Today in History for Sept. 12:
On this date:
In 1362, Pope Innocent VI died. He is considered by Roman Catholic Church scholars to be one of the best popes of the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century when the seat of the pontiff was moved from Rome to Avignon in southern France. Innocent brought about many reforms in church administration.
In 1504, Christopher Columbus sailed from Hispaniola in the West Indies for Spain to end his fourth and last voyage to the New World. The great adventurer died after a long illness in 1506. In 1542, his remains were exhumed in Seville and taken back to Hispaniola. They are buried in the cathedral at Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic.
In 1649, British statesman Oliver Cromwell captured Drogheda, Ireland, and executed the entire garrison of about 3,000 men.
In 1651, England's Oliver Cromwell entered London in triumph after defeating King Charles II and the Scots.
In 1818, Richard Gatling, inventor of the Gatling gun, was born in North Carolina.
In 1858, gold was discovered in Nova Scotia.
In 1869, British scientist Peter Mark Roget died. He compiled the "Theasaurus of English Words and Phrases," first published in 1852.
In 1908, Orville Wright set a flying endurance record by keeping his plane aloft for one hour and 14 minutes in a demonstration for the U.S. army. The army later made the Wright planes the world's first military airplanes.
In 1910, the Los Angeles Police Department appointed the world's first policewoman, former social worker Alice Wells.
In 1914, the "Battle of the Marne," a major offensive by British and French troops in the First World War, ended after several days of intensive fighting. The Allies succeeded in driving the Germans back across the Marne River, thanks in part to the 1,200 taxis commissioned by the French military governor to carry reinforcements to the front.
In 1932, the German Reichstag was dissolved after the Nazis and the Communists refused to form a coalition government.
In 1943, German paratroopers rescued Benito Mussolini from the hotel where he was being held by the Italian government.
In 1958, a two-day church convention closed in Winnipeg at which the Lutheran Church of Canada was organized.
In 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered Little Rock Central high school in Arkansas to admit black students under a desegregation policy. Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus, upset with the ruling, tried to make the schools "private institutions" and therefore outside the ruling. The attempt to circumvent the law was quashed by the court.
In 1961, the federal and provincial governments reached agreement on amending procedures that would give Canada the power to amend the Constitution.
In 1968, the French Foreign Ministry accepted responsibility for the activities of Phillipe Rossillon, chief of France's committee for the defence and expansion of the French language, who just returned from a visit to Canada. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had accused France of sending secret agents to Canada to agitate among French-language minorities.
In 1974, Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was deposed by a military coup.
In 1977, anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko died shortly after his arrival in a Pretoria prison in South Africa. Police claimed he died as result of a hunger strike but evidence later showed he had massive head injuries. The death served as an international wake-up call to the brutality of the apartheid regime.
In 1983, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that Air Canada's policy of forcing pilots to retire at age 60 was not discriminatory.
In 1983, the Canada Pension Appeals Board ruled a divorced woman is not entitled to her ex-husband's Canada Pension if she had given up all rights to his property or support.
In 1988, hurricane Gilbert hit Jamaica. With winds up to 233 km/h and torrential rains, the storm killed 45 people and left about half a million homeless. Gilbert was later responsible for the deaths of 300 people in Mexico and the United States.
In 1989, 7,000 college teachers and 90,000 health workers walked off the job in Quebec.
In 1990, Conservative John Buchanan resigned as premier of Nova Scotia to take a seat in the Liberal-dominated Senate.
In 1990, the final roadblock to German reunification was removed. The four wartime powers that defeated and carved up Nazi Germany signed a treaty in Moscow, along with the two German states.
In 1992, the space shuttle "Endeavour" blasted off, carrying with it Mark Lee and Jan Davis, the first married couple in space; Mae Jemison, the first black woman in space; and Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese citizen to fly on a U.S. spaceship.
In 1993, Canadian-born actor Raymond Burr, who portrayed TV's Perry Mason, died. He was 76.
