Today in History for March 8:
In 1698, the first meeting convened of the British group which later formed the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, or SPCK Today, SPCK equips Christians throughout the world with financial grants, resources, advice and encouragement. Working with Christian communicators and educators in 60 or more countries, in an average year it supports about 200 projects.
In 1702, England's Queen Anne acceded to the throne upon the death of King William III.
In 1715, Roman Catholic King Louis XIV announced he had finally put an end to all Protestant practices in France.
In 1765, the British House of Lords passed the Stamp Act, a means of raising revenue in the American colonies.
In 1775, an unidentified person in Billericay, England became the first victim of a tar-and-feathering.
In 1855, a suspension bridge was opened across the Niagara River at Niagara Falls, Ont.
In 1867, the British parliament passed the British North America Act. Many MPs were not in the Chamber for final reading, but they rushed in immediately after to vote on a bill to place a tax on dogs. The act received royal assent on March 29 and Queen Victoria set July 1 as the date for Confederation. On this date 115 years later, in 1982, the British Commons passed the Canada Bill for patriation of the Constitution.
In 1873, the Northwest Territories council prohibited the sale of liquor.
In 1889, John Ericsson, who invented the first successful screw propeller, died.
In 1894, New York dog owners became the first in the U.S. to license their pets.
In 1907, the Supreme Court of Saskatchewan was established. It was later split into the current Court of Queen's Bench and Court of Appeal.
In 1911, fingerprint evidence was introduced as a crime detection tool in a New York City case against a suspected burglar, who was convicted.
In 1915, about 10,000 people marched on the Ontario legislature to present a huge petition -- 825,572 signatures -- demanding Prohibition.
In 1917, riots and strikes in St. Petersburg marked the beginning of the Russian Revolution.
In 1939, Sir Henry Pellatt, the millionaire who built Casa Loma in Toronto, died at age 80. Pellatt had the castle built between 1911-14 at a cost of $2 million. Based on European designs, it had about 50 rooms and was lavishly decorated. Pellatt suffered financial losses in the 1930s and lost Casa Loma, which is now a tourist attraction.
In 1942, "Transit Through Fire: An Odyssey of 1942," the first opera commissioned by the CBC, was broadcast on the network. The music was by Healey Willan, and was orchestrated by Lucio Agostini.
In 1945, the first International Women's Day was celebrated. Now celebrated by millions of women around the world, a variety of events are held to celebrate the achievements of women. The symbols for International Women's Day are bread and roses. Bread is for women's struggle for economic equality while roses represent women's continuing efforts for a better quality of life.
In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court, in McCollum v. Board of Education, struck down voluntary religious education classes in Champaign, Ill., public schools, saying the program violated the separation of church and state.
In 1950, the Soviet Union announced it possessed the atomic bomb.
In 1954, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent visited the Canadian military brigade in Korea during a world tour.
In 1965, the United States landed its first combat troops in South Vietnam as 3,500 Marines were brought in to defend the U.S. air base at Da Nang.
1976, four workers were killed and four others injured when a concrete slab fell from the top of Montreal's Olympic stadium.
In 1982, the Canada Bill was passed by the British House of Commons by a vote of 177 to 33. The bill was passed on the 115th anniversary of the passage of the British North America Act of 1867. The bill allowed Canada to patriate its Constitution.
In 1984, the cruise missile was first tested over Western Canada. The unarmed missile was attached to a B-52 bomber during the 2,500-km flight.
In 1984, a lengthy battle over offshore resources ended with the Supreme Court decision that the federal government owned the oil resources of the Hibernia field off Newfoundland.
In 1993, the Canadian navy supply ship "HMCS Preserver" completed a three-month tour of Somalia. The crews of three Sea King helicopters airlifted 430 tonnes of supplies to the war-torn African country.
In 1994, Rogers Communications and Maclean-Hunter struck a $3.1-billion deal to create one of Canada's largest media companies.
In 1999, Alice Munro became the first Canadian to win the top fiction award from the National Book Critics Circle for her collection of short stories "The Love of a Good Woman."
In 1999, Joe DiMaggio, baseball's Yankee Clipper, whose 56-game hitting streak in 1941 endures as one of the most remarkable records in baseball or any sport, died of lung cancer at age 84.
In 2001, the Canadian Navy announced women would be eligible for service on submarines beginning the following year.
In 2004, Todd Bertuzzi of the Vancouver Canucks slugged Colorado Avalanche rookie forward Steve Moore from behind and fell on top of him, leaving Moore with a broken neck, a concussion and facial cuts. Bertuzzi, who was suspended by the NHL for the rest of the regular season and playoffs, later pleaded guilty to criminal assault. He received a conditional discharge and was sentenced to probation and community service. Bertuzzi was not reinstated until the start of the 2005-06 season, largely due to the 2004-05 NHL lockout. The hit ended Moore's career and a multimillion-dollar suit against Bertuzzi and the Vancouver Canucks was settled shortly before the start of a September 2014 trial.
In 2004, Iraq's Governing Council signed an interim constitution after weeks of wrangling, in a key step towards a planned handover of sovereignty by U.S.-led occupying powers to Iraqis on June 30, 2004.
In 2004, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived for a two-day visit to Ottawa.
