Today in History for March 18:
In 1314, 39 Knights Templar were burned at the stake in Paris. Created to protect pilgrims going to the Holy Land, the military order had grown wealthy after the Crusades. Perhaps because of jealousy, they were accused of sodomy, blasphemy, and heresy. Many scholars now consider them to have been innocent.
In 1584, Ivan IV, the first czar of Russia, also known as Ivan the Terrible, died.
In 1718, the first inoculation against disease took place in England, when Mary Wortley Montagu inoculated her son against smallpox. The injection was successful.
In 1836, the Hudson's Bay Co. steamer "Beaver," the first on the Pacific coast, arrived at Fort Vancouver.
In 1858, engine inventor Rudolph Diesel was born in Germany.
In 1869, Arthur Neville Chamberlain, British prime minister from 1937-40, was born in Birmingham.
In 1869, pathologist Maude Elizabeth Seymour Abbott was born in St. Andrews East, Que. Abbott was the first female graduate of the McGill Medical Faculty and one of the first women to practice and teach medicine in Canada.
In 1892, Gov. Gen. Lord Stanley of Preston donated a trophy, later named after him, as an award for the best hockey team in Canada. The Stanley Cup is the oldest trophy contested by professional athletes in North America. Originally presented to Canada's amateur hockey champions, it has gone to the top pro team since 1910. It became the National Hockey League's title trophy in 1926.
In 1907, the Canadian Pacific and Grand Trunk Railways were ordered to reduce fares to three cents per 1.5 kilometres.
In 1909, Einar Dessau of Denmark used a shortwave transmitter to converse with a government radio post about eight kilometres away in what's believed to have been the first broadcast by a "ham" operator.
In 1910, the first filmed adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel "Frankenstein," produced by Thomas Edison's New York movie studio, was released. Charles Ogle was the Monster.
In 1922, Mahatma Gandhi, leader of India's independence movement, was sentenced to six years in jail for acts of civil disobedience. He was released two years later.
In 1929, ground was broken for the Windsor-Detroit tunnel under the Detroit River.
In 1932, John Updike, American novelist, short story writer, poet and critic, was born in Shillington, Pa. He died Jan. 27, 2009.
In 1937, some 300 people, mostly children, were killed in a gas explosion at a school in New London, Texas.
In 1940, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met at the Brenner Pass, where the Italian dictator agreed to join Germany's war against France and Britain.
In 1945, Montreal Canadiens forward Maurice Richard became the first NHL player to score 50 goals in one season, accomplishing the feat in 50 games.
In 1957, Canada took part in a disarmament conference in London with Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union and France.
In 1965, the first spacewalk took place as Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov left an orbiting spaceship and floated in space. He left the two-man capsule for 10 minutes, secured by a five-metre lifeline. The extension supplied his spacesuit with oxygen and carried communication lines.
In 1967, U.S. oil tanker "Torrey Canyon" broke up on a dangerous reef near Land's End, England. A slick spread over 250 square kilometres of ocean and beaches were contaminated along 482 kilometres of coastline.
In 1978, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan, was found guilty of ordering the assassination of a political opponent and sentenced to hang.
In 1982, the CRTC awarded pay television licences to six companies.
In 1988, Jacques Parizeau took over control of the Parti Quebecois after winning the leadership by default.
In 1990, a conservative coalition, the three-party Alliance for Germany, swept to victory in East Germany's first free elections in 40 years.
In 1992, white South Africans voted nearly 69 per cent in favour of continuing the process of ending apartheid launched by President F.W. de Klerk.
In 1993, a report by a team of child abuse experts in Connecticut cleared Woody Allen of charges he molested his seven-year-old adopted daughter. Allen's former girlfriend, Mia Farrow, had accused him of molesting the child.
In 1993, about 200 angry environmentalists demanding the preservation of Vancouver Island wilderness areas stormed the legislature -- forcing the government to delay its Speech from the Throne for about 90 minutes.
In 1998, Edward Bigelow Joliffe, former leader of the CCF in Ontario, died at age 89 on Salt Spring Island, B.C.
In 1998, doctors staged walkouts in British Columbia and parts of Quebec to protest cuts to health care.
In 2000, Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party won the presidential election in Taiwan, ousting the 50-year-old Nationalist Party dynasty.
In 2000, Randol Whidden Ganong, the patriarch of Ganong Bros. Ltd. chocolate company in New Brunswick, died at age 93.
In 2004, Harrison McCain, one of the two architects of the McCain frozen-food empire in New Brunswick, died at a hospital in Boston at age 76.
In 2008, Canada recognized an independent Kosovo.
In 2008, British director Anthony Minghella, who won an Oscar for "The English Patient," died in London at age 54.
In 2009, actress Natasha Richardson, whose career highlights included the film "Patty Hearst" and a Tony-winning performance in a stage revival of "Cabaret," died in New York at age 45. She had suffered a head injury in a skiing accident at Quebec's Mont Tremblant resort on March 16th.
In 2010, the European Union rejected a U.S. motion to ban the international trade of polar bear parts. Canada, along with Norway and Greenland, led the opposition to the proposal. Canada is the only country that allows the export of polar bear hides.
In 2010, the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the province's controversial street racing law, in a judgment that largely turned on whether the possibility of jail time for offenders made it unconstitutional.
In 2010, the Russian Soyuz TMA-16 capsule carrying NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian astronaut Maxim Surayev landed safely on Kazakhstan's chilly northern steppes after spending almost six months on the International Space Station.
