Today in History for Dec. 15:
On this date:
In 1791, the U.S. Bill of Rights went into effect, following ratification by Virginia.
In 1890, Chief Sitting Bull, whose Sioux forces had wiped out Gen. George Custer and his army at the "Battle of Little Big Horn" in Montana in 1876, died in North Dakota after being shot by police trying to arrest him. He was born in 1831 along the Grand River in South Dakota.
In 1891, Honore Mercier was dismissed as premier of Quebec by the lieutenant governor over a scandal involving campaign funds.
In 1913, Toronto's newest vaudeville house, the 2,200-seat Loew's Yonge St. Theatre (now the Elgin), opened. Owner Marcus Loewe brought in Irving Berlin to sing some of his favourites to a standing-room only crowd. Two months later, the 1,500-seat Winter Garden was opened above Loew's, creating the only double-decker theatre complex in Canada.
In 1917, Germany and Russia signed an armistice during the First World War.
In 1922, the British Broadcasting Corp. was established.
In 1939, "Gone With the Wind," producer David O. Selznick's movie version of the Margaret Mitchell novel starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, had its world premiere in Atlanta.
In 1942, Parliament approved the conscription of married men during the Second World War.
In 1944, during the Second World War, American forces invaded Mindoro Island in the Philippines.
In 1952, in Canada's first parliamentary attack on television programming, federal Conservative leader George Drew blasted the play "Hilda Morgan."
In 1960, Montreal's new $30-million International Air Terminal at Dorval was officially opened.
In 1961, former Nazi SS officer Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death by an Israeli court for his part in the mass slaughter of the Jews during the Second World War. Eichmann was appointed head of the Gestapo in 1939 and was responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews after the “Final Solution” was implemented. Eichmann was captured by the U.S. Army at the end of the war but escaped, eventually making his way to Argentina in 1950. He was abducted by the Israeli Secret Service 10 years later and taken to Israel to stand trial. He was hanged at Ramleh Prison on May 31, 1962.
In 1964, the House of Commons voted 163-78 to adopt the red and white maple leaf design as Canada's flag.
In 1965, two U.S. manned spacecraft, "Gemini Six" and "Gemini Seven," manoeuvred within three metres of each other while in orbit.
In 1966, Walt Disney, who became a household name with his animated cartoon features, died at age 65. His most famous cartoon character, Mickey Mouse, first appeared in October 1928. He also produced full-length animated films, such as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Cinderella." In 1955, he created the enormously successful amusement park, Disneyland, in California, and followed it with Walt Disney World in Florida.
In 1967, Laval, Que., became the only municipality in Canada to impose a rental tax on apartment tenants.
In 1977, a bill passed by Quebec's national assembly made discrimination against homosexuals illegal in the province.
In 1978, the United States announced it would establish full diplomatic relations with China.
In 1985, Frank Sobey, the supermarket tycoon whose Empire Co. Ltd. was one of Canada's richest holding companies, died in Abercrombie, N.S. He was 83.
In 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down provisions of Quebec's language law, Bill 101, which required that all signs, posters and commercial advertising in the province be only in French. Premier Robert Bourassa later used the notwithstanding clause to exempt the law from the Constitution.
In 1989, a popular uprising began that resulted in the downfall of Romania's Nicolae Ceaucescu. Demonstrators gathered in the city of Timisoara to prevent the arrest of a dissident clergyman.
In 1990, more than 400 American Roman Catholic theologians charged that the Vatican had been throttling church reforms and imposing "an excessive Roman centralization." They contended that the Vatican had undercut a greater role for women, slowed the ecumenical drive for Christian unity and undermined the collegial functioning of national conferences of bishops.
In 1991, more than 450 people drowned after the ferry "Salem Express," carrying Egyptian pilgrims home from Jidda, Saudi Arabia, sank off the port of Safaga, Egypt.
In 1993, the British and Irish prime ministers agreed on a "framework for peace" in Northern Ireland that called for all parties that renounced violence to be invited to join in negotiations on the province's future.
