Today in History for Sept. 7:
On this date:
In 1533, England's future Queen Elizabeth I was born to King Henry VIII and Queen Anne Boleyn. She ruled 45 years, from 1558 to 1603.
In 1763, Britain's King George III issued a proclamation urging subjects to settle in Canada.
In 1813, the nickname "Uncle Sam" was first used as a symbolic reference to the United States in an editorial in a newspaper in Troy, N.Y.
In 1816, "The Frontenac," the first Canadian-built steamship on the Great Lakes, was launched at Ernestown (now Bath), Ont.
In 1822, Brazil declared its independence from Portugal.
In 1860, the Maple Leaf was first used as an official emblem during a visit to Toronto by the Prince of Wales.
In 1892, James Corbett knocked out John L. Sullivan in the 21st round of their heavyweight boxing match in New Orleans. It was the first major title bout to be fought under the Marquess of Queensbury rules.
In 1901, the Peace of Peking was signed by China and 11 foreign countries, ending "The Boxer Rebellion."
In 1907, the British liner RMS Lusitania set out from Liverpool, England, on its maiden voyage, arriving six days later in New York. On May 7, 1915 during the First World War, it was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland with the loss of nearly 1,200 civilian lives.
In 1910, the International Court at The Hague resolved a fishing dispute between the United States, Canada and Newfoundland. The court ruled that each government had the right to regulate its own fisheries but suggested Canada and Newfoundland inform the United States at least two months before they made any changes to their regulations.
In 1916, the U.S. Senate ratified the purchase of the Virgin Islands.
In 1927, American television pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth, 21, succeeded in transmitting the image of a line through purely electronic means with a device called an "image dissector."
In 1940, what came to be called "The Blitz" began when London suffered the first concentrated night air raid by German planes during the Second World War. In the first three nights, 1,000 people were killed and 3,500 seriously injured. The Royal Air Force prevented invasion during 1940, but the civilian population endured years of bombing before the tide of war turned.
In 1952, the Canadian liner "Princess Kathleen" ran aground and sank off Lena Point, Alaska. Her 300 passengers and crew of 115 were all rescued. The incident occurred during the highest tide of the season, and it was the falling tide that sank her.
In 1958, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced that any attack on China would be regarded as an attack on the Soviet Union.
In 1959, Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis died in Schefferville, Que. He founded the Union Nationale party in 1936 and led it to victory in a provincial election that year. Duplessis's first term was a disappointment and his government was defeated in 1939. The Union Nationale was returned to office in 1944 and Duplessis remained in office until his death.
In 1969, the Official Languages Act declared English and French as the official languages of Canada. The act, promoted by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, declared all federal institutions had to provide services in English or French at the customer's choice.
In 1973, the Northwest Territories Supreme Court allowed the Indian Brotherhood of the N.W.T. to file a land claim for one-third of the territory.
In 1977, Cindy Nicholas of Toronto became the first woman to complete a return, non-stop swim of the English Channel.
In 1977, the United States and Panama signed treaties calling for the U.S. to give up control of the Panama Canal by 2000.
In 1983, the Canadian tour of the Moscow Circus was cancelled after five of the nine cities on the tour cancelled performances in reaction to the Korean airline disaster. Two-hundred and sixty-nine people, including 10 Canadians, were killed when the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 after it accidentally entered Soviet airspace on Sept. 1.
In 1986, Bishop Desmond Tutu was installed as Archbishop of Cape Town, becoming the first black head of South Africa's Anglican Church.
In 1991, Edwin McMillan, a co-discoverer of plutonium who worked on the Second World War project that developed the atomic bomb, died at age 83.
In 1994, James Clavell, best-selling author whose books include "Shogun," "Noble House" and "Tai-Pan," died in Switzerland at age 69.
In 1995, Manufacturers Life Insurance Co. and North American Life Assurance Co. announced a merger.
In 1995, the Quebec government tabled Bill I, the legislation that would give the National Assembly the power to declare Quebec a sovereign country after a referendum victory.
In 2000, University of Toronto researchers reported the discovery of a key protein that acts as a trigger in the degeneration of nerve cells in Alzheimer's disease.
In 2001, Ashley Cowan, 15, of Toronto, became the youngest teen and the first disabled person to complete a 20-kilometre swim across Lake Erie. Cowan, a quadruple amputee, finished in slightly more than 15 hours.
In 2001, surgeons working in New York used a remote-controlled robot to remove the gall bladder of a 68-year-old woman in France in the first cross-oceanic operation.
In 2005, President Hosni Mubarak won his fifth six-year term in Egypt’s first contested presidential election.
In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper ignored his own fixed-date election law to call a general election for Oct. 14. That was more than a year ahead of the October, 2009 date envisioned in Conservative legislation that passed the Commons with little dissent. Harper argued the minority Parliament had become dysfunctional and he required a fresh mandate to navigate the troubled economic waters ahead.
In 2008, the U.S. government took over control of mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which own or guarantee about half of U.S. mortgage debt, in an attempt to ease the financial crisis that followed the housing collapse.
In 2009, a London jury convicted three British Muslims of conspiring to blow up at least seven airliners bound for the U.S. and Canada in what was intended to be the largest such attack since Sept. 11, 2001. Their alleged plan was to kill thousands of people by blowing up commercial passenger planes in mid-air with liquid explosives disguised as soft drinks. They were each sentenced to 30 years in prison.
In 2010, Claude Bechard, a youthful Quebec cabinet minister who soldiered on in his post despite suffering from pancreatic cancer, died on at the age of 41.
In 2010, Ontario and B.C. launched all-day kindergarten programs -- P.E.I. started theirs on Sept. 9.
In 2011, in one of the worst air disasters in sports history, a plane carrying members of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl hockey team of Russia's KHL crashed into the banks of the Volga River moments after takeoff. Forty-three people died in the crash and a player who survived the initial impact died five days later in hospital, leaving the flight engineer as the only survivor. The entire Lokomotiv team perished, including Canadian coach Brad McCrimmon and former NHL players Pavol Demitra, Josef Vasicek, Karel Rachunek, Karlis Skrastins and Ruslan Salei. The crash put Russia's troubled aviation industry in the spotlight but investigators later blamed it on pilot error.
In 2012, while in Moscow, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird announced the Canadian embassy in Iran would close immediately and expelled Iranian diplomats in Ottawa. He cited safety concerns in Tehran and the longstanding view that Iran is a threat to global peace.
In 2014, a Canadian search team solved one of the world's great exploration mysteries with the discovery of HMS Erebus in the Queen Maud Gulf. It was one of two lost ships from Sir John Franklin's doomed Arctic expedition during an 1845 quest for the Northwest Passage.
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(The Canadian Press)
The Canadian Press
