Today in History for March 30:
On this date:
In 1135, Moses Maimonides, the renowned medieval Jewish scholar, was born. Considered the foremost Talmudist of the Middle Ages, his most important writing was ``Guide to the Perplexed'' (1190), in which he tried to harmonize Rabbinic Judaism with the increasingly popular Aristotelianism of his day.
In 1809, the Labrador Act gave Labrador to Newfoundland. This was later disputed by Quebec and a final decision was not made until 1927.
In 1842, ether was first used as an anesthetic by Dr. Crawford Long in Jefferson, Ga. His patient paid $2 for the anesthesia before having a cyst removed.
In 1853, artist Vincent Van Gogh was born in the Netherlands. He committed suicide in France in 1890.
In 1858, the first pencil with an attached rubber eraser was patented by Hyman L. Lipman of Philadelphia.
In 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward reached agreement with Russia to purchase the territory of Alaska for $7.2 million, a deal roundly ridiculed as ``Seward's Folly.''
In 1870, the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving all citizens the right to vote regardless of race, was declared in effect by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish.
In 1874, Louis Riel arrived in Ottawa to claim the Manitoba Commons seat of Provencher, to which he'd been elected that year. Riel, a fugitive since the 1869 Red River Uprising, took the oath of office but never entered the Commons.
In 1901, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that marriages of Catholics by Protestant clergymen were valid.
In 1917, all imperial lands, as well as lands belonging to monasteries, were confiscated by the Russian provisional government.
In 1935, Newfoundland changed its time to three hours west of Greenwich Mean Time, and repeated 44 seconds.
In 1939, Prime Minister Mackenzie King said Canada would not conscript men for foreign service. That commitment was scrapped in 1944.
In 1945, the Soviet Union invaded Austria during the final months of the Second World War.
In 1954, the Yonge Street subway, the first subway line in Canada, was opened by the Toronto Transit Commission.
In 1972, Canadian sailors got a daily rum ration for the last time, ending a navy tradition dating back to 1667.
In 1973, the U.S. military role in Vietnam formally ended when the last American prisoner was released and the last soldier withdrew.
In 1978, the Ontario government banned advertising that portrayed the drinking of alcohol as a desirable thing to do and reduced the amount of beer and wine advertising a company could place on any radio or television station.
In 1981, U.S. President Ronald Reagan was shot while leaving a Washington hotel. The gunman, 25-year-old John Hinckley, said he hoped to attract the attention of actress Jodie Foster. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a mental hospital. Reagan recovered fully after surgery. Also wounded were White House press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and District of Columbia police officer Thomas Delahanty. Brady suffered permanent brain damage.
In 1987, Vincent Van Gogh's ``Sunflowers,'' painted in 1889, was sold at auction for the equivalent of C$55 million. The sale came on the 134th anniversary of the artist's birth. Van Gogh sold only two paintings during his lifetime.
In 1991, Patricia Bowman of Jupiter, Fla., told police she had been raped by William Kennedy Smith -- the nephew of U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy -- at the family's Palm Beach estate. Smith was acquitted.
In 1998, Judy Buenoano died in the electric chair in Florida, the state's first execution of a woman since 1848. Prosecutors dubbed her the ``Black Widow'' after she poisoned her husband, drowned her paralyzed son and tried to blow up her fiancee.
In 1999, Nunavut's legislature and mace were unveiled in a native ceremony.
In 2002, Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, died at the age of 101.
In 2003, the International Ice Hockey Federation cancelled the women's world hockey championship in China over fears of SARS, which had claimed more than 85 lives around the world.
In 2004, Alistair Cooke, the British-born prolific author, broadcaster who hosted ``Masterpiece Theatre'' and wrote ``Letter from America'' that ran for 58 years on the BBC, died in New York at age 95.
In 2008, Dith Pran, the Cambodian-born journalist whose harrowing tale of enslavement and eventual escape from that country's murderous Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in 1979 became the subject of the award-winning film ``The Killing Fields,'' died in New Jersey at age 65.
