Today in History for Dec. 12:
On this date:
In 1783, New Brunswick's first newspaper, the "Royal Saint John Gazette and Nova Scotian Intelligencer," was published.
In 1787, Pennsylvania became the second U.S. state.
In 1870, Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina became the first black lawmaker sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives.
In 1894, Canada's fourth prime minister, Sir John Thompson, died in England of a heart attack at age 49. He had just been made a member of the Imperial Privy Council by Queen Victoria. Thompson, a former Nova Scotia premier, was prime minister for only two years.
In 1897, "The Katzenjammer Kids," the pioneering comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks, made its debut in the New York Journal.
In 1899, a patent for the golf tee was granted to George Grant.
In 1901, Guglielmo Marconi received the first trans-Atlantic wireless signal at St. John's, Nfld. The inventor of wireless telegraphy flew a box kite trailing 121 metres of copper wire to a telephone to pick up faint clicking sounds transmitted from 3,200 kilometres across the ocean at the Podhu wireless station in Cornwall, England. Today, the hill on which he stood is called Signal Hill.
In 1925, the first motel -- the Motel Inn -- opened in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
In 1936, Bishop Clemens Count von Galen of Munster gave a blistering sermon condemning the Nazi extermination of handicapped adults for being "unfit." He called the Nazis "ungodly" and distanced the Christian community from them. The sermon was later credited to be a catalyst for an underground resistance movement.
In 1937, Japanese aircraft sank the U.S. gunboat Panay on China's Yangtze River. (Japan apologized and paid $2.2 million in reparations.)
In 1949, Nancy Hodges was named Speaker of the British Columbia legislature, becoming the first woman speaker of the Commonwealth.
In 1951, the St. Lawrence Seaway Authority was established.
In 1952, Ontario's Chalk River nuclear reactor experienced a major nuclear accident.
In 1955, British inventor Sir Christopher Cockerell received a patent for the hovercraft.
In 1963, Kenya became independent from Britain.
In 1970, Roy Spencer, father of Toronto Maple Leafs forward Brian Spencer, was shot and killed by the RCMP outside a TV station in Prince George, B.C. Spencer had forced the station off the air at gunpoint because it was not carrying a game between Toronto and the Chicago Blackhawks. Brian, who was in his rookie season, was to be interviewed that night. (Brian Spencer was shot and killed in June 1988, in Florida under mysterious circumstances.)
In 1973, the first commemorative coins to help finance the 1976 Olympics at Montreal went on sale.
In 1975, 10 people died and 19 were seriously injured when a GO commuter train hit a crowded Toronto Transit Commission bus stalled on a level crossing.
In 1980, Jean Lesage, the Liberal premier of Quebec from 1960-66 and the father of the Quiet Revolution, died of cancer at age 68.
In 1984, the Ontario government ended "happy hours" in Ontario bars serving cut-rate drinks.
In 1985, a U.S. DC-8 crashed and exploded on a hillside shortly after taking off from Gander, Nfld. The disaster claimed the lives of 250 U.S. military personnel and eight crew members, the worst air crash on Canadian soil.
In 1985, Robert Bourassa was sworn in as premier of Quebec.
In 1989, the presidents of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua signed a peace agreement for Central America.
In 1989, folklorist Helen Creighton, who was awarded the Order of Canada for her life-long work documenting the oral and musical culture of the Maritimes, died in Halifax, at age 90.
In 1996, the federal government decided to take over control of Radio Canada International, reversing CBC president Perrin Beatty's earlier decision to close it down.
In 1998, pitcher Kevin Brown became the first baseball player to sign a contract worth more than $100 million. He inked a seven-year, $105-million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to overturn a court-ordered recount of Florida's ballots in the previous month's presidential election. The decision caused Vice-President Al Gore to concede the following day to Texas Governor George W. Bush.
In 2000, GM announced it was eliminating its Oldsmobile brand of cars and cutting 13,000 jobs, or 10 per cent of its salaried work force, and closing a plant in Britain.
In 2001, Stockwell Day resigned as leader of the Canadian Alliance. Day later entered the ensuing leadership contest but was defeated by ex-Reform MP Stephen Harper in the March 20, 2002, vote.
In 2003, Keiko, the killer whale made famous by the "Free Willy" movies, died in the Norwegian fjord that he'd made his home.
In 2003, Paul Martin was sworn in as Canada's 21st prime minister.
In 2007, the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal sentenced former Bosnian Serb general Dragomir Milosevic to 33 years in prison for the shelling and sniping of civilians in Sarajevo in the mid-1990's.
In 2008, Manitoba couple Samantha Kematch and Karl Wesley McKay were sentenced to life in prison for the first-degree murder of Kematch's five-year-old daughter Phoenix Sinclair. They buried the body in a shallow grave near the Fisher River Indian Reserve.
In 2008, the federal and Ontario governments reached agreement on a $3.4 billion package for Canadian subsidiaries of the Detroit auto makers, conditional upon a U.S. industry bailout.
In 2011, Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney announced new Canadians would have to remove any face-coverings, such as the Islamic niqab or burka, while taking the oath of citizenship.
In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI began tweeting in eight languages from his personal Twitter account (at)Pontifex to over one million followers. The inaugural tweet read: "Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart."
In 2012, North Koreans celebrated the country's first satellite in space, sent aboard a three-stage, long-range rocket. Canada, the U.S., South Korea and Japan quickly condemned the launch as a cover for testing banned ballistic missile technology.
In 2015, Canada was among 193 countries to ratify the Paris Agreement on climate change, with the goal of creating a carbon-neutral economy sometime after 2050 but before 2100 and an obligation to keep the rise in global temperatures "well below" 2 C compared to pre-industrial times.
In 2016, former Portuguese prime minister Antonio Guterres was sworn in as Secretary-General of the United Nations, becoming the ninth UN chief in the body's 71-year history. (He took office on Jan 1.)
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The Canadian Press
