Today in History for Oct. 2:
In 322 BC, Greek philosopher Aristotle died.
In 1535, French explorer Jacques Cartier explored the St. Lawrence River to Hochelaga, present site of Montreal.
In 1608, the first telescope was demonstrated by Hans Lippershey of Middelburg, Holland.
In 1754, the inaugural session of the first Supreme Court in English Canada was held at Halifax.
In 1758, the first elected assembly in Canada met at Halifax. Charles Lawrence, then governor of Nova Scotia, wanted to encourage immigration but critics argued that New Englanders would hesitate to immigrate unless guaranteed an assembly that would give them a say in the governing process and protect their rights.
In 1780, Maj. John Andre was hanged as a British spy by George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
In 1804, England mobilized to resist possible invasion by Napoleon's French army.
In 1847, telegraph service opened between Montreal and Quebec City.
In 1869, Mahatma Gandhi, the architect of India's independence, was born at Porbandar. He was assassinated on Jan. 30, 1948.
In 1870, Rome was declared the Italian capital after the city and its provinces were formally made part of Italy.
In 1871, American Mormon leader Brigham Young was arrested for "cohabitating" with 16 young women.
In 1883, a women's medical college was founded at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., by Dr. Jennie Trout, the first Canadian woman to be licensed to practise medicine in Canada.
In 1895, much of Canada's Far North was formed into the provisional districts of Mackenzie, Yukon, Ungava and Franklin. Yukon became a territory in 1897. The remaining area was divided in 1918 into the districts of Mackenzie, Keewatin and Franklin, now the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
In 1914, Sir William Howard Hearst became premier of Ontario.
In 1920, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cincinnati Reds played major league baseball's last triple header. Cincinnati won the first two games 13-7 and 7-3. Pittsburgh was leading the third 6-0 when darkness set in.
In 1940, "The Empress of Britain," en route to Canada with child evacuees, was sunk by a German submarine, but British warships rescued most of the 634 crew and passengers. "The Empress," which had been converted into a troop ship during the Second World War, was the largest liner sunk during the conflict.
In 1942, the British cruiser "HMS Curacao" sank with the loss of 335 lives after it collided with the liner "Queen Mary" off Britain. The "Queen Mary," which was converted into a troop ship during the Second World War, was heading for Clydebank, Scotland, when it struck the "Curacao" and sliced her in two. The cruiser had been assigned to escort the "Queen Mary" into Clydebank from the North Atlantic when the collision occurred.
In 1944, Nazi troops crushed the two-month-old "Warsaw Uprising," during which a quarter of a million people were killed.
In 1949, the Soviet Union recognized the Chinese Communist government in Peking.
In 1950, "Peanuts" -- Charles M. Schulz's cartoon strip featuring Charlie Brown -- first appeared. It was to have been called "L'il Folks," but the syndication agency United Features insisted it be changed to the name by which it became known worldwide.
In 1955, the Canadian Unemployment Act went into effect.
In 1958, the African country of Guinea was proclaimed a republic independent from France. European traders first came to the Guinean coast in the 15th century and France originally began proclaimed an area as its protectorate in 1849.
In 1960, the first Canadian conference on children was held at St. Adele, Que.
In 1968, Jean-Jacques Bertrand became Union Nationale premier of Quebec, following the death of Daniel Johnson.
In 1972, Denmark voted to join the European Economic Community.
In 1980, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announced plans to unilaterally patriate the British North America Act and give Canada its own constitution, even without provincial consent.
In 1985, a joint American-French expedition announced it had found the wreckage of the "Titanic," the British luxury liner that hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage and sank in the North Atlantic on April 14, 1912, with the loss of 1,513 lives.
In 1988, the Summer Olympic Games ended in Seoul. Canada finished 19th overall with 10 medals.
In 1991, Senator Hazen Argue, 70, Canada's longest-serving parliamentarian, died in Regina.
In 1996, Robert Bourassa, premier of Quebec from 1970-76 and 1985-94, died in Montreal at age 63.
In 2000, onlookers erupted into "O Canada" as former prime minister Pierre Trudeau's coffin arrived in Montreal for a state funeral and burial, escorted by his sons after a train ride from Ottawa. Thousands of people lined the railroad crossings and stations to offer a final tribute. About 75,000 people paid their respects to Trudeau over three days of visitation in Ottawa and Montreal.
In 2000, for the first time, Britain adopted an official Human Rights Act.
In 2001, Swissair, long considered one of the world’s premier airlines, was grounded after filing for bankruptcy protection.
In 2001, Nortel Networks Corp. said it would slash another 19,500 jobs after posting a quarterly loss of $3.6 billion.
