On this day in history …. – Calgary Herald

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On this day, July 29, in history:

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In 1588, the Spanish Armada was defeated in the English Channel by the British, led by Sir Francis Drake. Although Spain sent other fleets against England in the 1590s, none repeated the threat of the 1588 plan to invade England.

In 1858, the government of John A. Macdonald and George-Etienne Cartier resigned when the House of Commons voted against their motion to move the capital of the Province of Canada to Ottawa from York.

In 1873, the first Icelanders to migrate to Canada arrived. Their homes had been destroyed by a volcanic eruption. Numbering 285, they arrived in Quebec and headed for the Muskoka area of Ontario. They found it difficult to settle there, however, and moved on to Willow Point on Lake Winnipeg. They named it Gimli Icelandic for paradise.

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In 1874, social reformer J.S. Woodsworth was born. He helped form the Manitoba Independent Labour Party and was elected to the Commons in 1921. In 1926, he bargained his partys two votes for a promise by Prime Minister Mackenzie King to enact an old-age pension plan.

In 1890, artist Vincent van Gogh died in Auvers, France, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

In 1899, the permanent international court of arbitration was established at The Hague, in the Netherlands.

In 1900, King Humbert I of Italy was assassinated at Monza, Italy.

In 1905, Dag Hammarskjold, Swedish diplomat and secretary general of the UN from 1953-61, was born. His spiritual journal Markings was published in 1964, three years after his death in a plane crash in Central Africa.

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In 1907, Sir Robert Baden-Powell formed the Boy Scout movement.

In 1911, the Canadian Northern Railway was completed between Montreal and Port Arthur, Ont.

In 1912, the British Privy Council upheld the provinces power to make marriage laws.

In 1914, the first transcontinental telephone line on the North American continent between New York and San Francisco was successfully tested.

In 1916, a bush fire swept through Matheson, Ont., killing 223 people.

In 1938, ABC anchor Peter Jennings was born in Toronto. He was the sole anchor of ABCs World News Tonight from 1983 until 2005. He died on Aug. 7, 2005 from complications of lung cancer.

In 1940, the German Luftwaffe began its all-out blitz against Britain during the Second World War.

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In 1958, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill creating the American space agency, NASA.

In 1967, an accidental rocket launch aboard the supercarrier USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin resulted in a fire and explosions that killed 134 servicemen.

In 1968, Pope Paul VI announced that the Roman Catholic ban on artificial contraception would continue.

In 1971, the Oland family of Halifax presented the Bluenose II, a replica of the original Bluenose, to the Nova Scotia government as a floating museum.

In 1977, crude oil began flowing through the Alaska Pipeline into storage tanks at Valdez, Alaska.

In 1981, Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in Londons St. Pauls Cathedral. An estimated 750 million people worldwide watched the televised ceremony. The couple divorced in 1996, one year before Diana died in a Paris car crash.

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In 1984, Ottawa chef-caterer Linda Thom won Canadas first Summer Olympics gold medal in 16 years. Thom claimed the womens sport pistol title on the first day of competition in Los Angeles.

In 1988, External Affairs Minister Joe Clark announced that all people travelling on South African passports and seeking entry into Canada to participate in sports would be denied visas. The ban was lifted a few years later after South Africa abolished apartheid.

In 1992, Erich Honecker, the former communist leader of East Germany, returned to Berlin from Moscow and was immediately charged with manslaughter in the deaths of people shot by border guards while trying to flee East Germany.

In 1993, the Israeli Supreme Court acquitted retired Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk of being Nazi death camp guard Ivan the Terrible and quashed his death sentence. Ivan was the sadistic gas-chamber operator at the Treblinka death camp in German-occupied Poland during 1942-43. (He returned to Ohio but U.S. immigration officials later ordered his deportation to Germany to face similar charges. In May 2011, he was again convicted and sentenced to five years in prison, but was released pending appeal but died on March 17, 2012.)

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In 1997, the Commission for Environmental Co-operation, a NAFTA agency, released a study that identified Ontario as the third biggest polluting jurisdiction in North America.

