Today in History – Sept. 5

Advance

THE CANADIAN PRESS

Today in History for Sept. 5:

On this date:

In 1534, Jacques Cartier arrived in France after his first voyage to Canada.

In 1638, Louis XIV of France was born.

In 1698, Peter the Great of Russia imposed a tax on beards.

In 1755, the deportation of 14,000 Acadians from Nova Scotia began. The British forced the French farmers to leave because they refused to swear allegiance to England. The British army destroyed their homes and forced the Acadians into exile in the 13 colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia. Many ended up in Maine and Louisiana, where there are still vibrant Acadian communities. Many returned secretly over the years, and then openly after 1764, when they were granted permission to return.

In 1781, the French fleet defeated the British outside Chesapeake Bay during the American Revolution.

In 1847, outlaw Jesse James was born near Kearney, Mo. With his brother Frank, James led a gang that executed daring bank and train robberies throughout the midwestern United States from 1866. Jesse James was killed on April 3, 1882, when he was shot by one of his own gang members, Robert Ford.

In 1857, Charles Darwin first outlined his theory of natural selection and evolution.

In 1877, Sioux Chief Crazy Horse, who led the Oglala Sioux and the Cheyennes against Lt.- Col. Custer at the “Battle of the Little Big-horn,” was killed by U.S. army troops at Fort Robinson, Neb.

In 1881, forest fires in Ontario and Michigan killed an estimated 500 people in 20 villages near Lake Huron.

In 1896, beef sold for $48 a pound in Circle City, Alaska, during the Klondike gold rush.

In 1905, the Russo-Japanese War ended.

In 1910, Madame Marie Curie demonstrated the transformation of radium ore to metal at the Academy of Sciences in Paris.

In 1914, future baseball legend Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run — the only one he ever hit in the minors — in Toronto. Ruth connected in the sixth inning as his Providence Grays blanked the Toronto Maple Leafs 9-0. Ruth, a budding southpaw pitcher, also tossed a one-hitter that day.

In 1914, the First Battle of the Marne, resulting in a French-British victory over Germany, began during the First World War.

In 1916, Canadian comedian Frank Shuster was born in Toronto, Ont. He died of pneumonia on Jan. 13, 2002, at age 85. He was the sunnier, subtler and taller half of the Wayne-and-Shuster comedy team that performed for more than half a century. His feisty sidekick Johnny Wayne died in 1990 at age 72.

In 1939, the United States proclaimed its neutrality in the Second World War.

In 1939, Gen. Jan Smuts formed a new government for South Africa.

In 1945, Soviet cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko defected from the Soviet embassy, bringing with him documents containing information that helped expose the existence of an espionage network operating in North America. His defection resulted in 20 espionage trials and nine convictions. Gouzenko lived in Canada under an assumed name with police protection until his death in 1982.

In 1945, Canada’s first atomic reactor began operating at Chalk River, Ont.

In 1957, leading “beat” author Jack Kerouac published “On the Road.”

In 1971, TVA became Canada’s first French-language private television network when it opened stations in Montreal, Quebec City and Chicoutimi.

In 1972, the Munich hostage crisis began at the Olympic Games in Germany. Two Israeli athletes died when eight Palestinian gunmen invaded the Israeli dormitory at the Olympic village. Nearly 24 hours later, nine Israeli hostages and five terrorists died in an airport shootout with police. The three remaining terrorists were arrested, but freed later in the year to end the hijacking of a German plane.

In 1975, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a disciple of Charles Manson, tried to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford in California.

In 1978, the Camp David summit on Middle East peace began with U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat. The summit eventually led to a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979.

In 1979, La Banque Provinciale du Canada merged with the Banque Canadienne Nationale to become the Banque Nationale du Canada.

In 1979, Canada’s first gold bullion coin, the Maple Leaf, went on sale. Five million of the coins, each containing 28.35 grams of gold, were produced over three years at an estimated cost of $1.23 billion to stimulate Canada’s gold mining industry. The coin was also sold in the United States and Europe.

In 1983, the U.S. space shuttle “Challenger” landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California after a successful six-day mission, the first such landing attempted in darkness.

In 1983, the Canadian government suspended all flights of the Soviet Aeroflot airline into Montreal for 60 days, as a protest over the shooting down of a South Korean jet.

In 1985, the Macdonald Royal Commission recommended free trade with the United States.

In 1986, 21 people were killed and dozens wounded after four hijackers who had seized a Pan Am jumbo jet in Karachi, Pakistan, opened fire when the lights inside the plane failed.

In 1988, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney signed an agreement in principle, giving the Dene and Metis people of the Western Arctic $500 million and 10,000-square kilometres of land, as well as special rights to another 180,000-square kilometres. The largest land transfer in Canadian history followed 13 years of negotiations.

In 1991, the Soviet Union’s parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies, voted itself out of existence.

In 1995, Newfoundlanders voted 54 per cent to support the government’s plan to curb church control over the province’s school system.

In 1995, France carried out the first of a series of bitterly disputed nuclear weapons tests at Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific.

In 1997, in a rare live television broadcast, the Queen addressed Britain and the Commonwealth and paid tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, who was killed in a car crash in Paris on Aug. 31.

In 1997, Nobel Peace Prize-winning Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun who devoted her life to the destitute, died in Calcutta, India, at the age of 87.

In 1999, French President Jacques Chirac became the first head of state to visit the new Canadian territory of Nunavut. He was welcomed in Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, by Paul Okalik, leader of the Arctic territory.

In 1999, Mike Weir of Brights Grove, Ont., won the Air Canada Championship in Surrey, B.C., and became the first Canadian to win a PGA Tour event on home soil since 1954.

In 1999, “Candid Camera” creator Allen Funt died in Pebble Beach, Calif., at age 84.

In 2000, representatives of four major churches formally apologized to the aboriginal people of Newfoundland and Labrador for 500 years of assimilation and discrimination at a ceremony in St. John’s. But the Innu leader said the apology had to be more specific.

In 2001, Peter Bray became the first person to cross the Atlantic unassisted in a kayak. The Briton made landfall in Ireland after leaving Newfoundland in June.

In 2007, former television journalist David Onley, 55, was sworn in as Ontario’s 28th lieutenant-governor.

In 2007, Katie Couric debuted as anchor of “The CBS Evening News.” Her first newscast ended with photos of the baby of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, who had eluded paparazzi for months.

In 2008, Robert Giroux, a distinguished giant of 20th century publishing who guided and supported dozens of great writers from T.S. Eliot and Jack Kerouac to Bernard Malamud and Susan Sontag, died. He was 94. Giroux helped create one of the most notable publishing houses — Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

In 2008, Quentin Bryce, 65, a former governor of Queensland, rights activist and grandmother, was sworn in as Australia’s first woman governor general.

—-

(The Canadian PRess)

10:01ET 24-08-12