Today in History for Nov. 7:
On this date:
In 1659, the Pyrenees were designated as the boundary between France and Spain, thus ending a 24-year war between the two countries.
In 1665, the "London Gazette" was published for the first time.
In 1781, the last public burning by the Spanish Inquisition took place in Seville.
In 1793, during the French Revolution, Christianity was abolished. Reason was deified, and as many as 2,000 churches were destroyed throughout France.
In 1804, Napoleon declared himself emperor, thus ending the First Republic of France.
In 1807, the Lewis and Clark expedition sighted the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Columbia River.
In 1836, three men from Britain flew 770 kilometres from London to Germany in a balloon. The trip took 18 hours.
In 1867, Marie Curie was born Marie Sklodowska in Poland. She shared the Nobel prize for physics in 1903 with her French husband for their work in radioactivity. She won a second Nobel prize for her discovery of radium in 1911. She died July 4, 1934.
In 1873, the Liberals formed their first federal government under Alexander Mackenzie. John A. Macdonald's Conservatives had resigned two days before due to a bribery scandal.
In 1874, the Republican Party was symbolized as an elephant in a cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast in "Harper's Weekly."
In 1879, Leon Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein. A Russian Communist leader who played a leading role in both the 1905 revolution and the October Revolution in 1917, he was removed from all positions after the death of Lenin in 1924. Trotsky was driven into exile and assassinated in Mexico in 1940.
In 1885, the last spike was driven at Craigellachie in B.C.'s Eagle Pass, completing the Canadian Pacific Railway's transcontinental line. Donald Smith, a principal CPR shareholder, did the honours. Though the line -- stretching from Montreal to Port Moody, B.C. -- was expected to take 10 years to construct, it was completed in less than five.
In 1893, the state of Colorado granted its women the right to vote.
In 1898, Her Majesty's Theatre opened on Guy Street in Montreal with "The Ballet Girl," a musical comedy. The theatre remained in operation for 65 years, with presentations of operas, concerts and ballets occupying its stage. The building was demolished in 1963.
In 1900, the federal election sustained Sir Wilfrid Laurier's Liberals: Liberals 133; Conservatives 80.
In 1900, three Canadian cavalrymen won Victoria Crosses as part of a Canadian detachment that covered a British retreat during the Boer War.
In 1906, Canada's first movie theatre opened in Toronto.
In 1910, Count Leo Tolstoy, author of "War and Peace," died in Astapovo, Russia. He was 82.
In 1916, Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress.
In 1917, Russia's Bolshevik Revolution began when workers and soldiers seized key points in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg).
In 1918, evangelist Billy Graham was born in Charlotte, N.C. Graham became the single greatest evangelist of the modern era, reaching millions on radio, television and film. The son of a farmer, Graham was ordained in 1939. Ten years later, he turned to large-scale evangelism and toured the United States and Europe.
In 1944, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term in office, defeating Thomas E. Dewey. A later amendment to the U.S. Constitution bars presidents from serving more than two consecutive terms.
In 1950, the first contingent of Canadian troops for the Korean War landed at Pusan.
In 1962, Richard M. Nixon, having lost California's gubernatorial race, held what he called his "last press conference," telling reporters, "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore."
In 1962, Eleanor Roosevelt died in New York at age 78. The wife of the 32nd U.S. president was one of the most admired women of her time through her support of liberal and humanitarian causes.
In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that offshore mineral rights on the west coast belonged to the federal and not the British Columbia government.
In 1982, Iona Campagnola was elected president of the federal Liberal party.
In 1983, the world's first successful single-lung transplant was performed in Toronto. Tom Hall, a 58-year-old hardware executive, lived for another six years after receiving the lung of a 13-year-old car accident victim.
In 1989, the entire 44-member East German cabinet resigned amid a deepening political crisis and exodus of citizens to the West.
In 1990, Mary Robinson, a 46-year-old lawyer, was elected Ireland's first woman president. She later became the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. She left that post in September, 2002.
In 1991, Los Angeles Lakers guard Magic Johnson announced he was HIV positive and was retiring immediately from the NBA. He went on to play for the 1992 U.S. Olympic Dream Team. He attempted a comeback in the 1992, participating in the NBA's pre-season games but retired again before the regular season began. He returned to play the final 32 games in the 1995-96 season before retiring a third and final time.