In 2001, NATO members agreed for the first time in their 52-year history to invoke a joint defence clause known as "Article 5," which said that an attack on one member state from abroad was an attack on all members.
In 2003, a report by American chief weapons inspector David Kay said that after extensive searches, no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.
In 2003, two Canadian soldiers, Sgt. Robert Alan Short and Cpl. Robbie Christopher Beerenfenger, died after their jeep was rocked by a landmine not far from their Camp Julien base near Kabul, Afghanistan.
In 2003, the Liberal Party led by Dalton McGuinty won a sweeping majority in the Ontario election, ending eight years of Conservative rule. Liberals won 72 of 103 seats and PC 24. The NDP won just seven seats, one below what it needed to retain official party status.
In 2003, South African writer John Maxwell Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for literature.
In 2005, a glass-enclosed tour boat capsized suddenly in Lake George, in upstate New York, killing 21 seniors.
In 2006, a 32-year-old milk truck driver took young girls hostage at an Amish community school in Lancaster, Pa., killing five before committing suicide. The schoolhouse was later razed.
In 2011, 92-year-old Andy Rooney ended his 33-year run on "60 Minutes" after delivering his 1,097th essay on the newsmagazine. (He died just over a month later on Nov. 4.)
In 2017, rock superstar Tom Petty, who wrote such classics such as "Free Fallin'," "Refugee" and "American Girl," died a day after he suffered cardiac arrest at his home in Malibu, Calif. He was 66. Usually backed by the Heartbreakers, Petty broke through in the 1970s and went on to sell more than 80 million records. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
In 2017, two of Quebec's iconic retail brands formalized a merger with Metro Inc.'s $4.5-billion friendly takeover offer for the Jean Coutu pharmacy group, which was to operate as a separate division of the grocery company.
In 2018, Parliament formally stripped Aung San Suu Kyi of her honorary Canadian citizenship for complicity in the atrocities committed against Myanmar's Rohingya people. The Senate followed an earlier move by the House of Commons and voted unanimously to strip Myanmar's civilian leader of the symbolic honour bestowed on her in 2007.
In 2018, a $40-billion liquefied natural gas project in northern B.C. received final approval from investors. The five partners in the project to build a 670-kilometre pipeline and LNG plant in Kitimat - Royal Dutch Shell, Mitsubishi, Malaysian-owned Petronas, PetroChina and Korean Gas - had delayed the final investment decision in 2016, citing a drop in natural gas prices.
In 2018, Canadian Donna Strickland became only the third woman to win the Nobel Prize for Physics when she shared the prize with a French colleague and an American scientist. The associate professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario and Gerard Mourou were honoured for their work in the field of pulsed lasers. Arthur Ashkin developed "optical tweezers" that can grab tiny particles such as viruses without damaging them.
In 2018, Alberta announced it was ditching its privatized model for road testing and would administer road exams directly to new drivers to fix reported problems with poor service, high fees and lack of access in smaller centres.
In 2019, Canada's Bianca Andreescu has won her 16th match in a row. The world No. 6 beat Elise Mertens of Belgium 6-3, 7-5 in a second-round match at the China Open. It was a rematch of a U.S. Open quarterfinal, which Andreescu won en route to her first career Grand Slam title last month. The 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., will face Jennifer Brady of the U.S. in the round of 16 at the US$8.285 million WTA Tour Premier-Mandatory event.
In 2020, Canadian Eugenie Bouchard was knocked out in the third round of the French Open. It was her best showing in a Grand Slam tournament since 2017.
In 2020, disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein was charged with the rape of two more women in Los Angeles County. The 68-year-old was already serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York.
In 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump tested positive for COVID-19. The results came just hours after the White House announced that senior aide Hope Hicks had come down with the virus after travelling with the president several times. Later in the evening, a feverish and "fatigued" Donald Trump was taken to a military hospital. Reports said the president had been injected with an experimental antibody cocktail in treatment at the White House. Trump's expected stay of "a few days'' at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center was said to be precautionary.
In 2021, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 had now surpassed 700,000. That's a greater number than the population of Boston.
In 2021, U.S. federal officials announced a Canadian man alleged to be a leading Islamic State media figure and foreign fighter was charged with conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization resulting in death. Thirty-eight-year-old Mohammed Khalifa was captured overseas by the Syrian Democratic Forces in January 2019. He was recently transferred into FBI custody and brought to the Eastern District of Virginia where charges were laid.
In 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized to the chief of B.C.'s Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation for what many Indigenous people considered his tone-deaf behaviour. The community that recently found the remains of hundreds of children on the site of a former residential school invited Trudeau to visit on Canada's first National Truth and Reconciliation Day. Instead, Trudeau flew to Tofino on vacation the week prior, setting off a firestorm of controversy.
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The Canadian Press