In 1998, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled that the federal government underpaid 200,000 employees in six wage categories dominated by women, and ordered Ottawa to pay nearly $3 billion in compensation.

In 1999, an irate stockbroker opened fire at two Atlanta, Ga., brokerage offices, killing nine people and wounding 12 before committing suicide as police stopped his van. His wife and two children were also found dead in his home.

In 2003, Foday Sankoh, who led a bloody rebel movement in Sierra Leone that killed 75,000 people over 10 years, died in United Nations custody. He was charged with crimes against humanity, rape and sexual slavery.

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In 2003, the Canadian Football League terminated Sherwood Schwarzs ownership of the Toronto Argonauts and seized control of the club.

In 2008, the U.S. House issued an unprecedented apology to African Americans for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and segregation laws.

In 2009, the hottest day ever was recorded in Vancouver, as the temperature reached a high of 33.8 C, breaking the previous record of 33.3 C set in 1960.

In 2009, Microsoft reached a 10-year deal with Yahoo for an Internet search partnership, ending years of back and forth negotiations. The agreement gave Microsoft access to the Internets second-largest search engine audience.

In 2010, Ford Motor Co. of Canada announced nearly 400 employees would be laid off on Nov. 1 when the company cut one of two shifts at its Windsor, Ont. engine plant.

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In 2010, raging forest fires encircled Voronezh, Russia, and tore through provincial villages, forcing mass evacuations. In the coming weeks, over 600 fires had swept across western Russia causing close to $15 billion in damages and cloaked Moscow in suffocating smog.

In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada denied an attempt by Big Tobacco companies to get the federal government named as a third-party defendant in a B.C. lawsuit seeking the recovery of health care costs linked to smoking-related diseases. Governments in Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador had all filed similar suits.

In 2011, Norway honoured the memory of 77 people killed in the nations worst peacetime massacre, with the prime minister calling on the nation to unite around its core values of democracy and peace. An 18-year-old Muslim girl, Bano Rashid, was the first victim to be laid to rest.

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In 2013, Canadian retailer Hudsons Bay Co. announced it would acquire U.S. luxury retailer Saks Inc. in a friendly deal worth US$2.9 billion, with plans to open seven full-line stores and about two dozen locations under a discount banner across Canada.

In 2018, Vladimir Guerrero, Chipper Jones, Trevor Hoffman, Jack Morris, Jim Thome and Alan Trammell were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

In 2019, Canadas chief electoral officer said voting day should not be moved. Election day could be no later than Oct. 21 under federal law, which this year fell on the Jewish holiday known as Shemini Atzeret, meaning Orthodox Jews are not permitted to work, vote or campaign. Elections Canada had been lobbied to change the date, but decided against it this close to an election, prompting a Federal Court challenge to the decision. The court ordered chief electoral officer Stephane Perrault to take a second look at the decision and balance the infringement on the charter rights of affected voters against the objectives of the election law. Perraults detailed decision said it is not in the public interest to move voting day.

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In 2019, Capital One said a hacker had gained access to the personal data of more than 100-million people, including as many as six-million Canadians. The hack exposed one million social insurance numbers making it one of the largest security breaches in Canadian history. Credit card, credit limit, and contact information was accessed but no credit card numbers or log-ins were released. A Seattle woman Paige A. Thompson a former systems engineer at Amazon Web Services, who uses the handle erratic was charged with a single count of computer fraud and abuse.

In 2020, WE Charity announced it had mutually agreed to suspend its partnerships after a flood of companies announced they were dropping their support for the embattled organization. Several companies, including Royal Bank of Canada, Loblaw Companies, GoodLife Fitness and KPMG already announced they had ended their partnerships with the charity.

In 2020, scientists said theyd figured out why some COVID-19 sufferers temporarily lose their sense of smell, something the doctors call anosmia. They said the virus attacks the cells that support neurons in the brain that control smell. There is good news, as researchers say once a patient recovers, those neurons recover as well and ultimately the ability to smell comes back.

The Canadian Press

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On this day in history .... - Calgary Herald