Today in History for Jan. 30:
In 1649, King Charles I was beheaded.
In 1730, Russian Czar Peter II died of smallpox on his wedding day.
In 1868, the Nova Scotia legislature opened its first session.
In 1901, the court of international arbitration was established at The Hague in the Netherlands.
In 1923, the Grand Trunk Railway was taken over by the Canadian government, beginning the organization of what is now CN Rail.
In 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany.
In 1948, India's leader Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated on his way to prayer in New Delhi by a Hindu fanatic who objected to his tolerance for Muslims. Also known as Mahatma Gandhi, the man who led his country to independence from British rule, was 78.
In 1958, a bill passed by Britain's House of Lords admitted women to the Upper Chamber.
In 1962, two members of ``The Flying Wallendas'' high-wire act were killed when their seven-person pyramid collapsed during a performance in Detroit.
In 1969, the Canadian satellite ``Isis One'' was launched.
In 1972, 13 Roman Catholic civil rights marchers were shot to death by British soldiers in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on what became known as ``Bloody Sunday.'' (In June 2010, an epic 12-year, C$290 million report ruled that the demonstrators were innocent and the British soldiers were entirely to blame for the slaughter).
In 1979, Iran's civilian government announced the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was living in exile in France, would be allowed to return.
In 1985, the federal government announced that metric measurement would continue to be mandatory but retailers could use the imperial system as well.
In 1985, lawyer-poet-law professor Frank Scott died in Montreal at age 85. He helped draft the 1933 Regina Manifesto, which founded the CCF (now the NDP), and served on the federal Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism.
In 1986, NASA expanded its search for wreckage from the space shuttle ``Challenger,'' sending six navy ships to search the Atlantic for debris.
In 1990, a judge ordered former U.S. president Ronald Reagan to provide excerpts of his personal diaries to John Poindexter for the former national security adviser's Iran-contra trial. The judge later reversed himself, deciding the material was not essential.
In 1991, the Hudson's Bay Company announced it was getting out of the fur business, on which it was founded in 1670. The Bay cited declining sales.
In 1996, Los Angeles Lakers guard Magic Johnson returned to the NBA, five years after his positive test for the AIDS virus. Johnson retired again after the season.
In 2003, Richard Reid, the British citizen and al-Qaida follower who'd tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic jetliner with explosives hidden in his shoes, was sentenced to life in prison by a federal judge in Boston.
In 2005, Iraqis voted in huge numbers in defiance of mortar attacks, suicide bombers and boycott calls in the country's first free election in a half-century. United Iraqi Alliance, dominated by Shiites, won a slim majority and created a 275-member national assembly, whose job was to create a constitution and serve for 11 months until new elections would be held.
In 2013, Research In Motion announced it was changing its corporate name to BlackBerry as it officially launched its long-awaited BlackBerry 10 operating system and two new smartphones. The launch did not end the Waterloo, Ont.-based company's financial woes.
In 2014, an appeals court in Florence upheld a guilty verdict against American Amanda Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito for the 2007 murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher in the Italian university town of Perugia. (In March 2015, the Italian Supreme Court overturned the conviction, bringing an end to the high-profile case.)
In 2018, Houston point guard James Harden became the first player in NBA history to score 60 points as part of a triple-double as the Rockets beat the Orlando Magic 114-107.
In 2018, Mark Salling, who played bad-boy Noah ``Puck'' Puckerman in the hit TV musical-comedy ``Glee,'' died from asphyxia after hanging himself, just weeks after pleading guilty in federal court to possessing child pornography. He was 35.
In 2019, Canadian members of Parliament passed a unanimous motion condemning Netflix for using images of the Lac-Megantic rail disaster in fictional dramas and demanding financial compensation for the Quebec community for use of the tragic images without consent. The motion came after footage from the 2013 rail explosion that killed 47 people was used in the hit movie Bird Box and the series Travelers.
In 2019, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs announced his province would no longer host the 2021 Francophonie Games, blaming their growing cost and a lack of financial support from Ottawa. Cost estimates ballooned to $130 million from the original bid of $17 million.
In 2019, the federal government said it was creating a new mechanism to warn Canadians if malicious actors tried to manipulate the outcome of the 2019 election. It was establishing a ``critical election incident public protocol,'' under which five senior public servants would decide when an incident is egregious enough to warrant going public with a warning in the midst of a campaign.
In 2019, the Sebastian Giovinco (joh-VINK'-oh) era in Toronto ended. Toronto FC sold Giovinco to a Saudi Arabian club because it was unwilling to meet the Italian international's contract demands. TFC had already turned down one bid from a Middle East club, but got what it could for Giovinco with the January FIFA transfer window about to close.
