Today in History for Sept. 29:
On this date:
In 1547, Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish poet, playwright and novelist, the creator of "Don Quixote," was born.
In 1560, King Gustav I of Sweden, founder of the Vasa dynasty which ruled until 1818, died. He was born in 1496.
In 1665, Germain Morin was ordained the first Canadian-born Catholic priest.
In 1758, British naval commander Horatio Nelson was born in Norfolk, England.
In 1788, the first ship built on the Pacific coast, the "North West America," was completed by Captain Meares at Nootka, Vancouver Island.
In 1793, John Graves Simcoe, accompanied by a party of officers, soldiers and officials, reached Lac Au Claire and renamed it Lake Simcoe in memory of his father.
In 1829, London's reorganized police force, which became known as Scotland Yard, went on duty.
In 1877, the first spike was driven for the Canadian Pacific Railway.
In 1901, Italian-born U.S. physicist Enrico Fermi was born in Rome.
In 1902, French novelist Emile Zola died of carbon monoxide poisoning. He was 62. The novel "Therese Raquin" was his first important work.
In 1913, German engineer Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, died. He was 55. Although his family refused to accept his death as suicide, he's said to have thrown himself over the rail of an English Channel steamer after having lost control over his invention.
In 1916, John D. Rockefeller became the world's first billionaire during the share boom in the U.S.
In 1950, the U.S. Bell Telephone Company tested the first automatic telephone answering machine.
In 1956, Hal Patterson of the Montreal Alouettes set a CFL record with 338 pass receiving yards in a game in Hamilton.
In 1956, Gen. Anastasio Somoza, president of Nicaragua, was assassinated.
In 1957, the New York Giants played their last game at the Polo Grounds before moving to San Francisco for the 1958 season.
In 1962, Canada became the third nation to have a satellite in space with the launch of "Alouette 1" from Cape Kennedy, Fla. The satellite cost $3 million and weighed 146 kilograms. It spent a decade studying the ionosphere from an altitude of one-thousand kilometres before being deactivated.
In 1963, the second session of the ecumenical council, Vatican II, opened in Rome.
In 1970, a new translation of the Bible -- the New American Bible -- replaced the Douay version, which had been standard in English-speaking Roman Catholic churches for 220 years.
In 1972, Japan's Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and China's Premier Chou En-lai signed an agreement to establish diplomatic relations, ending a 35-year state of war.
In 1979, Pope John Paul II became the first pope to visit Ireland.
In 1982, seven people in Chicago died after unwittingly taking Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide. The crime was never solved.
In 1985, Lincoln Alexander was named lieutenant-governor of Ontario, becoming the first black to hold a vice-regal position in Canada. Alexander had also been the first black MP and federal cabinet minister.
In 1985, retiring Quebec Premier Rene Levesque resigned his seat in the Quebec national assembly.
In 1987, members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers began a rotating strike against the post office.
In 1988, the space shuttle "Discovery" blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., the first American shuttle mission since the "Challenger" disaster in January, 1986.
In 1988, United Nations peacekeeping forces were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1990, in Washington, D.C., the National Cathedral (officially the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul) was completed after 83 years of construction. Begun in 1907, the Gothic edifice had been used in its incomplete form since 1912.
In 1992, Brazil's Congress voted to impeach president Fernando Collor de Mello over charges of corruption, racketeering and forgery.
In 1992, a Canadian helicopter and a U.S. sightseeing chopper collided in the sky near Horseshoe Falls, at Niagara Falls. The Canadian helicopter made an emergency landing while the U.S. helicopter crashed, killing the pilot and three passengers.
In 1997, India launched its first fully operational satellite aboard an Indian-developed rocket.
In 2000, a prolonged period of deadly violence in the Middle East broke out one day after Israel's then-opposition leader, Ariel Sharon, toured Jerusalem's bitterly-contested Temple Mount area.
In 2001, former South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu, who led his nation in the U.S.-backed war against the North, died at age 78 in Boston.
In 2003, Premier Pat Binns led the Conservatives to a rare third majority government in the P.E.I. election. The last time a P.E.I. government won three consecutive majorities was in the 1880s. More than 80 per cent of the electorate voted, despite power outages and blocked roads caused by hurricane Juan. (Results PC 23; Liberals 4)
In 2004, a group of 44 North Korean refugees, including women and children, disguised as construction workers, entered the Canadian Embassy in Beijing, using ladders to scale a spiked fence around the compound.
