Today in History for July 25:
On this date:
In 325, the Council of Nicea closed. Regarded as the first ecumenical council, its 300 attending bishops drafted the Nicene Creed and fixed the formula for Easter Sunday.
In 1593, the Protestant king of France, Henry IV, converted to Roman Catholicism.
In 1787, British navigator Capt. George Dixon named the Queen Charlotte Islands, after the wife of George III.
In 1799, botanist-explorer David Douglas was born in Scotland. The Douglas fir is named after Douglas, who died in 1835.
In 1845, Canadian-born Roman Catholic missionary Francois Blanchet was consecrated bishop of the U.S. Pacific Northwest. He devoted 45 years to building churches, and is remembered today as the Apostle of Oregon.
In 1845, English explorer Sir John Franklin disappeared while on an expedition in the eastern Arctic trying to chart and navigate the Northwest Passage. It was later learned that Franklin's ships were frozen in ice west of King William Island. Franklin died June 11, 1847, and his 105 crew members perished while trekking southward.
In 1847, Liberia, settled in West Africa by freed U.S. slaves, became a republic.
In 1874, "The Maple Leaf Forever," one of Canada's most famous patriotic songs, was said to have been performed for the first time during the laying of the foundation stone for the Christian Baptist Church in Newmarket, Ont. The song's composer, Alexander Muir, conducted a choir of schoolchildren. But the song likely had its first public performance years earlier. An 1871 sheet music edition said it had been “sung with great applause by J.F. Hardy, Esquire, in his popular entertainments.”
In 1909, French aviator Louis Bleriot became the first man to fly over the English Channel. His 37-minute flight earned him a prize of $2,500 from the London Daily Mail newspaper.
In 1917, Finance Minister Sir Thomas White introduced, as a war measure only, a proposal to levy income tax on Canadians. Until then, only the provinces had levied personal income tax.
In 1920, the Canadian Marconi Co. made the first transatlantic two-way radio broadcast from Signal Hill, Nfld., to the "SS Victoria."
In 1943, King Victor Emmanuel forced Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to resign during the Second World War. Mussolini, who led the country for 21 years, was arrested, but he was later rescued in a daring raid by German paratroopers in the Abruzzi mountains. Mussolini was recaptured in 1945 by Italian partisans and executed.
In 1944, the 2nd and 3rd Canadian Infantry Divisions suffered around 2,000 casualties in an attack on German forces near Caen in northern France. It was Canada's second-bloodiest day of the Second World War, after the 1942 Dieppe raid.
In 1946, the United States detonated an atomic bomb near Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in the first underwater test of the device.
In 1952, Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth of the United States.
In 1956, the transatlantic liners "Andrea Doria" and "Stockholm" collided off the New England coast. A massive rescue mission managed to save all but 51 of the 1,668 passengers.
In 1963, the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain signed a treaty banning nuclear testing in the atmosphere, in space or under water.
In 1969, the Official Languages Act was amended to declare English and French the official languages of Canada.
In 1969, a week after the Chappaquiddick incident that claimed the life of Mary Jo Kopechne, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) pleaded guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident. He went on television to call his failure to immediately notify authorities "indefensible."
In 1973, Louis St. Laurent, prime minister from 1948-57, died at age 91 in Quebec City. He was appointed minister of justice in the government of Mackenzie King and soon established a reputation for probity and ability. He was chosen to succeed King in 1948, and for the next nine years, his government led the country through a period of growth and prosperity.
In 1975, a Montreal judge sentenced Dr. Henry Morgentaler to 18 months in jail for performing illegal abortions. Morgentaler served 10 months before being granted a retrial.
In 1978, the world's first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in Lancashire, England.
In 1981, the McDonald Royal Commission condemned illegal RCMP activities against Quebec separatists and other dissidents and recommended a civilian agency take over security work.
In 1982, an escape bid at the Archambault maximum-security prison near Montreal turned into a bloody riot. Three guards were killed and two convicts committed suicide.
In 1983, in San Antonio, Texas, a female baboon named E.T. (Embryo Transplant) became the first non-human primate conceived in a laboratory.
In 1984, Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space when she left the Salyut-7 space station to do a welding job.
In 1990, the Bloc Quebecois began as an informal coalition of Conservative and Liberal MPs from Quebec. The coalition was led by Lucien Bouchard, who left the federal Tory cabinet to protest possible changes to the Meech Lake Accord.
In 1994, King Hussein of Jordan and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin signed a declaration in Washington to end 46 years of hostility and open the way for economic co-operation between the two countries.
In 1995, seven people were killed and more than 80 injured when a bomb exploded on a crowded subway train during the evening rush hour in Paris, France.
In 1995, the UN war crimes tribunal indicted Serb leader Radovan Karadzic for atrocities against civilians.
In 1996, Bishop Hubert O'Connor, the highest ranking Roman Catholic in Canada to have been charged with sex crimes, was found guilty of committing rape and indecent assault involving two aboriginal women at the B.C. residential school he headed in the 1960s.
In 1997, Larry Fisher was arrested in Calgary and charged with the first-degree murder and rape of Saskatoon nursing aide Gail Miller in January, 1969. Fisher was convicted in 1999 and sentenced to life. David Milgaard wrongfully spent 23 years in prison for the crime. (Fisher died in prison on June 9, 2015, at age 65.)
In 1997, Ben Hogan, the legendary golfer who won nine major championships, died in Forth Worth, Texas, at age 84.
