Today in History for May 11:
On this date:
In 1189, Emperor Frederik I Barbarossa and 100,000 crusaders left Regensburg in southern Germany for the Holy Land.
In 1421, Jews were expelled from Styria in Austria.
In 1676, beggars were told that they needed permission from priests to beg in Montreal and Quebec City.
In 1717, the Canadian Commercial Exchange was founded in Montreal. It was the forerunner of the Montreal Stock Exchange.
In 1811, Chang and Eng Bunker, the world's original Siamese twins, were born in Siam (now Thailand). They married sisters and fathered 21 children between them before their deaths on Jan. 17, 1874.
In 1812, Spencer Perceval became the only British prime minister to be assassinated. He was shot by a financially distressed merchant as he walked through the lobby of the House of Commons.
In 1816, the American Bible Society was founded in New York.
In 1833, 215 people died when the "Lady of the Lake" struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic while sailing to Quebec from England.
In 1839, the Canadian College of Physicians and Surgeons was founded.
In 1870, Canada paid the Hudson's Bay Co. $11 million for its territorial holdings in Rupert's Land and the Northwest Territories.
In 1885, the Metis under Louis Riel were defeated by the militia at Batoche, Sask., during the North-West Rebellion. Riel surrendered a few days later and was charged with treason and convicted. He was executed in Regina on Nov. 16th.
In 1904, Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali was born in Figueras, Spain.
In 1910, the city of Trail, British Columbia was incorporated.
In 1920, Britain's Oxford University agreed to grant degrees to women.
In 1921, Tel Aviv was declared the first all-Jewish municipality.
In 1928, WGY in Schenectady, N.Y., began the first regular programming of television.
In 1942, the British steamer "Nicoya" was sunk in the St. Lawrence near Anticosti Island, Que., by a German submarine "U-S53." Six of the Nicoya's crew were killed.
In 1946, the first CARE package arrived in Europe. The relief agency's name stood for Co-operative for American Remittances to Europe.
In 1949, Israel was admitted to the United Nations as the world body's 59th member.
In 1949, Siam changed its name to Thailand.
In 1960, Israeli security forces captured Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, Argentina. An S.S. lieutenant-colonel, he was chief of the Jewish office of the Gestapo during the Second World War and implemented the Final Solution -- which aimed for the total extermination of European Jewry. He was put on trial in Israel, found guilty and executed in 1962 -- the only time Israel has carried out a death sentence.
In 1965, a wind storm in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) killed 17,000 people.
In 1971, Cleveland's Steve Dunning hit a grand slam off Oakland's Diego Segui. He became the last American League pitcher to hit a grand slam before designated hitters were introduced in 1973.
In 1984, a federal law created the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CSIS, to replace the RCMP when dealing with espionage and terrorism.
In 1985, a flash fire swept through a packed soccer stadium in Bradford, England. As millions watched in horror on TV, 56 people were killed.
In 1987, Philippine voters elected a national legislature, and candidates supported by President Corazon Aquino swept to victory.
In 1988, master spy Kim Philby died in Moscow at age 76. Philby worked for the Soviets from within the highest levels of British security for 30 years before fleeing to the Soviet Union in 1963.
In 1996, an Atlanta-bound ValuJet DC-9 caught fire shortly after takeoff from Miami and crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people on board.
In 1997, an IBM super-computer became the first machine to beat a reigning world chess champion in a classical match. "Deep Blue" defeated Russian grandmaster Gary Kasparov in the deciding game of their six-game series in New York. Each won one game, with three games ending in draws.
In 2003, Team Canada won the world hockey championship in Helsinki, Finland, defeating Sweden 3-2 in overtime. It was Canada's first world championship since 1977.
In 2003, the U.S. declared Saddam Hussein's Baath Party dead in a radio broadcast to Iraqis.
In 2010, in his most thorough admission of the church's guilt in the clerical sex abuse scandal, Pope Benedict XVI said the greatest persecution of the institution "is born from the sins within the church," and not from a campaign by outsiders.
In 2010, Conservative leader David Cameron, 43, became Britain's youngest prime minister in almost 200 years after Gordon Brown stepped down and ended 13 years of Labour government. Cameron, whose party was 21 seats shy of a majority in the previous week's national election, also reached a deal with the third-place Liberal Democrats that delivered Britain's first full coalition government since the Second World War.
In 2011, B.C. Premier Christy Clark, who was victorius in February's Liberal leadership race, won the byelection in former premier Gordon Campbell's Vancouver-Point Grey riding by 600 votes, and broke a 30-year losing streak for B.C. governments in byelections.
In 2011, Michael Ignatieff bade farewell to politics after a final Liberal caucus meeting with his colleagues — many of whom were following him into private life after a crushing defeat in the May 2 federal election.
