Today in History for June 14:
On this date:
In 1617, Canada's first farmer, Louis Hebert, arrived at Tadoussac with his wife and their three children.
In 1777, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopted the Stars and Stripes as the national flag.
In 1808, the first Methodist church in Montreal was built.
In 1872, the Canadian Pacific Railway's general charter was passed by the Dominion parliament.
In 1919, British pilots John William Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown took off from St. John's, Nfld., for the first non-stop transatlantic flight. They landed in a peat bog at Galway, Ireland, after flying about 3,100 kilometres in just over 16 hours. The flight won them a $10,000 prize offered by the London Daily Mail, and both were awarded knighthoods.
In 1928, Che Guevara was born in Rosario, Argentina. He was a theoretician and tactician of guerrilla warfare, a prominent Communist figure in the Cuban Revolution (1956-59), and later a guerrilla leader in South America. He was executed Oct. 9, 1967, after he was captured by the Bolivian army while leading a revolt.
In 1940, Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi concentration camps, was first opened near Krakow, Poland. Before its liberation by the Allies in 1945, over three million Jews would be murdered there.
In 1940, German forces occupied Paris during the Second World War.
In 1951, "Univac," the world's first commercial computer, was unveiled.
In 1953, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill became Sir Winston when Queen Elizabeth made him a Knight of the Garter, Britain's highest honour.
In 1966, the Vatican announced that the "Index of Prohibited Books" was being abolished. The first edition of the index was instituted by Pope Paul IV in 1557. It was a list of publications which the Roman Catholic Church censored for being a danger to the church itself or the faith of its members. The 1948 edition contained 4,000 titles censored for reasons including heresy, moral deficiency and political incorrectness.
In 1977, Alan Reed, the original voice of Fred Flintstone, died at age 69.
In 1982, 74 days after invading the Falkland Islands, Argentine forces surrendered to the British.
In 1984, a Liberal party leadership convention opened in Ottawa, with a gala tribute to retiring Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
In 1985, Lebanese Shiite Muslim gunmen hijacked a TWA flight after takeoff from Athens. Hours later, the hijackers killed U.S. navy diver Robert Stethem as the plane landed at Beirut.
In 1989, former U.S. president Ronald Reagan received an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth.
In 1990, Toronto lost to Hanover, Germany -- by a one-vote margin -- in a bid to stage the Expo 2000 world's fair.
In 1994, rioting broke out in Vancouver after the Canucks lost the Stanley Cup to the Rangers in New York in Game 7. Police later used videotapes of the riot to lay charges.
In 1995, a New Brunswick couple, Steve and Lorelei Turner, were convicted in the starvation death of their three-year-old son. They were believed to be the first parents in Canada to be convicted of manslaughter for failing to provide the necessities of life to a child.
In 2004, Jack McClelland, promoter of Canadian literature at McClelland and Stewart, one of Canada's most influential publishing houses, died in Toronto at the age of 81.
In 2005, 22-year-old Asafa Powell of Jamaica set a then world record, running the men's 100 metres in 9.77 seconds, at the Athens super grand prix in the city's Olympic Stadium. (Fellow Jamaican Usain Bolt currently holds the record with a 9.58 at the 2009 world championships in Berlin.)
In 2007, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the Hamas-led government and declared a state of emergency after a week of bloody fighting between Fatah and Hamas fighters that culminated in Hamas' seizure of the Gaza Strip.
In 2008, the Ontario home where Lucy Maud Montgomery penned many of the books in her Anne of Green Gables series was named a national historic site.
In 2009, William McIntyre, one of nine judges who occupied a unique place in legal history, died of throat cancer in Victoria. He was 91. McIntyre was on the Supreme Court of Canada bench when the passage of the Charter of Rights forever changed the course of the law.
In 2010, the House of Commons voted unanimously to designate Halifax's Pier 21 as Canada's national immigration museum. From 1928-71, a million immigrants arrived at Pier 21. It closed on March 8, 1971, as more immigrants arrived in Canada by plane.
In 2012, 77-year-old retired judge Jacques Delisle, believed to be the first Canadian judge to ever stand trial for murder, was found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of his invalid wife. He received the mandatory sentence of life in prison, with no possibility of parole for 25 years.
In 2013, the U.S. government charged former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden with espionage and theft of government property after he admitted to providing information to the news media about two highly classified government programs to collect phone records and online data. (Snowden had fled to China and was then holed up for almost six weeks in Moscow's airport before being granted a year's asylum in Russia, which later issued him a residency permit.)