In 1993, Montreal synchronized swimmer Sylvie Frechette was finally awarded an Olympic gold medal. At the 1992 Games in Barcelona, she was the victim of a judging error when an official pressed the wrong key. Canada appealed the mark after Frechette was awarded silver. The original gold-medal winner, American Kristen Babb-Sprague, got to keep her medal.
In 1994, the million-hectare Tarshenshini-Alsek wilderness in the northwestern corner of British Columbia was declared a world heritage site by UNESCO. Together with adjacent wilderness preserves in Alaska and the Yukon, the remote corner is now the largest international world heritage site in the world at 8.5 million hectares.
In 1996, the Boeing Co. and McDonnell Douglas Corp. announced plans to merge.
In 1999, the PQ government tabled legislation that denied Ottawa the right to hold a referendum on Quebec's political future without the consent of the national assembly.
In 2000, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was shut down for good, 14 years after it spawned the world's worst nuclear accident.
In 2001, Italy's leaning Tower of Pisa was re-opened to the public after being closed for safety reasons in 1990. A massive engineering effort, costing around $40-million, reduced the tower's tilt. The tower started to lean shortly after it was built in 1173.
In 2005, Iraq's first parliamentary election was held since its constitution was ratified.
In 2005, U.S. prosecutors laid new criminal charges against Conrad Black, including racketeering, money laundering and obstruction of justice.
In 2006, hurricane-force winds knocked out power in southern British Columbia, leaving about a quarter-million people in the dark. An estimated 3,000 trees fell in Vancouver's Stanley Park.
In 2008, former newspaper executive David Radler, imprisoned for joining Conrad Black in a multi-million-dollar swindle of the Hollinger International media empire, was granted full parole from a Canadian prison.
In 2009, Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby won the Toronto Star's 2009 Lou Marsh Award as Canada's outstanding athlete. The superstar forward led his team to the Stanley Cup in June. He also won the award in 2007.
In 2009, U.S. television evangelist Oral Roberts, died in Newport Beach, Calif., at age 91.
In 2009, a $50-million public inquiry released its report into how seven institutions in Cornwall, Ont., including the local police service and Catholic diocese, responded to widespread allegations of child sexual abuse since the 1950s that surfaced in the community and were brought to their attention in the decades that followed. The inquiry found that children in Cornwall who were sexually abused or at risk of being abused were sometimes further harmed by the authorities entrusted to help them. It did not make a pronouncement on whether a pedophile ring existed or not.
In 2010, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year."
In 2010, Blake Edwards, the director and writer known for clever dialogue, poignance and occasional belly-laugh sight gags in "Breakfast at Tiffany's,'" "10" and the "Pink Panther" farces, died at age 88.
In 2010, Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller died of acute leukemia. He was 92. He won 266 games in 18 seasons.
In 2010, the U.S. Justice Department sued British Petroleum and eight other companies in an effort to recover billions of dollars spent to clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. (In November 2012, BP said it agreed to pay $4.5 billion, including a record $1.3 billion in criminal fines.)
In 2011, U.S. officials held a ceremony marking the formal end of America's nine-year war in Iraq, which saw 4,500 Americans and 110,00 Iraqis killed and cost more than $800 billion. The remaining 4,000 U.S. troops left on Dec. 18.
In 2011, a French court found former President Jacques Chirac guilty of embezzling public funds to illegally finance the conservative party he long led, in a historic verdict with repercussions for his legacy and France's political elite.
In 2011, a French court convicted terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a.k.a. Carlos the Jackal, of organizing four deadly attacks in France in the 1980s and sentenced him to life in prison. He was already serving a life sentence in a Paris prison for a triple murder in 1975.
In 2014, a 16-hour hostage siege ended in a hail of bullets when police stormed a cafe in downtown Sydney after hearing gunfire within. Three people died, the gunman - an Iranian-born, self-styled Muslim cleric - and two of his 17 hostages.
In 2016, a jury took less than two hours to convict Dylann Roof of all 33 counts in the racially motivated slaughter of nine black church members in South Carolina in June 2015. (He was sentenced to death, becoming the first person in the U.S. ordered executed for a federal hate crime.)
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(The Canadian Press)
The Canadian Press