In 1992, the architect of the Prague Spring reforms in Czechoslovakia that were crushed by Soviet troops in 1968, died following a car accident. Alexander Dubcek was 70.
In 1995, Canadian Rohinton Mistry won the Giller prize for his novel "A Fine Balance."
In 1999, Tiger Woods became the first golfer since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win four straight tournaments.
In 2000, Canadian writer Margaret Atwood won the Booker Prize, Britain's most prestigious literary award, for her 10th novel "The Blind Assassin."
In 2000, U.S. First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton won a Senate seat in New York state, defeating Republican Congressman Rick Lazio. She was the first wife of a U.S. president to seek public office and was the first woman to win a New York Senate seat.
In 2000, the U.S. presidential election was held. The election was disputed because of the close race in Florida, which both George W. Bush and his Democratic rival, Al Gore, needed to win. The election was settled five weeks later, when the U.S. Supreme Court intervened on Bush's side by ending recounts in that state.
In 2001, Air France and British Airways resumed Concorde trans-Atlantic service, about 15 months after the supersonic jets were grounded by a deadly crash near Paris. (It was retired in November 2003.)
In 2002, four former members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the hippie-era U.S. terror group, agreed to plead guilty to murder in the shotgun slaying of a bank customer during a 1975 holdup, to avoid a possible sentence of life in prison. The four were William Harris, his ex-wife, Emily Montague, Michael Bortin and Sara Jane Olson. Coincidentally, James Kilgore, the last unaccounted-for member of the group, was arrested at his home in Cape Town, South Africa. In 2003, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and spent six years in prison.
In 2004, former St. Louis Blues player Mike Danton from Brampton, Ont., was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison for a failed murder-for-hire plot to kill his agent David Frost. He was granted full parole in September 2009, but during the parole hearing it was learned that his father was the intended victim.
In 2004, baseball player Jason Bay from Trail, B.C., became the first Canadian and first Pittsburgh Pirate to be chosen the National League's rookie of the year.
In 2005, Omar Khadr was formally charged with terrorism-related crimes -- including murdering a U.S. soldier. (In 2011, he withdrew his not guilty plea and entered a guilty plea, in a deal that would see him serve only eight years. He was transferred to a Canadian prison in 2012 to serve out the remainder of his sentence. In April 2015, he was granted bail pending the appeal of his U.S. conviction.)
In 2006, CFL legend Jackie Parker died at the age of 74 after a battle with throat cancer.
In 2006, Republicans suffered stinging losses in the U.S. mid-term elections, losing control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate to the Democrats.
In 2006, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was named winner of the presidential election in Nicaragua.
In 2007, the Saskatchewan Party led by Brad Wall won a majority in the Saskatchewan election, winning 37 of the 58 seats in the legislature and ending 16 years of NDP rule.
In 2007, an 18-year-old gunman killed eight people before shooting himself at a school in southern Finland.
In 2007, B.C. politicians voted 63-4 in favour of the Tsawwassen First Nation treaty, Canada's first urban land-claims treaty.
In 2007, the Canadian dollar closed at US$1.10 -- the highest level since 1950.
In 2008, at least 92 people died, many of them children, after a school on the outskirts of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, collapsed.
In 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed a landmark health-care reform bill that would extend health insurance to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and enact dramatic changes to America’s medical system.
In 2011, Michael Jackson's doctor was convicted of involuntary manslaughter after a trial that painted him as a reckless caregiver who administered a lethal dose of a powerful anesthetic that killed the pop star. Dr. Conrad Murray showed no emotion as the jury in Los Angeles found him guilty of being substantially responsible for Jackson's June 2009 death. Murray was immediately taken into custody and later sentenced to the maximum term of four years behind bars.
In 2011, the Saskatchewan Party led by Premier Brad Wall cruised to a second consecutive majority, taking 49 of 58 seats in the provincial election. The party took more than 60 per cent of the popular vote, surpassing the record 57 per cent by the Liberals in 1912.
In 2011, former heavyweight champion Smokin' Joe Frazier died after a brief fight with liver cancer. He was 67. Frazier and Muhammad Ali were bitter rivals in the ring who fought three epic bouts in the 1970s. He handed Ali his first defeat but Ali won the last two and Frazier had to live forever in his rival's shadow.