In 1997, a $3.5 billion class-action lawsuit on behalf of thousands of Canadians infected with hepatitis-C through tainted-blood products, was launched against the Red Cross and federal and provincial governments.
In 2000, an Air France Concorde supersonic jet on its way to New York from Paris, crashed in a huge fireball two minutes after takeoff, hitting a hotel. All 109 people on board and four on ground were killed. It was the first crash of a Concorde. (On Dec. 6, 2010, Continental Airlines Inc. and John Taylor, one of its mechanics, were convicted in a French court of manslaughter. Continental's fines reached nearly $2 million while Taylor received a 15-month suspended sentence).
In 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that the so-called forgotten victims of the hepatitis-C tainted-blood scandal would get a $1 billion compensation package. (It marked an end to decades of controversy over a federal-provincial compensation deal reached in 1998 that only provided support to those people who were infected with hepatitis-C from tainted-blood products between 1986 and 1990).
In 2006, Israeli bombs destroyed a UN observer post on the border in southern Lebanon, killing four UN peacekeepers, including one Canadian.
In 2007, the humidex reached a record 53 C in Carman, Man., breaking Windsor, Ont.'s previous mark of 52.1 C in 1953.
In 2010, WikiLeaks, a whistle-blowing group, posted online some 91,000 classified U.S. military records over the past six years about the Afghanistan war, including unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings and covert operations against Taliban figures. The U.S. also asked Canada to put diplomatic pressure on Saudi Arabia and South Africa over Taliban fundraising activity apparently taking place in the two countries.
In 2010, Arctic archaeologists found the "HMS Investigator," the ship that forged the final link in the Northwest Passage and was lost in the search for the Franklin expedition. The British vessel, abandoned in the ice in 1853, was found in shallow water in Mercy Bay along the northern coast of Banks Island in Canada's Western Arctic.
In 2010, outfielder Andre Dawson, manager Whitey Herzog and umpire Doug Harvey were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Dawson entered the Hall as a Montreal Expo, joining Gary Carter as the only players to have an Expo cap on their plaques.
In 2011, only three months after leading the NDP party to a historic electoral breakthrough, a frail, raspy-voiced Jack Layton, who had been battling prostate cancer, announced he was diagnosed with a new undisclosed form of cancer and would take a temporary leave of absence. The party accepted his recommendation and confirmed rookie Quebec MP Nycole Turmel as interim leader three days later. (Layton died on Aug. 22.)
In 2011, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (now BlackBerry Ltd.) announced it would be eliminating 2,000 jobs, 11 per cent of its global workforce, in an effort to save money amid an increasingly competitive smartphone and tablet market. (In June 2012, it announced another 5,000 job cuts.)
In 2011, 150,000 people filled the streets of central Oslo to mourn the 77 victims of the July 22nd double massacre with a "rose march" that ended with mourners placing thousands of flowers in front of the Oslo Cathedral.
In 2016, seeking a wider digital audience, Verizon announced it was buying Yahoo for US$4.83 billion in a deal that marked the end of an era for a company that defined much of the early internet but struggled to stay relevant in an online world dominated by Google and Facebook.
In 2017, 14-1 longshot Cool Catomine grabbed the lead in the deep stretch to capture the Prince of Wales Stakes, the second jewel of the Canadian Triple Crown of thoroughbred horse racing.
In 2017, Canadian swimmer Kylie Masse won the 100-metre backstroke at the world championships in Hungary in a world-record time of 58.10 seconds.
In 2019, Canada's arts community mourned the death of impresario Walter Homburger. An obituary on the Mount Pleasant Funeral Centre's website said Homburger died at Sunnybrook Veteran's Centre in Toronto. He was 95. As managing director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for 25 years, Homburger fostered the careers of acclaimed artists including Glenn Gould. He also presented esteemed international artists, including Louis Armstrong, and took the company on tours to such far-flung locales as China in 1978. In a tribute to Homburger on its website, the TSO described him as "one of the most revered artistic administrators in Canadian musical history."
In 2021, Canada had made it onto the podium twice now in Tokyo, winning silver medals in two events. First was Canada's women's four-by-100 freestyle relay team, which saw Penny Oleksiak swim the anchor leg to pick up her fifth Olympic medal. That tied her for most Summer Games medals won by a Canadian athlete. The second silver was won by Canadian divers Jennifer Abel and Melissa Citrini-Beaulieu in the women's three-metre synchronized springboard.
In 2022, Pope Francis issued an abject apology for the Roman Catholic Church's role in the cultural destruction and forced assimilation of Indigenous people in residential schools. Tears streamed down the faces of elders and survivors as Francis apologized in Maskwacis, south of Edmonton, after visiting the site of the former Ermineskin Indian Residential School. The Pope said he wanted to express his sorrow and ask forgiveness. Francis said the memories of the children who never returned from residential schools had left him with a sense of "sorrow, indignation and shame.''
In 2023, Pat Carney, who pioneered roles for women in Canadian politics and journalism, died at the age of 88. The former MP and senator was the first female Conservative member of Parliament elected in B.C. and the first female Conservative appointed from the province to the Senate.
In 2024, Canada women's soccer coach Bev Priestman's time at the Paris Olympics ended before the opening ceremony. The Canadian Olympic Committee removed Priestman as head coach for the remainder of the Games after two team staffers were sent home for allegedly using a drone to spy on a New Zealand practice. Priestman denied any involvement.
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The Canadian Press