In 2020, hereditary chiefs and supporters of a B.C. First Nation filed a new complaint with a civilian body that handles reports of misconduct against the RCMP. Wet'suwet'en chiefs and advocacy groups alleged the Mounties acted unlawfully and improperly by setting up a checkpoint outside a Coastal GasLink pipeline work site in northern B.C. The RCMP said the checkpoint was a measured response that reflected the need to prevent further escalation of the situation.
In 2020, Russia announced it was keeping its land border with China closed to guard against an outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The closure of the more than 4,000-kilometre border followed similar steps taken by Mongolia and North Korea. Russian authorities said the closure that began over the Lunar New Year holiday would be extended until March 1. Meanwhile, health officials in the U.S. reported the first case in the country of person-to-person spread of the virus.
In 2020, the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over the novel coronavirus, because of the possible spread of the disease to other countries. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus added that the decision was not a vote of non-confidence in China, and that the WHO continued to have confidence in China's capacity to control the outbreak.
In 2020, lawyers for a woman who said U.S. President Donald Trump raped her in the 1990s asked for a sample of his DNA. The attorneys for advice columnist E. Jean Carroll said they want to determine whether Trump's genetic material is on a dress she says she wore during the encounter. Carroll filed a defamation suit against Trump in November after the president said she was lying about the alleged attack.
In 2022, Rafael Nadal won a men's record 21st Grand Slam singles title with a comeback five-set victory over second-ranked Daniil Medvedev in the Australian Open final. He had to do it the hard way after Medvedev won the first two sets in a final that started late in the day and ended almost five and a half hours later. The 35-year-old Spaniard now had one more than Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, and became the fourth man in history to win all four of the sport's major titles at least twice.
In 2022, Global Affairs Canada said ''non-essential'' Canadian employees and their dependents were being temporarily withdrawn from the embassy in Ukraine over concerns about Russian troop movements near the Ukrainian border.
In 2023, the World Health Organization decided not to declare an end to the COVID-19 global public health emergency. The decision came on the third anniversary of the day Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the emergency, prompting Canada and the rest of the world to impose pandemic restrictions. Tedros said the number of weekly deaths had been rising since early December, and that over the past eight weeks more than 170,000 deaths had been reported. However, he said the actual number was much higher.
In 2023, Hockey Hall of Famer Bobby Hull, the first player in NHL history to score more than 50 goals in a single season, died at 84. Over a pro career than spanned 23 years, Hull played for the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks and Hartford Whalers as well as the World Hockey Association's Winnipeg Jets. He and Chicago teammate Stan Mikita helped popularize the curved hockey stick blade in the NHL.
In 2023, a suicide bombing at a mosque inside a police compound in Peshawar, Pakistan, killed at least 100 people. Officials said more than 200 others were wounded, and that most of the casualties were police officers. The bomber set off the explosives when more than 300 worshippers were praying inside the mosque and others were approaching. A commander for the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility on the social media platform X.
In 2024, after suspending funding to the UN agency that helps Palestinians, Canada instead sent $40 million in aid to other organizations that support people in Gaza. The money was diverted to the World Food Program, UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
In 2024, some Alberta daycare operators started a series of rolling closures to push for changes to the federal government's $10-a-day child-care program. Operators in several provinces threatened to pull out of the system or even close their doors, saying the federal-provincial agreements limit the fees they can charge and don't include enough support to cover all their costs.
In 2024, Tony award-winning actress Chita Rivera died at the age of 91. The dynamic dancer, singer and actress first gained widespread recognition for playing Anita in the original production of "West Side Story" in 1957.
In 2024, the federal ethics watchdog announced that it did not plan to investigate Prime Minster Justin Trudeau's recent holiday trip to Jamaica. Konrad von Finkenstein told a House of Commons ethics committee he considered the case closed because the trip came from a friend with whom Trudeau has a "true depth of friendship."
In 2024, lawyers for three NHL hockey players confirmed that their clients had been charged in a 2018 sexual assault case in London, Ont. Dillon Dube, Michael McLeod and Carter Hart were all members of Canada's world junior hockey team in 2018. Days earlier, the lawyer for former NHL player Alex Formenton confirmed his client had been charged in the case and would plead not guilty.
In 2024, the president of CBC and Radio-Canada said the broadcaster could pay out bonuses to executives in the midst of it planning to slash 10 per cent of its workforce. Catherine Tait testified before MPs in Ottawa, who questioned her about bonus pay at a time when it's planning job cuts. Tait told the MPs that bonuses would be paid if the executives achieve their targets.
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The Canadian Press