In 2006, the Catholic Church in Ireland admitted that 102 of its priests in Dublin were suspected of sexually or physically abusing at least 350 children.
In 2009, Trooper Marc Diab, 22, from the Royal Canadian Dragoons, died and three other soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their armoured vehicle on patrol northeast of Kandahar city in Afghanistan.
In 2010, Ontario Provincial Police Constable Vu Pham, 37, was shot and killed after pulling over a pickup truck near London. The suspect, Fred Preston, then became involved in a shootout with two other OPP officers and was critically wounded and died in hospital on March 11.
In 2012, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird travelled to Myanmar to personally confer honorary Canadian citizenship on Nobel laureate and freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi.
In 2013, the Metis won a landmark case as the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the federal government failed to live up to its constitutional obligations in handing out land to children of the Manitoba Metis in the 1870s. It opened the door for the Metis to negotiate a claim to vast tracts of land in the province, including all of present-day Winnipeg.
In 2014, a Malaysia Airlines jet carrying 239 people, including two Canadians, vanished on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Despite a massive multinational search and wide-ranging theories about what might have happened, Flight MH370 has not yet been found.
In 2016, Imperial Oil announced it reached deals to sell its remaining 497 Esso retail stations in Canada to five fuel distributors for $2.8 billion.
In 2018, a new $10 bill featuring civil rights icon Viola Desmond was unveiled by Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz at a ceremony in Halifax. Desmond became the first Black person - and the first non-royal woman - to appear on a regularly circulating Canadian bank note.
In 2018, Canada and the other 10 members of the old Trans-Pacific Partnership signed a revised trade agreement that will forge ahead without the United States, just over one year after President Donald Trump withdrew his country from the 12-nation pact. It was renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP.
In 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shed tears as he apologized for the way Inuit in northern Canada were treated for tuberculosis in the mid-20th century, calling it colonial and misguided. Trudeau delivered an apology to the Inuit on behalf of the federal government — words that prompted many in the room to openly weep. Trudeau acknowledged that many people with TB died after being removed from their families and communities and taken on gruelling journeys south on ships, trains and aircraft. He also apologized to those who still do not know what happened to their loved ones.
In 2019, SNC-Lavalin lost a court bid to overturn the public prosecutor's refusal to negotiate an agreement that would see the company avoid a criminal trial. The Federal Court of Canada tossed out the Montreal-based engineering firm's plea for judicial review of the 2018 decision by the director of public prosecutions. SNC-Lavalin was accused of paying bribes to obtain government business in Libya — a criminal case that prompted a political firestorm for the Trudeau Liberals.
In 2020, Kamala Harris announced her endorsement of Joe Biden as the Democratic choice for US president. Harris said she will do everything she can to help elect him. (Harris was later selected as Biden's running mate for vice president and won alongside him in November 2020.)
In 2022, Mark Arendz from Hartsville, P.E.I., won the gold medal in the 10-kilometre standing biathlon event at the Beijing Paralympics. He was the only athlete in the field to go a perfect 20-for-20 on the shooting range. His gold was his second medal in Beijing and the 10th of his career.
In 2022, the World Health Organization was now saying an expert panel was strongly supporting booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines. That was a turnaround from the UN agency's previous insistence that boosters weren't necessary and contributed to vaccine inequity. The expert group concluded that booster shots provide high levels of protection against severe disease and death from the highly contagious Omicron variant.
In 2022, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and UNICEF confirmed that two million people -- half of them children -- had fled Ukraine after Russia's invasion on Feb. 24.
In 2022, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada was indefinitely extending its NATO military mission in Latvia. The mission, called Operation Reassurance, was due to end the following year. The extension came weeks after Russia's invasion of neighbouring Ukraine.
In 2022, a judge dismissed the sex abuse lawsuit brought by an American woman against Prince Andrew after the parties settled. The federal judge in New York signed papers ending the litigation at the request of the lawyers. The lawyers three weeks prior announced a deal in which the prince would donate to Virginia Giuffre's charity and declare he never meant to malign her character. Giuffre accused Andrew of sexually abusing her while she travelled with financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2001 when she was 17.
In 2024, the Canadian government announced new sanctions on International Women's Day against two Iranians accused of participating in the violent repression of women and girls in Iran. Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said Iranian women and girls face an increasingly repressive environment, where injury or death could come from expressing themselves or demanding basic rights. The chief executive of the transit system in Iran's capital Tehran and a senior parliamentarian were both added to the list for carrying out "increasingly repressive measures."
In 2024, the RCMP announced they wouldn't be laying any charges following an investigation into potential voter identity fraud in the 2017 United Conservative Party leadership race. The investigation was launched after Jason Kenney won the leadership race to become leader of the new party following the merger of Alberta’s two conservative rival parties. Police said there were suspected instances of potential fraud but they couldn't find enough evidence to support laying charges.
In 2024, International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen said Canada would resume funding to the United Nations aid agency known as UNRWA for Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip. Canada was one of 16 countries to pause future payments to UNRWA after Israel alleged in January a dozen of its workers participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Hussen said he reviewed an interim report from the UN about the allegations, and the decision was being made in light of that information.
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The Canadian Press
