Today in History for Feb. 1:
In 1516, Desiderius Erasmus dedicated his ``amendment'' of Jerome's Latin (Vulgate) translation of the Bible to Pope Leo X. Martin Luther and other Protestants based their vernacular versions on the translations.
In 1650, French philosopher Rene Descartes died. Though perhaps best known for his saying, ``Cogito ergo sum'' (I think, therefore I am), he later developed a logical argument for the existence of God.
In 1796, the capital of Upper Canada was transferred to York, now Toronto, from Newark, now called Niagara-on-the-Lake.
In 1799, Ile St. Jean was given royal assent to change its name to Prince Edward Island.
In 1854, fire destroyed the Canadian Parliament buildings in Quebec City.
In 1858, the Douglas Law went into effect in B.C. It required miners to obtain licences to search for gold in the Fraser Valley.
In 1882, Louis St. Laurent, Canada's 12th prime minister, was born in Compton, Que. After a successful legal career, St. Laurent entered politics in 1942 and became Liberal leader and prime minister in 1948. He served until his 1957 election defeat by John Diefenbaker's Conservatives. St. Laurent died in Quebec City on July 25, 1973.
In 1884, the first Oxford English Dictionary was published.
In 1893, Thomas Edison completed work on the world's first motion picture studio, the Black Maria, in West Orange, N.J.
In 1920, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was formed by the merger of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police and the Dominion Police. The Northwest force was formed in the 1870s to administer the vast unsettled territories. The Dominion Police was a federal force that guarded government buildings and enforced federal statutes since 1868.
In 1946, Trygve Lie became the United Nations' first secretary-general.
In 1952, West Germany ratified the Schuman Plan, agreeing to share its coal and steel with five other European countries for the next 50 years. The pact was the beginning of the European Community.
In 1958, James Gladstone, an Alberta Blood Indian, became Canada's first aboriginal senator.
In 1958, the first American satellite to orbit the earth, ``Explorer 1,'' lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
In 1959, men in Switzerland rejected giving women the right to vote by a more than 2-1 referendum margin. (Swiss women gained the right to vote in 1971.)
In 1967, Prime Minister Lester Pearson voiced concern over the high level of foreign ownership in many areas of Canadian industry. He said non-Canadian firms must be subject to Canadian law and responsive to Canadian policy.
In 1968, during the Vietnam War, South Vietnam's police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan executed a Viet Cong officer with a pistol shot to the head in a scene recorded by The Associated Press and NBC News.
In 1969, Saturday mail delivery ended in Canada.
In 1971, Canada and China exchanged diplomats as both countries officially recognized each other.
In 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran after living in exile in France for nearly 15 years.
In 1981, most Polish workers called off strikes following an agreement between the government and the Solidarity labour federation that included a 40-hour work week.
In 1983, pay TV was launched in Canada as First Choice, Superchannel and C-Channel signed on. C-Channel survived less than a year, while First Choice and Superchannel later merged.
In 1991, South African President F.W. de Klerk said he would repeal all remaining apartheid laws.
In 1999, after being phased in since 1992, the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System -- a satellite system -- replaced the Morse code as the International Maritime Organization's method to signal distress.
In 2003, space shuttle ``Columbia'' disintegrated upon re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere more than 60,000 metres over Texas, killing the crew of five men and two women, just minutes before they were to land in Florida. (The crew were Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Rick Husband, William McCool, and Ilan Ramon). Foam insulation that fell off the shuttle and struck a wing during liftoff damaged heat-absorbing tiles.
In 2006, Justice John Gomery released his final report on the sponsorship scandal, calling for a major overhaul of the federal decision-making process to avert future scandals.
In 2007, a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- a group of hundreds of the world's leading scientists -- said global warming was human-made and blamed it largely on the burning of oil and other fossil fuels.
In 2008, Exxon Mobil posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company -- $40.6 billion -- and the biggest quarterly profit ($11.7 billion) to that time, breaking its own records.
In 2009, the Pittsburgh Steelers became the first franchise to win six Super Bowls with a 27-23 win over the Arizona Cardinals. Mike Tomlin, 36, became the youngest coach to win a Super Bowl.
