Today in History for Oct. 23:
In 4004 BC, according to the sacred timeline worked out by Archbishop James Ussher, "the heavens and the earth" were created on this date at 9 a.m. (GMT). Ussher's Chronologies of the Old and New Testaments were first published 1650-54.
In 1239, in England, the main cathedral at Wells, begun in 1186, was consecrated. The most striking interior feature of the cathedral are the inverted arches (14th century) by which the piers of the tower are strengthened.
In 1385, in Germany, the University of Heidelberg was founded under Pope Urban VI as a college of the Cistercian order. Among its faculties today are theology, law, medicine and philosophy.
In 1707, the first Parliament of Great Britain, created by the Acts of Union between England and Scotland, held its first meeting.
In 1837, a meeting at St-Charles, Que., marked the beginning of the Rebellion of 1837 in Lower Canada.
In 1847, telegraph service was opened from Montreal to Albany and New York.
In 1864, the Canadian militia arrested 14 U.S. fugitives after the men robbed three banks in Vermont of $200,000 and killed one person before heading north to Canada. The men were escaped prisoners of the Civil War and had been hiding out in Montreal before they went to St. Albans, Vt., to rob the banks. They returned to Canada with some of the loot, but only $19,000 was recovered.
In 1874, Harvard beat McGill in the first inter-collegiate football game in Canada.
In 1885, artist Lawren Stewart Harris, a member of the Group of Seven, was born in Brantford, Ont. An heir to the Massey-Harris fortune, he was the social convener of the group -- he started the Arts and Letters club where many of them met. He formed the idea of the Studio Building, where they could all work, and paid for most of it. He also outfitted a boxcar as a studio on wheels, complete with living and sleeping areas, and took all his artist friends on all-expenses-paid trips to Algoma where they found the landscape that inspired many of their works.
In 1910, Blanche S. Scott became the first woman to make a solo, public airplane flight. She reached an altitude of four metres over a park in Fort Wayne, Ind.
In 1915, 25,000 women marched in New York City demanding the right to vote.
In 1924, Ontarians voted, by a narrow margin, to maintain Prohibition in the province. It lasted from 1916 until 1927.
In 1942, the Second World War Battle of El-Alamein began in North Africa. It ended in an Allied victory on Nov. 4.
In 1946, the United Nations General Assembly met in New York for the first time.
In 1950, University of Toronto researchers announced the development of an electronic heart pacemaker.
In 1952, Canadians fought their heaviest battle of the Korean War on Little Gibraltar Hill.
In 1956, students and workers in Budapest began an unsuccessful revolt against the Soviet Union. The country had been occupied by forces of the Soviet Union since the end of the Second World War. Opposition to the communists started building in 1956 and street demonstrations by students began Oct. 23. The protests spread spontaneously, and became national with insurgents occupying public buildings and production centres. Soviet forces counter-attacked on Nov. 4 and fighting was intense for about a week before the revolution was quelled.
In 1958, Soviet poet-novelist Boris Pasternak, author of "Doctor Zhivago," was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. But Kremlin authorities, unhappy with the novel's indictment of socialism, pressured him into refusing the honour. The novel was translated into 18 languages but not published in Russia.
In 1958, a deep underground explosion wrecked the No. 2 Cumberland Coal Mine in Springhill, N.S. The disaster at the deepest coal mine in North America killed 75 miners; 100 survived. Twelve men were brought to the surface alive Oct. 30 and seven more were found alive two days later. The last body was recovered Nov. 6.
In 1966, Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson announced the federal government would pay 50 per cent of post-secondary education costs.
In 1967, Brenda Robertson became the first woman elected to the New Brunswick legislature.
In 1973, U.S. President Richard Nixon agreed to turn over White House tape recordings subpoenaed by the Watergate special prosecutor to Judge John J. Sirica.
In 1977, the Toronto Argonauts' Zenon Andrusyshyn set a CFL record with a 108-yard punt against Edmonton.
In 1980, the "Globe and Mail" became Canada's first newspaper to use satellite technology.
In 1981, Pearl McGonigal became Manitoba's first female lieutenant governor.
In 1983, 241 U.S. service members, most of them Marines, and 58 French paratroopers died in Beirut when trucks loaded with explosives were driven into two buildings filled with sleeping troops from a peacekeeping force.
In 1989, tens of thousands of Hungarians cheered and marched as onetime Communist Hungary declared itself an independent republic.
In 1991, Cambodia's warring factions and representatives of 18 nations signed a UN-backed peace treaty in Paris. The treaty was aimed at ending two decades of war in Cambodia, including 13 years of civil war between the Vietnam-backed government of Prime Minister Hun Sen and the three-party guerrilla coalition.
In 1991, Prince Charles and Princess Diana arrived in Toronto for a week-long visit to Canada.
In 1992, Emperor Akihito arrived in Beijing, marking the first time a Japanese monarch visited China. He expressed deep regret for Japan's wartime atrocities, but stopped short of an apology.
In 1993, the Toronto Blue Jays became the first team to win the World Series on Canadian soil when Joe Carter hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the 9th inning to give Toronto an 8-6 win over Philadelphia. The defending champions won the series 4-2.
In 1996, in a formal statement, Pope John Paul II said that "fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the (Darwin's) theory of evolution as more than just a hypotheses."
