Today in History for May 10:
On this date:
In 1278, Jews in England were imprisoned on charges of coining.
In 1427, Jews were expelled from Berne, Switzerland.
In 1534, Jacques Cartier arrived at Cape Bonavista, Nfld., on his first voyage to Canada.
In 1559, Scottish Protestants under John Knox rose up against the Regent, Mary of Guise, mother of Mary, Queen of Scots.
In 1570, Russian Czar Ivan IV became a Protestant.
In 1798, English explorer George Vancouver died in London at age 40.
In 1841, the city of Halifax was incorporated.
In 1844, the capital of Canada was moved from Kingston to Montreal, where it remained for five years.
In 1869, a gold spike was driven at Promontory, Utah, marking the completion of the first transcontinental railway in the U.S.
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated his telephone before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Philadelphia.
In 1886, German neo-Orthodox theologian and author Karl Barth was born in Basel, Switzerland.
In 1920, it was announced that Ottawa's own minister, not the British ambassador, would represent Canada in Washington.
In 1924, J. Edgar Hoover was given the job of FBI director. He remained there until his death on May 2, 1972.
In 1924, prohibition ended in Alberta.
In 1933, the Nazis staged massive public book burnings in Germany.
In 1940, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned and Winston Churchill formed a government. Churchill's stirring oratory and his refusal to make peace until Adolf Hitler was crushed were crucial in maintaining British and Commonwealth resistance to the Nazis during the Second World War. But in 1945, Britain's desire for rapid social reform led to a Labour party victory in a general election. Churchill returned to power in 1951. He died in 1965 at the age of 90.
In 1941, German deputy fuhrer Rudolf Hess flew to Britain on a self-described peace mission. He crash-landed in Scotland and was captured and jailed. Hess was sentenced to life in prison at the 1945 Nuremberg war crimes trial. He was 93 when he died in prison in 1987.
In 1955, Ontario-born Tommy Burns, the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1906-08, died in Vancouver at age 73.
In 1968, the Vietnam peace talks began in Paris.
In 1978, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon announced they had agreed to end their 18-year marriage.
In 1981, France took a left turn as Socialist candidate Francois Mitterrand defeated incumbent Valery Giscard D'Estaing in a presidential election.
In 1991, a B.C. court convicted Inderjit Singh Reyat of manslaughter in a 1985 bombing that killed two baggage handlers at Tokyo's Narita Airport. Reyat was later sentenced to 10 years in prison.
In 1992, the Bible Land Museum opened in Jerusalem.
In 1994, Nelson Mandela was sworn in as South Africa's first black president.
In 1994, notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed by injection at an Illinois prison. He was convicted of murdering 33 young men and boys in the Chicago area between 1972-78.
In 1999, a military jury at Camp Lejeune, N.C., sentenced Capt. Richard Ashby, a Marine pilot whose jet had clipped an Italian gondola cable, sending 20 people plunging to their deaths, to six months in prison and dismissed him from the corps for helping destroy a videotape made during the flight. Ashby had been acquitted earlier of manslaughter.
In 2004, Chuck Guite and Jean Brault, two central figures in the federal sponsorship scandal, were arrested and each charged with six fraud-related charges. The alleged fraud totalled about $2 million and extended to the infamous federal firearms registry program. (They were found guilty and handed 42- and 30-month sentences respectively.)
In 2006, the federal cabinet approved a $2 billion deal to compensate former students of native residential schools for physical and sexual abuse.
In 2010, Canwest Global Communications approved the sale of its newspapers to Postmedia Network Canada Corp., a group led by National Post president and CEO Paul Godfrey, in a $1.1-billion deal that preserved jobs and paid off the insolvent company's bankers.
In 2010, Marc Emery, Canada's self-styled "Prince of Pot," was ordered extradited to the U.S., ending his high-profile five-year battle to avoid U.S. drug charges related to his Canadian seed-selling business. He was extradited on May 20 and on May 24 pleaded guilty to drug distribution under an agreement with U.S. prosecutors and sentenced to five years in prison. (He was released from prison in August 2014, and returned to Canada.)
In 2010, Fahim Ahmad, one of the ringleaders of the so-called Toronto 18, pleaded guilty in mid-trial after a jury heard weeks of evidence that he led a terror cell plotting to attack Parliament and nuclear targets.
In 2011, Microsoft announced it was buying popular Internet phone company Skype for US$8.5 billion in cash in the biggest deal in the software maker's 36-year history. It also meant a big payout for the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board which more than tripled its investment of $300 million in Skype in 2009.
In 2018, Denis Shapovalov defeated Milos Raonic 6-4, 6-4 in a third-round matchup at the Madrid Open, in the first-ever tournament meeting between the two Canadians.
In 2019, Canada's labour market delivered a record high job creation rate - its biggest one-month employment gain since the government started collecting comparable data in 1976. The country added 106,500 net jobs in April, the bulk of which were full time. The rush of new jobs far surpassed market forecasts and helped drop the unemployment rate to 5.7 per cent, down from 5.8 per cent in March. A closer look at April reveals the overall gain was driven by the creation of 73,000 full-time jobs and 83,800 positions in the private sector. The gains were spread across many industries, with both the services and factory sectors seeing gains.
In 2020, a Cargill meat plant south of Montreal was shut down temporarily after 64 workers tested positive for COVID-19. It was the second time the company had to close one of its Canadian operations due to an outbreak, after beef-packing plant in High River, Alta., was closed for two weeks after more than 900 of 2,000 workers there tested positive.
In 2023, firefighters from Yukon, B.C., Ontario and Quebec arrived in Alberta to help crews battling 81 wildfires. The province said crews are also expected from New Brunswick, Oregon and Alaska.
In 2023, federally regulated workplaces were expected to begin offering free menstrual products to workers in mid-December. The federal Liberals changed the Canada Labour Code to ensure access to the products, delivering on a 2021 election campaign promise.
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The Canadian Press