In 2012, 74 people were killed and hundreds injured after soccer fans rushed the field in Port Said following an upset victory by home team Al-Masry over Egypt's top club Al-Ahly, setting off clashes and a stampede as riot police largely failed to intervene.
In 2015, five-time winner Novak Djokovic defeated Andy Murray in four sets to take the men's Australian Open title.
In 2015, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady orchestrated two fourth-quarter TD drives to erase a 10-point deficit to dethrone the Seattle Seahawks 28-24, capturing his fourth Super Bowl title and record-tying third MVP award. The Patriots survived a last-ditch drive by the Seahawks with rookie cornerback Malcolm Butler's game-saving interception at the goalline with 20 seconds left.
In 2018, the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned IOC suspensions and reinstated results for 28 Russian athletes accused of doping at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi. The ruling returned medals for seven Russian athletes, including two gold medals.
In 2018, former LPGA Tour player Gail Graham and course architect A.V. Macan were named as inductees to the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame.
In 2019, Ron Joyce, the man who co-founded the Tim Horton's doughnut chain, died peacefully at home in Burlington, Ont. He was 88. Joyce's childhood was marked by the Great Depression but he went on to invest in the first Tim Hortons shop in Hamilton in 1964. He helped grow it into a successful chain before selling it to Wendy's International Inc. in 1996.
In 2019, the United States announced it was pulling out of a nuclear arms treaty with Russia. President Donald Trump said Russia had violated the terms of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with impunity for far too long. It had been a cornerstone of arms control since the Cold War.
In 2020, concerns over the novel coronavirus sent markets tumbling as major airlines announced the suspension of flights to China. Tour companies and hotels in Western Canada reported seeing an increase in cancellations from Chinese tourists. A number of countries announced they were moving to bar entry to most people who may have visited China in the past two weeks. A World Health Organization official noted that while most cases reported so far had been people who visited China, human-to-human transmission was becoming more prevalent in cases abroad.
In 2020, Ontario's Saugeen Ojibway Nation overwhelmingly rejected a proposed underground storage facility for nuclear waste near Lake Huron, likely bringing an end to the multibillion-dollar, politically fraught project that had been years in the making.
In 2020, best-selling American author Mary Higgins Clark, the tireless and long-reigning ``Queen of Suspense,'' died of natural causes in Naples, Florida. She was 92.
In 2021, drugmaker Novavax submitted its COVID-19 vaccine candidate to Health Canada for regulatory approval.
In 2022, the demonstrators still taking part in a protest in front of Parliament Hill said they were staying put until all COVID-related restrictions were lifted. Some extended their stays at hotels or asked to rebook for the coming weekend.
In 2022, Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady announced he was retiring after 22 seasons in the NFL so he could spend more time with his wife, supermodel Gisele Bundchen, and three children. The 44-year-old won seven Super Bowl rings over his career with the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
In 2022, the head of the World Health Organization said 90 million cases of coronavirus had been reported since the Omicron variant was first identified 10 weeks prior. That's more cases than all of 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2024, the federal government announced spending of an additional $362 million to help provinces and cities temporarily house asylum seekers. Immigration Minister Marc Miller called the interim housing assistance program a stopgap measure, saying the system needs to be rejigged to reflect a large flow of international migration that is not about to stop.
In 2024, Health Minister Mark Holland introduced legislation in Parliament to postpone the expansion of eligibility for assisted dying to those whose sole underlying condition is a mental illness until 2027. The change was scheduled to take effect in the middle of the next month, but nearly all provinces and territories asked the government take an indefinite pause on the expansion.
In 2024, British Columbia Attorney General Niki Sharma formally apologized to members of the Doukhobor religious group and offered them a $10-million compensation package. Some members of the group were forcibly taken from their parents more than 70 years ago. Sharma acknowledged the children were "mistreated both physically and psychologically'' and that the government's actions caused anxiety for the broader Doukhobor community.
In 2024, sixty-three recommendations were issued following the inquest into the death of Sammy Yatim, who was fatally shot by a Toronto police constable, more than a decade ago. The recommendations touched on issues including officer training and monitoring, peer intervention, and mental health supports for officers and family members of those killed or seriously injured by police.
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The Canadian Press
