Today in History for Oct. 26:
On this date:
In 1774, the American Congress invited Canada to join the 13 colonies opposing Britain.
In 1813, a small force of British and Canadian soldiers defeated an advance party of 1,500 Americans at the battle of Chateauguay.
In 1825, the Erie Canal opened, connecting Lake Erie and the Hudson River.
In 1850, Capt. McClure of the Royal Navy discovered the Northwest Passage while searching for the Franklin expedition.
In 1879, Leon Trotsky, a leader of the Russian Revolution, was born at Yanovka, Russia.
In 1881, the Gunfight at the OK Corral took place in Tombstone, Ariz. Wyatt Earp, his two brothers and Doc Holliday shot it out with Ike Clanton's gang. Three members of Clanton's gang, including his brother, were killed, and Earp's brothers were wounded.
In 1902, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an American pioneer in the fight for voting rights for women, died.
In 1905, Norway separated from Sweden, naming Prince Charles of Denmark king.
In 1934, the Honorable H. H. Stevens resigned from the Bennett government and formed his own Reconstruction Party.
In 1942, Japanese planes badly damaged the U.S. warship "Hornet" in the "Battle of Santa Cruz Islands" during the Second World War. (The "Hornet" sank early the next morning.)
In 1942, 16 people were killed when a Royal Air Force ferry bomber crashed at Montreal's Dorval Airport.
In 1948, the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America was organized at Des Moines, Iowa. The association is comprised of 24 Pentecostal groups and meets annually to promote unity among Pentecostal Christians.
In 1950, Canada and the United States agreed on economic principles for joint defence production.
In 1957, the Soviet Union's minister of defence, Marshal Zhukov, was relieved of his post, accused of promoting his own "cult of personality" and seen as threatening Khrushchev's popularity.
In 1958, Pan American Airways flew its first Boeing 707 jetliner from New York to Paris in eight hours and 41 minutes. At the same time, the first London-New York flight was inaugurated by British Overseas Airways.
In 1969, former prime minister John Diefenbaker was installed as chancellor of the University of Saskatchewan.
In 1970, the comic "Doonesbury" by Garry Trudeau premiered.
In 1976, Transkei became the first of South Africa's black homelands to be declared an independent republic.
In 1977, the experimental shuttle "Enterprise" glided to a bumpy landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
In 1979, South Korean President Park Chung-hee was shot to death by Kim Jae-kyu, the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.
In 1982, the Senate passed legislation renaming the July 1st holiday Canada Day. The legislation capped Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's plan to give Canada an independent identity complete with its own Constitution, which had been repatriated in April 1982.
In 1984, "Baby Fae," a newborn with a severe heart defect, was given the heart of a baboon in an experimental transplant, in Loma Linda, Calif. She lived 21 days with the animal heart.
In 1984, New Brunswick Premier Richard Hatfield was charged with possession of 26.5 grams of marijuana. The charges were laid after RCMP officers discovered the drug on Sept. 25 in Hatfield's luggage while he was accompanying the Queen during her visit to New Brunswick. Hatfield was later acquitted.
In 1985, Jacinth Fyfe, 25, of Roxboro, Que., became the first policewoman in Canada to die in the line of duty when she was fatally shot by a man while answering a call.
In 1988, two grey whales were freed by a Russian icebreaker in Barrow, Alaska. They were assisted by Inuit using chainsaws to cut the ice as the world looked on. A third trapped whale died before the rescue.
In 1992, the Charlottetown Accord, which would have drastically altered the Constitution, was defeated in a national referendum. Canada-wide, the "No" vote garnered 54 per cent, compared with a 45 per cent "Yes" vote.
In 1993, brush fires that would eventually destroy more than 1,000 homes broke out in southern California. Some of the fires, which scorched more than 2,700 hectares, were deliberately set. It took more than a month to contain the last major blaze.
In 1994, Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty to end 46 years of war.
In 1999, the British House of Lords, under pressure from Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government, agreed to abolish the 800-year-old right of hereditary nobles to sit and vote in Britain's upper chamber of Parliament.
In 2000, the New York Yankees beat the New York Mets to win baseball's "Subway Series," their third consecutive World Series championship.
In 2001, U.S. President Bush signed the "Patriot Act," giving authorities the unprecedented ability to search, seize, detain or eavesdrop in their pursuit of possible terrorists.
In 2002, a three-day hostage crisis at a Moscow theatre came to an end as Russian forces stormed the building using a mysterious knockout gas that killed at least 120 hostages. About 50 hostage-takers were also killed.
In 2004, a Saskatchewan public inquiry found that aboriginal teenager Neil Stonechild, who froze to death in a snowy field on Saskatoon's outskirts nearly 14 years earlier, was in police custody just before he died and that investigators closed the case prematurely.
In 2005, 17 Alberta oil field workers shared a $54-million Lotto 6-49 lottery win.
In 2009, health officials launched the biggest vaccination program in Canadian history, targeting the pandemic H1N1 virus.
In 2009, the Ontario law came into effect making it illegal for drivers to use hand-held cellphones and other electronic devices while behind the wheel.
In 2010, Iran began the process of loading 163 fuel rods into the reactor core of its first nuclear power plant. It was built with Russian help in the southern port city of Bushehr.
In 2010, Tariq Aziz, the dapper diplomat and highest-ranking Christian in Saddam Hussein's regime, was sentenced to death by hanging for persecuting members of the Shiite religious parties. (In November, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani declared he wouldn't sign off on the death penalty.)
In 2010, a day after an earthquake sparked a deadly tsunami, Indonesia saw another natural disaster as Mount Merapi began erupting, resulting in hundreds of deaths in the weeks that followed.
In 2011, Boeing's new 787, the much-anticipated $190 million long-haul jet nicknamed The Dreamliner, carried its first passengers on a four hour flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong. (In Januray 2013, regulators grounded all 50 of the planes in use after a series of mechanical problems. Flights began again in late April after the FAA approved the redesigned battery system.)
In 2012, a Milan court convicted former Premier Silvio Berlusconi of tax fraud and sentenced the media mogul to four years in prison, his first prison sentence in years of criminal probes. (The conviction was upheld after all his appeals were exhausted.)
In 2014, the CBC abruptly severed ties with "Q" radio host Jian Ghomeshi, who acknowledged he engaged in rough sex but said it was always consensual. In the following weeks, as many as nine women alleged they were victims of non-consensual violence during, or leading up to, sexual encounters with Ghomeshi. (In 2016, a judge acquitted him on all four charges of sexual assault and one count of overcoming resistance by choking.)
In 2015, nearly 400 people died after a magnitude-7.5 earthquake, centred deep beneath the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan's sparsely populated Badakhshan province that borders Pakistan, Tajikistan and China.
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(The Canadian Press)
The Canadian Press