In 2004, the Expos played their last game in Montreal, as the club moved to Washington after 36 seasons.
In 2004, Imperial Oil Ltd. announced it would shift its head office to Calgary from Toronto, affecting 1,500 employees.
In 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that British Columbia could sue tobacco companies for the cost of treating smoking-related illnesses.
In 2005, public transit came to Charlottetown as the first of four buses began runs, 150 years after the city’s incorporation. It was the only provincial capital in Canada without a bus system.
In 2007, Canadian actress Lois Maxwell, who played the definitive "Miss Moneypenny" in 14 James Bond films, died in Australia at age 80.
In 2008, financial markets nosedived in the wake of the rejection of the $700-billion package negotiated by U.S. congressional leaders to bail out the financial industry. The Dow industrial average plummeted as much as 700 points, its biggest single-day drop, and Toronto's S&P/TSX composite index fell as much as 800 points. The TSX lost $100-billion in market value, and the Dow $1.2-trillion. Both indexes rebounded somewhat later in the afternoon.
In 2012, Toronto-born convicted terrorist Omar Khadr was returned to Canada from Guantanamo Bay to serve out the remaining six years of his sentence in the 2002 death of a U.S. special forces soldier in Afghanistan. (In 2015, he was granted bail pending the appeal of his U.S. conviction for war crimes in Afghanistan.)
In 2013, slotback Geroy Simon caught the 1,018th pass of his 15-year CFL career, breaking Ben Cahoon's record. (He retired at the end of the season with 1,029. In 2017, Nik Lewis surpassed Simon.)
In 2018, the US Securities and Exchange Commission and Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced a negotiated settlement of a suit filed against him for alleged securities fraud. The suit claimed his tweet in August that he had secured funding to take the company private was false and misleading. The settlement allowed Musk to remain as Tesla CEO but required him to step down as chairman for three years.
In 2019, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said he took "full responsibility" for the grisly killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but denied allegations that he ordered it. In an interview with 60 Minutes, Prince Mohammed, 34, called it a heinous crime and that he took full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia, especially since it was committed by individuals working for the Saudi government. Asked if he ordered the killing of Khashoggi, who had criticized him in columns for The Washington Post, Prince Mohammed replied: "Absolutely not." He said the slaying was "a mistake." Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Turkey on Oct. 2, 2018, to collect a document that he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee. Agents of the Saudi government killed Khashoggi inside the consulate and apparently dismembered his body, which has never been found. Saudi Arabia has charged 11 people in the slaying and put them on trial, which has been held in secret. As of yet, no one has been convicted.
In 2020, in a co-ordinated approach, both Canada and Britain imposed sanctions on Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and his government following the country's disputed presidential election that saw the re-election of the authoritarian leader. In a statement, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Canada and Britain acted together to ensure the sanctions had a greater impact.
In 2021, Japan's former foreign minister Fumio Kishida won the governing party leadership election and was set to become the next prime minister. Kishida replaced outgoing party leader Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who was stepping down after serving only one year.
In 2021, Indigenous rights campaigner Freda Huson of B.C.'s Wet'suwet'en First Nation won Sweden's Right Livelihood Award. The foundation that awards what are known as the "Alternative Nobel'' recognized her "fearless dedication to reclaiming her people's culture and defending their land against disastrous pipeline projects.'' The foundation also recognized a gender and peace activist who has worked to prevent sexual violence against girls in Cameroon, a Russian environmental campaigner and India's Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment.
In 2021, Ottawa lost its bid to appeal a decision that called for First Nations children to be compensated after it was ruled the government didn't properly fund child and family services on reserves. The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled in 2019 that Ottawa didn't properly fund the services, which amounted to discrimination. It ordered Ottawa to pay $40,000 each to about 50,000 First Nations kids and their families.
In 2021, a judge suspended Britney Spears' father from the conservatorship that had controlled the singer's life and money for 13 years. Spears' lawyer Michael Rosengart said she was relieved that her nightmare was finally over. The move was a major victory for the singer, who pleaded in dramatic hearings in June and July that her father needed to be out.
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The Canadian Press