In 2010, U.S. citizen David Coleman Headley, 49, confessed to planning the 2008 attacks that killed 166 people in Mumbai, India, and admitted he was behind a plot to attack a Danish newspaper. His testimony implicated lifelong friend Tahwwur Hussain Rana, a Canadian who denied he provided documents that were key to Headley鈥檚 schemes.
In 2010, the B.C. Supreme Court banned the sale of raw milk in the province, rejecting the co-op structure that allows for the sharing of unpasteurized milk in Ontario.
In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an agreement to annex Crimea, two days after residents voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine. The vote was widely condemned as illegal by Western leaders, who moved swiftly to punish Russia with economic sanctions.
In 2016, an 81-year-old cancer victim, who became the first person in Ontario to be given legal permission for a doctor-assisted suicide, died less than 24 hours after the courts approved of doctors helping him end his life.
In 2017, former federal cabinet minister Jason Kenney was elected as the new leader of Alberta's Progressive Conservative party in a decisive first ballot victory on a unite-the-right campaign to dissolve the PCs and form a new party with the Wildrose. (Members of both parties voted July 22 in favour of a merger and on Oct. 28 Kenney won the leadership of the United Conservative Party.)
In 2018, Vladimir Putin rolled to a crushing re-election victory for another six-year term as Russia's president.
In 2018, on the final day of competition at the Pyeongchang Paralympic Games, alpine skier Molly Jepsen won silver in the women's standing slalom; Canada won two medals in cross-country skiing - silver in the mixed 4x2.5-km and bronze in the 4x2.5-km open relay; Canada lost 2-1 in overtime to the U.S. in ice hockey. Canada finished third overall and with a national record 28 medals (eight gold, four silver, 16 bronze), improving on the 19 won in Vancouver in 2010.
In 2019, the country's top bureaucrat announced he would retire as clerk of the Privy Council. Michael Wernick said in a statement there was no path for a "relationship of mutual trust'' if the Conservatives or N-D-P form the next government. Former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould accused Wernick of pressuring her to help Quebec-based engineering giant S-N-C-Lavalin avoid a criminal prosecution.
In 2019, police in the Dutch city of Utrecht captured the suspect in a shooting on a tram that left three dead and five wounded. The father of 37-year-old Turkish suspect Gokmen Tanis said his son should be punished if he was to blame.
In 2020, Canada's six big banks announced they would let customers defer mortgage payments for up to six months over COVID-19.
In 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed that the border between the two countries would be shuttered to all but essential traffic in both directions in an attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19.
In 2020, the federal government announced an $82 billion relief package to help support workers, businesses and the entire Canadian economy as the COVID-19 pandemic continued. The government also announced it was pausing Canada Student Loan payments for six months.
In 2020, B.C. and Saskatchewan became the latest provinces to declare states of emergency in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020, an elderly woman from the Lanaudiere region, northeast of Montreal, became Quebec's first reported death from COVID-19.
In 2020, Norwegian musher Thomas Waerner easily won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. His closest competitor was three-time champion Mitch Seavey, who was about five hours behind.
In 2020, several colleges and universities in Ontario either asked or ordered students to move out of their dorms to help reduce the spread of COVID-19.
In 2020, Porter Airlines announced it would suspend all flights, giving passengers' two days notice to return home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020, despite not having any COVID-19 cases, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, and Yukon announced they were declaring public health emergencies to allow their governments to respond quickly should cases surface.
In 2021, the drug regulatory agency of the European Union said experts concluded the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is not linked to an overall increase in blood clot risk. The European Medicines Agency said while it recommends its use, it also suggests a description of certain rare types of blood clots be added to the vaccine leaflets for AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca said it reviewed the safety records of 17 million patients who received the vaccine in Europe and the U-K. The drugmaker said it found no causal link between its product and blood clots.
In 2021, designer Elsa Peretti, who went from Halston model and Studio 54 regular in the 1960s and '70s to one of the world's most famous jewelry designers, died. She was 80. She died in her sleep at home in a small village outside Barcelona, Spain. Peretti's sculptural cuff bracelets, bean designs and open-heart pendants are among her most recognizable work. She designed jewelry for Tiffany.
In 2022, the City of Ottawa calculated the cost of responding to the three-week-long protest against COVID-19 restrictions in front of Parliament Hill came in at $36.3 million. Almost all of that was the cost of policing the protest. The total costs in the memo to city councillors didn't include losses to downtown businesses, which were estimated to be in the millions, or the almost $30,000 in relief payments to social service providers whose operations were affected.
In 2024, Vladimir Putin secured a fifth term as Russia's president. The country's election commission said Putin received an overwhelming number of votes 鈥� 76 million ballots to win 87 per cent of the vote. After facing only token challengers and harshly suppressing opposition voices, Putin became set to extend his nearly quarter-century rule for six more years.
In 2024, the Israeli military said it killed a Hamas commander who was armed and hiding inside the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said senior Hamas militants were directing attacks from the compound.
In 2024, retired NASA astronaut Thomas P. Stafford died at the age of 93. He took part in four space missions, commanding a dress rehearsal flight for the 1969 moon landing and the first American-Soviet space link-up.
In 2024, members of Parliament approved a dramatically altered version of a New Democrat motion calling on the Liberals to recognize Palestinian statehood. The approved motion was negotiated by the Liberals and NDP with the most significant change revising the call to recognize Palestine as a state to instead "actively pursue" the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of a negotiated two-state solution. The amendment aligned with Canada's existing policy and the new motion passed by a margin of 204-117.
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The Canadian Press
