.
In 2023, Donald Trump and 18 others were indicted in a criminal probe of efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state of Georgia. It was the fourth criminal case brought against the ex-U-S president in a matter of months.
In 2024, Ontario's Marineland had to pay $85,000 in fines and restitution over animal cruelty charges. The Niagara theme park was found guilty in March 2024 of keeping three blackbears, Slash, Toad and Lizzy, in small enclosures without sufficient access to water. The ruling called for the theme park to pay out $15,000 for each of the bears, and restitution for the cost of care of the animals after they were seized.
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The Canadian Press