In 2017, a deadly overnight fire raced through a 24-storey apartment tower in London, killing 72 people.
In 2017, a rifle-wielding attacker opened fire on Republican lawmakers at a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Va., wounding House GOP Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and several others. Scalise's security detail wounded the shooter who later died of his injuries.
In 2018, The Toronto Raptors named Nick Nurse as head coach, becoming the ninth in franchise history. He had spent the last five seasons as an assistant with the club.
In 2018, deputy premier Joe Savikataaq was chosen to take over for Nunuvat premier Paul Quassa who lost his job earlier in the day in a non-confidence vote. It marked the first time a sitting premier was removed in the territory's 19-year history.
In 2018, in what is believed to be a legal first in Canada, a court in Newfoundland and Labrador recognized three unmarried adults as the legal parents of a child born within their "polyamorous" family.
In 2018, in the season opener, the Edmonton Eskimos downed the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 33-30 in the second-longest game in CFL history (Fog Bowl, 1962 Grey Cup). The total time of the game was five hours and 42 minutes, with two weather delays accounting for almost three hours.
In 2019, The Toronto Raptors won their first NBA title in franchise history -- bringing the Larry O'Brien Trophy to Canada. It was the culmination of a brilliant basketball story 24 years in the making. Kyle Lowry had 26 points, 10 assists and seven rebounds to lift the Raptors to a thrilling 114-110 victory over the two-time defending champion Golden State Warriors in Game 6 of the NBA Finals. Raptors star Kawhi Leonard was named Finals MVP for the second time in his career. He had been acquired in a blockbuster deal that sent former Raptors star DeMar DeRozan to the San Antonio Spurs.
In 2021, Manitoba dropped the minimum age for COVID-19 vaccines to 12 and up. Health Canada approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for people that age earlier in the month.
In 2021, Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin -- the man leading the charge with Canada's vaccine rollout -- stepped down. The move followed the announcement that he was the subject of a military probe, although there had been no information released about the nature of the investigation.
In 2022, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly struck a historic deal with Denmark, settling a dispute stretching back five decades over a 1.3-square-kilometre island in the Arctic. Joly and her Danish counterpart signed an agreement to divide Hans Island -- an uninhabited rock situated between Nunavut and Greenland. Joly said the deal ended the so-called Whisky War, which involved both nations leaving bottles of spirits on the island with little notes for one another while removing each other's flags.
In 2023, the federal government confirmed land expropriations for a rail bypass to be built around Lac-Megantic. The town was the site of a deadly 2013 train explosion that killed 47 people. In a statement, Ottawa said it is going ahead with the expropriations without the consent of all of the affected landowners.
In 2023, Bell announced it was cutting three per cent of its workforce or 1,300 jobs. The company said it also planned to close six of its radio stations and significantly adapt how it delivers the news.
In 2023, the Calgary Stampede named Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen its parade marshal for 2023. The 47-year-old colonel and CF-18 pilot is set to become the first Canadian to travel the moon as part of the Artemis Two mission, slated for September 2025.
In 2023, a Quebec judge rejected a request from a Muslim group to suspend a ban on school prayer rooms. In April of the same year, Quebec Education Minister Bernard Drainville barred public schools from making space available to students for prayer, saying students would still be allowed to pray discreetly and silently.
In 2023, RONA Inc., a Boucherville, Quebec-based company, announced it was eliminating 500 jobs across Canada in a bid to simplify its organizational structure amid a slowing economy.
In 2024, Pope Francis welcomed more than 100 of the world's top comedians to the Vatican to celebrate the importance of humour. He told Whoopi Goldberg, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Rock, Stephen Colbert, Conan O'Brien and others that in the midst of so much gloomy news, they have the power to spread peace and smiles. He asked the entertainers to remember that when they manage to bring intelligent smiles to the lips of even a single spectator, they also make God smile.
In 2024, cicada chaos flourished as trillions of crawling cicada nymphs that had spent 17 years underground shed their skin and emerged as adults.
In 2024, scientists in British Columbia called it a "landmark day" for Caribou conservation efforts, as the province moved forward with a massive park expansion. A major provincial park expansion will create a nearly 2,000-square-kilometre protection zone for caribou and other species in northeastern British Columbia. The addition to the Klinse-za Park will make it the largest provincial park established in the province in a decade.
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The Canadian Press