In 1998, Buffalo-area abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian was slain by a sniper at his home. Police later said the shooting was related to the non-fatal shootings of abortion providers in Vancouver, Winnipeg and Hamilton. Anti-abortion activist James Kopp was later arrested in France and convicted in Slepian's killing.
In 1998, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed a breakthrough land-for-peace agreement at the White House.
In 2001, the Quebec government and the Crees of northern Quebec signed an agreement clearing the way for a giant extension of the James Bay power project. The 50-year pact will provide the 15,000 Cree with approximately $3.5-billion.
In 2001, the Irish Republican Army announced it had begun to disarm in accordance with Northern Ireland's 1998 Good Friday peace deal.
In 2003, Dalton McGuinty officially became Ontario's 24th premier as he was sworn in alongside his 22-member Liberal cabinet. McGuinty, 48, was the province's first Liberal premier in 13 years.
In 2009, Kyle Unger, who spent 14 years in prison for the murder of a teenage girl at a rock concert outside Winnipeg in 1990, was acquitted of first-degree murder, a rare move in wrongful conviction cases. The acquittal, rather than just a stay of the charges, is a Canadian first. (In September 2011, he filed a lawsuit for $14.5 million.)
In 2011, the leader of Libya's transitional government, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, declared the country liberated, three days after the capture and death of dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
In 2011, Tunisians held their first truly free election, the culmination of a popular uprising that ended decades of authoritarian rule and set off similar rebellions across the Middle East.
In 2015, Patricia, which peaked as the strongest hurricane on record in the Western Hemisphere, made landfall on a sparsely populated stretch of Mexico's Pacific coast as a Category 5 storm with sustained winds of 266 km/h, avoiding direct hits on the resort city of Puerto Vallarta and major port city of Manzanillo.
In 2018, the federal government announced it would return 90 per cent of all the money it collects from a carbon tax directly to residents of provinces hit with the levy. The federal rebates would apply in provinces and territories that do not have climate pricing plans that meet federal standards. That included Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick starting in April 2019, and Yukon and Nunavut as of July 2019. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe called it a vote-buying scheme.
In 2018, in a bid to survive after New Brunswick's cliffhanger election, the minority Liberal government presented a throne speech outlining what it said was a framework for collaboration.
In 2018, the Liberal government faced new pressure to cancel a deal to sell armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia amid international outrage over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he didn't want to leave Canadians "holding a billion-dollar bill" by cancelling the controversial contract. Just days later Trudeau raised the cancellation cost to "in the billions."
In 2018, a bomb was found in a mailbox at the suburban New York estate of George Soros, the liberal billionaire philanthropist who had been the target of right-wing conspiracy theorists. It was the first of more than a dozen suspicious packages mailed to critics of U.S. President Donald Trump over the following week. Packages were also sent to CNN, former President Barack Obama, former presidential candidate Hilary Clinton and actor Robert de Niro. None of the packages exploded.
In 2018, China opened the world's longest sea-crossing bridge - 55 kilometres - linking Hong Kong to the mainland.
In 2019, the bodies of 39 Vietnamese between the ages of 15 and 44 were found in the back of a refrigerated truck in southeastern England -- the victims of human traffickers. The bodies were found in the English town of Grays, east of London. The 31 men and eight women are believed to have paid human traffickers for their clandestine transit into England. Several suspects were later arrested in the U.K. and Vietnam. On November 25 a man from Northern Ireland who was allegedly driving the truck pleaded guilty to plotting with others to assist illegal immigration and acquiring criminal property. The victims' bodies were repatriated November 27th, arriving on a flight that landed in Hanoi, Vietnam鈥檚 capital.
In 2020, by a vote of 14-to-3 with one abstention, Nunavut's legislature voted to eject former housing and Nunavut Arctic College minister Patterk Netser from cabinet. Premier Joe Savikataaq stripped Netser of his portfolios after he posted on Facebook that "All lives matter" and criticized Black women for having abortions. (The phrase "All Lives Matter" is seen by many as dismissive of the concerns raised by the "Black Lives Matter" movement, which seeks to highlight injustices suffered by Black people.)
In 2020, the Assembly of First Nations called for the resignation of the country's top cop. National Chief Perry Bellegarde said he had ''lost confidence'' in RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki. The call for Lucki to quit came as the RCMP faced criticism for its response to violence over a disputed Mi'kmaq moderate-livelihood lobster fishery in Nova Scotia.
In 2020, the federal government named a Nova Scotia university representative to serve as a neutral third-party mediator in the Indigenous lobster fishery dispute. The government said Allister Surette would begin work immediately and his first priority would be to meet with Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq and commercial sector leaders and harvesters to listen to their concerns.
In 2021, Afghans already approved to come to Canada were being told there wasn't enough funding to keep them in safe houses as they waited to flee Afghanistan. Hundreds of Afghans who helped the Canadian military and non-governmental organizations would be left on their own in Kabul as those safe houses were set to be closed in two weeks.
In 2021, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration review found child-size doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine appeared effective in young children. The FDA posted its review ahead of a public meeting to consider opening vaccinations to kids five to 11.
In 2023, Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles removed a rookie politician from caucus for comments she made about the Israel-Hamas war. Stiles said Sarah Jama's actions undermined the party's collective work and broke the trust of her colleagues.
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The Canadian Press
