Today in History for Jan. 9:
In 1788, Connecticut became the fifth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
In 1793, Frenchman Jean Pierre Blanchard, using a hot-air balloon, flew between Philadelphia and Woodbury, N.J.
In 1802, Canadian author and pioneer Catherine Parr Traill was born in England.
In 1805, the Lower Canada parliament began a session that dealt with prohibiting Sunday shopping and assessing a tax to pay for jails.
In 1816, the safety lamp invented by Britain's Sir Humphrey Davey was first used in coal mines.
In 1861, the first shots in the U.S. Civil War were fired when the steamship "Star of the West" was attacked by Confederate troops in Charleston.
In 1863, the dome of the Church of La Madonna Del Sasso in Switzerland crashed through the roof, killing 53 praying women.
In 1889, the Niagara Suspension Bridge collapsed during a storm.
In 1899, Manitoba reached a record low of -52.8 Celsius (63-below Fahrenheit).
In 1923, the United States withdrew the last of its First World War troops from Germany.
In 1927, 77 children died in a fire at the Laurier Palace theatre in Montreal. It started as a small fire and firemen extinguished the blaze in a few minutes, but in the panic to escape the building, many children piled up at the bases of stairways. Twelve of them were crushed to death and 64 were asphyxiated.
In 1949, marathon runner Tom Longboat died on the Ohsweken reserve near Brantford, Ont. He was 61. Longboat won the 1907 Boston Marathon and went on to a successful professional running career. During the First World War, he served as a dispatch runner in France.
In 1953, Marguerite Pitre, a Quebec widow, was hanged in Montreal for her part in a plot to bomb an airplane. All 23 people on a Canadian DC-3 died when the plane exploded over Sault-au Cochons, Que., on Sept. 9, 1949. Pitre's brother, Albert Guay, and another man were also hanged for the death of Guay's wife, a passenger on the plane.
In 1956, the first Dear Abby column was published.
In 1957, Sir Anthony Eden resigned as prime minister of Britain.
In 1964, anti-American riots broke out in the Panama Canal Zone, resulting in the deaths of 21 Panamanians and several American soldiers.
In 1967, the Confederation train, a mobile museum of Canadian history, left Victoria, B.C. after being officially unveiled by Secretary of State Judy LaMarsh. The train made 83 stops across Canada until Dec. 4.
In 1968, "Surveyor 7" made a soft landing on the moon, marking the end of the American series of unmanned explorations of the lunar surface.
In 1969, the Concorde supersonic jet was flown for the first time at Bristol, England.
In 1980, Saudi Arabia beheaded 63 Sunni Muslim extremists for their role in a hostage-taking of pilgrims at the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November, 1979. About 250 people were killed when authorities re-took the mosque.
In 1981, Roch LaSalle became leader of Quebec's Union Nationale party by acclamation.
In 1988, Sylvana Tomaselli married the Earl of St. Andrews, becoming the first Canadian to marry into the Royal Family at a ceremony in Leith, Scotland. The earl was 17th in line to the throne, but was automatically dropped from the line of succession because his wife was Roman Catholic.
In 1992, the Nova Scotia government announced plans to privatize the Nova Scotia Power Corp., which was carrying a debt of $2.4 billion. The then-Crown corporation's president, Louis Comeau, said the decision was a philosophical one, undertaken despite the fact that there had been no studies done to show it would do any good. The plan was to sell shares worth 57 per cent of the company, with the province keeping 43 per cent.
In 1992, Alberta premier Donald Getty called for an end to official bilingualism and laws that entrench multiculturalism.
In 1993, Anglican Archbishop Edwin Lackey, well known in Canada and internationally for his promotion of social justice issues, died in Ottawa at age 62.
In 1997, a Comair commuter plane crashed 28 kilometres short of the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, killing all 29 people on board.
In 1998, Wayne Gretzky was named the best player in NHL history by a panel of Hockey News voters.
In 1999, Canadian diamond driller Norbert Reinhart, who swapped places with a captive employee, was released after 94 days by Colombian leftist rebels after a US$70,000 ransom was paid.