In 2003, the United Nations Security Council formally lifted sanctions on Libya, ending a ban on arms sales and flights imposed some 15 years earlier after Moammar Gadhafi's government was implicated in the 1988 Pan Am flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland.
In 2005, the Israeli army withdrew from Gaza, officially ending Israel's 38-year occupation.
In 2007, the federal government announced a $96-million compensation package for people exposed to chemical defoliants such as "Agent Orange" that was sprayed at CFB Gagetown by the U.S. military in 1966 and 1967.
In 2008, 25 people died and dozens of others were injured after a Los Angeles commuter train collided head-on with a freight train.
In 2011, the plot of land that was known as Ground Zero was opened to the public for the first time since Sept. 11, 2001. A few thousand people walked among hundreds of white oak trees on a plaza and gazed at the two enormous fountains where the World Trade Center's twin towers once stood.
In 2013, a raging fire engulfed much of an iconic Jersey shore boardwalk, destroying more than 50 businesses and undoing months of rebuilding efforts after the inundation of Superstorm Sandy in October 2012.
In 2014, a South African judge found double-amputee Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius guilty of manslaughter in the shooting death of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp and declared him not guilty of premeditated murder. He was later sentenced to five years in prison. (In 2015, he was released from prison and placed under house arrest but an appeals court overturned the lower court decision and convicted him of murder. He was sentenced to six years in prison, but the State appealed the sentence. In November 2017, the South African Supreme Court of Appeal more than doubled it to 13 years and five months.)
In 2014, a Nunavut judge found defrocked Roman Catholic priest Eric Dejaeger, 67, guilty of 24 of the more than 70 sex-related charges he faced involving Inuit children more than 30 years ago. He had already pleaded guilty to eight counts of sexual assault when his trial began in November 2013.
In 2014, the Rev. Ian Paisley, the divisive Protestant firebrand who devoted his life to thwarting compromise with Catholics in Northern Ireland only to become a pivotal peacemaker in his twilight years, died in Belfast at age 88.
In 2017, Allan MacEachen, a long-serving Liberal MP and senator from Nova Scotia who was a driving force behind many Canadian social programs, died at age 96. MacEachen was one of Canada's most powerful cabinet ministers of the postwar era and held a variety of posts, including a term as minister of national health and welfare from 1965-1968 during the creation of medicare. As labour minister, MacEachen was also instrumental in reforming the labour code and establishing a new standard for the minimum wage.
In 2018, in what doctors called a Canadian first, surgeons from Montreal's Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital successfully completed a face transplant in a 30-hour operation on a 64-year-old man. Maurice Desjardins had been living in constant pain and isolation since a 2011 accident despite five reconstructive surgeries.
In 2018, Prince Edward Island announced it was scrapping a controversial business immigration program that prompted federal investigations alleging hundreds of applicants never actually settled on the Island.
In 2018, Jeff Fager resigned as the executive producer of "60 Minutes" after he was named in reports about tolerating an abusive workplace.
In 2018, "The Tonight Show" cancelled an appearance by Canadian Norm Macdonald after criticism of his comments about the #MeToo movement and fellow comedians Louis C.K. and Roseanne Barr.
In 2022, people aged 70 and older, long-term care residents and health-care workers in Ontario could now receive an Omicron-targeted COVID-19 vaccine shot. Indigenous people and their household members who are 18 years and older, immunocompromised people aged 12 and older, and pregnant people were also eligible.
In 2022, Const. Andrew Hong, a 22-year veteran of the Toronto police force and father of two, was fatally shot in an "ambush attack" while on a lunch break from training in Mississauga, Ont. One other person was killed and three others injured in what police said were two separate shooting incidents involving the same suspect. That suspect was later shot and killed by police in Hamilton.
In 2023, Apple unveiled the iPhone 15 at an Apple Event in Cupertino, Calif., alongside the higher-priced iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max.
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The Canadian Press