In 2012, a London, Ont., jury found Michael Rafferty guilty of first-degree murder, sexual assault causing bodily harm and kidnapping in the killing of eight-year-old Victoria "Tori" Stafford of Woodstock in 2009.
In 2013, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his Muslim League-N party won nationwide elections in Pakistan. Parliament elected Sharif prime minister on June 5, marking the first time in Pakistan's 65-year history that a civilian government had completed its full term and handed over power in democratic elections.
In 2015, the NFL suspended Super Bowl MVP quarterback Tom Brady for the first four games of the 2015 season, fined the New England Patriots $1 million and took away two draft picks as punishment for the "Deflategate" scandal, where under-inflated footballs were used in the AFC title game against Indianapolis. (Brady's suspension was overturned on appeal, but in April 2016 a higher court reinstated the suspension.)
In 2018, the Toronto Raptors fired head coach Dwane Casey after being eliminated in the NBA playoffs by the Cleveland Cavaliers for the third consecutive season. Casey led Toronto to a franchise-record 59 wins and a top seed in the Eastern Conference. (Conference rivals Detroit Pistons hired Casey as their new head coach.)
In 2018, the Toronto Maple Leafs stayed in-house and named Kyle Dubas as their new general manager. Dubas joined the team as assistant GM in July 2014.
In 2018, a federal judge in Saskatoon approved a multimillion-dollar settlement for Indigenous people who were taken from their families and placed in non-Indigenous foster homes in the so-called '60s Scoop. The settlement includes $750 million for the survivors, $50 million for an Indigenous healing foundation and $75 million for legal fees.
In 2019, Peggy Lipton, a star of the groundbreaking late 1960s TV show "The Mod Squad" and the 1990s show "Twin Peaks," died of cancer at the age of 72. Daughters Rashida and Kidada Jones said in a statement that Lipton died surrounded by family. Lipton played one of a trio of Los Angeles undercover "hippie cops" on "The Mod Squad," which aired on ABC. The Los Angeles Times says it was one of pop culture's first efforts to reckon seriously with the counterculture and one of the first TV shows to feature an interracial cast. Lipton was nominated for Emmys and won a Golden Globe in 1971 for her performance. Lipton married music producer Quincy Jones in 1974, and they had two daughters. The couple divorced in 1989.
In 2020, Quebec reopened elementary schools and daycares outside the Montreal area as the COVID-19 pandemic continued. Officials said students would be subject to physical distancing, frequent handwashing and carefully co-ordinated school days spent in large part at their desks.
In 2020, comedy veteran Jerry Stiller died at the age of 92. Stiller launched his career opposite wife Anne Meara in the 1950s and re-emerged four decades later as the hysterically high-strung Frank Costanza on "Seinfeld." His son, Ben Stiller, announced his passing via Twitter, saying he died of natural causes.
In 2020, Princeton University named its first Black valedictorian since the school's founding 274 years ago. As part of his senior thesis, Montreal-raised Nicholas Johnson developed algorithms to help address Canada's obesity problem.
In 2020, after only 18 months on the job, former army officer Craig Dalton resigned as veterans ombudsman. The move left veterans without a key advocate at a time when many worried about how the COVID-19 pandemic affected their requests for assistance from the federal government.
In 2021, Ontario followed Alberta's lead and stopped giving out first doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Dr. David Williams, Ontario's top public health official, said the decision was made out of an abundance of caution due to cases of a rare blood-clotting disorder linked to the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot. The move came hours after a similar announcement from Alberta, which cited a lack of confirmed shipments of the vaccine.
In 2021, the federal government filed court documents to fight Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's effort to shut down Enbridge's Line 5 pipeline. The Calgary-based company said it had no intention of complying with Whitmer's demand that it shut down the cross-border energy link by the next day.
In 2022, a federal study revealed that the U.S. government supported more than 400 Native American boarding schools that for over a century sought to assimilate Indigenous children into white society. It also identified more than 50 associated burial sites, a figure that could grow exponentially as research continues. The investigation had so far turned up over 500 deaths at 19 schools, though the Interior Department said that number could climb to the thousands or even tens of thousands.
In 2023, Federal Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said Ottawa agreed to help with what he calls the "unprecedented wildfire situation" in Alberta. Blair said Canadian Forces personnel were being deployed to the Grande Prairie, Fox Creek and Drayton Valley areas.
In 2023, police in India said they wanted two Vancouver residents extradited to face charges after four members of the same family froze to death while trying to cross from southern Manitoba into the U.S. in January 2022. Investigators said they believed the deaths of the couple and their 11-year-old daughter and three-year-old son were linked to a human smuggling operation.
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The Canadian Press