In 1999, Saul Rae, one of Canada's most distinguished diplomats and father of former Ontario premier Bob Rae, died at age 84.
In 2001, the federal Competition Bureau approved BCE's acquisition of the "Globe and Mail" and related Internet properties.
In 2003, the Ottawa Senators NHL hockey club filed for bankruptcy protection as the troubled franchise struggled to manage under huge debts.
In 2005, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas won an election to succeed the late Yasser Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority.
In 2007, CanWest Global Communications and Goldman Sachs agreed to buy Alliance Atlantis for $2.3 billion.
In 2007, the final report was released into the SARS outbreak that killed 44 people in the Toronto area in 2003. It said those involved in the response failed to ensure the safety of health-care workers, who continued to become infected throughout the four months the virus plagued Ontario hospitals.
In 2011, voting began in a week-long referendum in southern Sudan as the region sought to split off from the Khartoum-based north. Ninety-nine per cent voted for independence. The referendum came six years after the two sides ended a 23-year civil war that killed two million people. South Sudan officially became independent on July 9.
In 2018, same-sex couples married across Australia after the country's last legal impediment to gay marriage expired just after midnight.
In 2018, Breitbart News Network announced that former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon would step down as executive chairman of the conservative news site after a public break with U.S. President Donald Trump for comments made in "Fire and Fury," a book by Michael Wolff that questioned the president's fitness for office.
In 2020, Justin Trudeau said intelligence from multiple sources indicated an Iranian surface-to-air missile struck the Ukraine International Airlines flight, causing it to crash shortly after take-off from Tehran. The prime minister said the strike might have been unintentional, and called on international partners to be involved in any probe, including a thorough and credible investigation of the crash scene.
In 2022, Bob Saget, a comedian and actor best known for his role on the sitcom ''Full House,'' died. He was 65. The Orange County, Fla., sheriff's office said via Twitter it was called about an ''unresponsive man'' in a hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando. Detectives found no signs of foul play or drug use. Saget was in Florida as part of his ''I Don't Do Negative Comedy Tour.'' Saget was also a longtime host of ''America's Funniest Home Videos,'' and tributes from friends and fellow comics noted both his humour and kindness.
In 2023, an avalanche claimed the life of a police officer in the mountains of southeastern B.C. The Nelson Police Board said one City of Nelson police officer, 43-year-old Const. Wade Tittemore, was killed and another, Const. Mathieu Nolet, was critically injured near Kaslo, which is about an hour's drive north of Nelson. The board said the pair were on snowmobiles when they were hit by the snowslide.
In 2024, hundreds of families in Canada competed for 1,000 visas to bring loved ones trapped in the Gaza Strip to safety. Canada's existing program was available only to immediate family members of Palestinian-Canadians, including spouses and children. The expansion added parents, grandparents, adult children, grandchildren and siblings of Canadians and Canadian permanent residents, as well as their immediate family members.
In 2024, Quebec's public-school students were back to class after an FAE teachers' strike shut down 800 schools, keeping 368,000 students home for 22 days.
In 2024, France's youngest-ever prime minister and first openly gay one – former education minister and government spokesman Gabrial Attai – was named to the post by President Emmanuel Macron a day after his predecessor resigned.
In 2024, the Pittsburgh-based company that was trying to become the first private business to land on the moon said its mission appears doomed. Astrobotic Technology's spacecraft developed a critical fuel leak just hours after it was launched from Florida.
In 2024, the European climate agency Copernicus reported 2023 was the hottest year on planet Earth. It said the year was 1.48 C above pre-industrial times.
In 2024, South Korea's parliament passed a landmark ban on production and sales of dog meat. The bill makes slaughtering, breeding and sales of dog meat for human consumption illegal starting in 2027 and punishable by two to three years in prison.
In 2024, the Manitoba government promised improvements to a section of highway that saw 17 seniors die in a bus crash the previous year. The NDP Government announced $12 million to improve a section of Highways 1 and 5 before releasing an outside review of the intersection.
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The Canadian Press