In 2012, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake rocked Guatemala, killing at least 52 people. Damage was reported in all but one of the country's 22 states and shaking was felt as far away as Mexico City, 965 kilometres to the northwest.
In 2013, the Bank of Canada released the new $5 and $10 polymer bills into circulation.
In 2013, shares of Twitter went on sale to the public for the first time, leaping more than 70 per cent above their initial offering price of $26, giving the social network that reinvented global communication in 140-character bursts a value of $31 billion.
In 2016, Leonard Cohen, the iconic writer, poet, composer and baritone-voiced singer-songwriter who seamlessly blended spirituality and sexuality in hits like "Hallelujah," ''Suzanne" and "Bird on a Wire," died in Los Angeles at age 82.
In 2017, former star pitcher Roy Halladay, a Cy Young Award winner in both leagues and the face of the Toronto Blue Jays franchise for most of the 2000s, died when the plane he was piloting crashed in the Gulf of Mexico. He was 40.
In 2018, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed his government would do more to protect synagogues and other places of worship from violence as part of an apology for anti-Semitic policies that denied refuge in Canada to Jews fleeing the Holocaust.
In 2018, a parole board panel denied both full and day parole to a drunk driver who killed three young children and their grandfather in a crash north of Toronto in2015. The panel said 32-year-old Marco Muzzo continued to minimize his problems with alcohol and must address the issue before he could be released into the community.
In 2018, days after the resignation of a senior Ontario cabinet minister was announced, Premier Doug Ford confirmed Jim Wilson was forced to leave cabinet and the Progressive Conservative caucus after facing an allegation of sexual misconduct. Ford's office had initially said Wilson resigned as economic development minister to seek treatment for addiction issues.
In 2018, the Trudeau government announced new rules to make it tougher for federal prisoners serving lengthy sentences to be transferred to Indigenous healing lodges. The change followed a public outcry over the transfer of an Ontario woman, convicted in the 2009 murder of eight-year-old Tori Stafford of Woodstock, to a healing lodge in Saskatchewan from a traditional prison. Terry-Lynne McClintic was returned to prison after the changes were announced.
In 2018, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was pushed out as the country's chief law enforcement officer after enduring more than a year of blistering and personal attacks from President Donald Trump over his recusal from the Russia investigation. Trump named Sessions' chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney from Iowa, as acting attorney general.
In 2018, terrified patrons hurled barstools through windows to escape or threw their bodies protectively on top of friends as a Marine combat veteran killed 12 people at a country music bar in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Dressed all in black with his hood pulled up, the gunman apparently took his own life as scores of police converged on the Borderline Bar & Grill.
In 2020, Joe Biden won the U.S. presidential election, clinching his victory in the Electoral College over President Donald Trump. In his first address, Biden pledged to be a president "who seeks not to divide but to unify." With the win, Kamala Harris became the first woman and first person of colour to be elected vice-president. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he looked forward to helping the Biden administration tackle the world's greatest challenges.
In 2021, Canada's flag was hoisted at federal buildings and the Peace Tower in Ottawa following the longest period in the country's history that it had flown at half-mast. It was lowered to mark the finding of unmarked graves at former residential school sites and was being raised in time for Remembrance Day.
In 2021, Oscar- and Emmy-nominated actor Dean Stockwell died of natural causes at his home at the age of 85. Stockwell was a top Hollywood child actor who gained new success in middle age in the sci-fi series "Quantum Leap'' and in a string of movies, including "Blue Velvet,'' "Paris, Texas'' and "Married to the Mob.'' In a career that spanned seven decades, Stockwell was considered a supreme character actor whose performances didn't have to be lengthy to be mesmerizing.
In 2022, Ontario Premier Doug Ford stepped back from his controversial education-worker legislation that included using the notwithstanding clause. Ford said he was willing to repeal the legislation if the Canadian Union of Public Employees showed “a similar gesture of good faith'' and stopped its strike. The government's Bill 28 not only imposed a contract on the 55,000 workers but also banned their right to strike.
In 2023, King Charles delivered a speech to mark the grand state opening of British Parliament. Charles paid tribute to his mother at the start of the first King's Speech since 1951.
In 2023, Prince William said seven countries -- Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore, Britain and the U.S. -- have committed to deepen their intelligence-sharing and other co-operation to combat money laundering by international gangs engaged in the illegal wildlife trade.
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The Canadian Press