In 2008, members of the Federation of Newfoundland Indians overwhelmingly endorsed an agreement-in-principle that gave the Mi'kmaq status as the Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nation Band. While the deal didn't include land or a reserve, status under the act means funding for education, health, economic development and other programs.
In 2010, Serbia's parliament narrowly approved a declaration condemning the 1995 Serb massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica.
In 2010, the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider, located in an underground tunnel near the French-Swiss border, was started at its highest energy level, recreating conditions at the ``Big Bang'' birth of the universe. The world's largest atom smasher set a record for high-energy collisions by crashing proton beams into each other at three times more force than ever before.
In 2018, LeBron James recorded his 867th consecutive game with at least 10 points, breaking Michael Jordan's NBA record set between 1986-2001. James began his streak on Jan. 6, 2007.
In 2018, Noor Salman, the widow of the gunman who killed 49 people at a gay Orlando nightclub, was acquitted on charges of lying to the FBI and helping her husband in the 2016 attack.
In 2020, organizers said the Tokyo Olympics would open exactly one year after the games were due to start after being postponed due to COVID-19. The opening ceremony will take place July 23, 2021. The Paralympics were rescheduled to Aug. 24 through Sept. 5.
In 2020, a First Nation in Ontario reported its first confirmed cases of COVID-19. Elected chief Mark Hill said checkpoints would be set up at the Six Nations of The Grand River's boundaries to restrict the flow of people in and out of the territory.
In 2020, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador recorded their first deaths caused by COVID-19. The Manitoba government announced the closure of all non-essential businesses.
In 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced funding for people out of work because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those eligible were to be given 75 per cent of their pay with a cap of $847 a week.
In 2021, Canada signed a joint declaration with 13 other countries voicing concerns about an international report on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. The statement outlined their unease after World Health Organization experts went to study the original outbreak of the virus in China's Wuhan province. They decried what they called the significant delays and lack of access to complete, original data and samples that the international study team faced in China.
In 2021, G. Gordon Liddy, a mastermind of the Watergate burglary and a radio talk show host after emerging from prison, died at age 90. Liddy, a former FBI agent and army veteran, spent four years and four months in prison, including more than 100 days in solitary confinement. After his release, Liddy became a popular, often provocative radio talk show host.
In 2022, the UN refugee agency said more than four million refugees had now fled Ukraine following Russia's invasion. The figure was a new milestone in the largest refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War. The UNHCR said more than 2.3 million refugees had arrived in Poland. The agency also estimated 6.5 million people had been displaced from their homes within Ukraine.
In 2022, former chief of the defence staff general Jonathan Vance pleaded guilty to one charge of obstruction of justice. His lawyer was seeking a discharge, arguing his client entered a guilty plea at the earliest opportunity and had already suffered significant financial and reputational damage. Military police charged Vance in July, following a months-long investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct. He wasn't charged with that offence, but investigators found that Vance repeatedly contacted a woman and tried to persuade her to make false statements about their past relationship. Vance was sentenced to 80 hours of community service and put on probation for a year.
In 2023, the Vatican formally repudiated the "Doctrine of Discovery,'' the theory that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Indigenous lands and forms the basis of some property law today. Indigenous groups had been demanding such a statement for decades. A statement from the Vatican says the 15th-century papal bulls, or decrees, "did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous Peoples'' and had never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith. It adds that the documents had been "manipulated'' for political purposes by colonial powers.
In 2023, the final report from the public inquiry into the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia found widespread failures in how the Mounties responded, and called for fundamental change in the RCMP. The commission described red flags that police missed in the years leading up to the murders of 22 people, including the killer's violence toward his spouse. The report says RCMP commanders ignored eyewitness accounts, failed to promptly warn residents of the danger and failed to use basic investigative steps. It also called for a ban on all semi-automatic handguns and all semi-automatic rifles and shotguns that discharge centrefire ammunition.
In 2024, American actor Chance Perdomo died in a motorcycle crash at age 27. Perdomo rose to fame as lead character Ambrose Spellman on the horror series "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" and was on the first season of "Gen V."
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The Canadian Press