Today in History for Dec. 21:
In 1266, the last stand of the first English parliamentarians ended when rebels surrendered Kenilworth Castle to the king after a six-month siege. Their leader, Simon de Montfort, who called England's first parliament, had already been killed in battle.
In 1620, the "Mayflower" arrived at Plymouth Rock.
In 1804, British prime minister and writer Benjamin Disraeli was born in London.
In 1846, surgeon Robert Lister performed the first anesthetized operation in Europe when he used ether before amputating a patient's leg.
In 1879, Russian dictator Josef Stalin was born. He died in 1953.
In 1883, the first Canadian infantry and calvary schools were established.
In 1884, British troops arrived in Khartoum only to find that general Charles Gordon's garrison had been massacred three days earlier.
In 1894, Sir Mackenzie Bowell became prime minister of Canada following the death of Sir John Thompson.
In 1910, 344 coal miners were killed in Britain's Pretoria Pit Disaster.
In 1940, author F. Scott Fitzgerald died in Hollywood, Calif., at age 44.
In 1942, butter rationing began in Canada as a wartime measure. Gasoline had been rationed since April 1st.
In 1943, the Canadian First Division launched the "Battle of Ortona" on the Italian front during the Second World War. The Canadians captured the town after a week of heavy fighting.
In 1945, American Second World War General George Patton died of injuries he had suffered in a car accident in Heidelberg, Germany.
In 1946, about 2,000 people died in an earthquake on the Japanese island of Honshu.
In 1948, the state of Eire, or Ireland, passed an act declaring itself a republic.
In 1951, Canada's Department of National Health and Welfare began making old-age security payments.
In 1963, the Canadian weather service received its first automatic picture transmission from satellite. Today, satellites can provide updated information for specific areas over North America and the nearby ocean every few minutes.
In 1966, royal assent was given to the Canadian Medical Care Act.
In 1967, Louis Washkansky died 18 days after becoming the world's first heart transplant patient in Cape Town, South Africa.
In 1968, the "Apollo 8" spacecraft began the first manned mission to orbit the Moon.
In 1971, Austrian foreign minister Kurt Waldheim succeeded U Thant as Secretary-General of the United Nations.
In 1975, five men and a woman shot their way into a conference of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna. Three people were killed and eight others wounded in the melee in which the terrorists took the 13 OPEC oil ministers and about 60 others hostage. The terrorists released all hostages in Vienna, Libya and Algiers before they surrendered Dec. 23 to Algerian authorities.
In 1978, police in Des Plaines, Ill., arrested John Wayne Gacy, a 36-year-old convicted sex offender, and began unearthing the remains of 33 men and boys beneath Gacy's house. He was later convicted of the murders and was eventually executed.
In 1984, two securities messengers in Montreal were robbed of $68.5 million.
In 1988, a Pan Am Boeing 747 flying from London to New York crashed in the village of Lockerbie, Scotland. The crash killed all 259 people aboard -- including three Canadians -- and 11 on the ground. Investigators blamed a powerful explosive planted by Libyan terrorists. A Libyan man was convicted of the bombing and sentenced to life in prison in 2001 by a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands. Scotland freed him in 2009 on compassionate grounds because he had terminal cancer.
In 1990, the federal and Quebec governments reached an agreement on immigration. The deal gave the province exclusive jurisdiction to decide which immigrants will be allowed into the province.
In 1991, 11 former Soviet republics -- Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Moldova, Armenia and Azerbaijan -- signed the historic documents establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States in Alma-Ata, capital of Kazakhstan. Georgia became the 12th republic to join in 1993.
In 1995, Bethlehem came under Palestinian control after 26 years of occupation by Israel.
In 1999, the federal government filed a $1-billion lawsuit in U.S. Federal Court against RJR-Macdonald, Canada's third-largest tobacco company, alleging a conspiracy to smuggle cheap smokes into Canada.
In 2000, Al Gross, the Canadian-born inventor of the walkie-talkie and a father of wireless communication, died in Sun City, Ariz., at age 82.
In 2003, more than 150 people were killed in mudslides in the Philippines.
In 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Montreal swingers clubs didn't break obscenity laws.
In 2009, securities regulators approved $138.8 million in penalties against seven Canadian banks and investment dealers in connection with the meltdown of Canada's $32-billion asset-backed commercial paper market in 2007.
In 2009, Diane Sawyer took over the anchor desk at ABC's "World News." (She left in August 2014 and was replaced by David Muir.)
In 2009, New Jersey Devils goaltender Martin Brodeur set an NHL record with his 104th career shutout, moving him past Terry Sawchuk on the all-time list. It gave him the only major goaltending milestone missing from his resume. (He retired with 125 shutouts.)
In 2010, in the wee hours of the morning, many Canadians witnessed a rare winter solstice total lunar eclipse. NASA said it last occurred 372 years ago.
In 2010, Fred Foy, the radio announcer best-known for calling out "Hi-Yo, Silver!" in his passionate lead-in to "The Lone Ranger," died at his Massachusetts home. He was 89.
In 2017, a Halifax jury found Christopher Garnier guilty of second-degree murder and interfering with a dead body following the 2015 death of off-duty police officer Catherine Campbell.
In 2017, Hall of Fame broadcaster Dick Enberg, who got his big break with UCLA basketball and went on to call Super Bowls, Olympics, Final Fours and Angels and Padres baseball games, died at age 82.
In 2018, a judge denied former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr's request for relaxed bail conditions and a Canadian passport. Justice June Ross said nothing has changed since the last time Khadr asked for eased bail conditions and there's no evidence the current restrictions create hardship or are needlessly strict.
In 2018, after more than a week of expressing worsening upset about China's arrests of two Canadians, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland formally demanded that Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor be let go. "We are deeply concerned by the arbitrary detention by Chinese authorities of two Canadians earlier this month and call for their immediate release," Freeland said in a written statement. (Kovrig and Spavor were released in September 2021.)
In 2020, the European Medicines Agency approved the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for use in the European Union's 27 member countries. The European regulator had been under pressure since the U.K., Canada and the U.S. granted approval for use of the vaccine.
In 2020, the Ontario government announced that the whole province would go into lockdown on Boxing Day over a rise in COVID-19 cases, meaning all non-essential businesses would have to close. Premier Doug Ford asked everyone to stay home unless absolutely necessary, saying the lockdown was needed to save lives and prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed.
In 2020, U.S. president-elect Joe Biden received his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on live television. The Democrat took a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at a hospital not far from his Delaware home, hours after his wife, Jill Biden, did the same.
In 2021, Canadian Maggie Mac Neil won the gold medal in the women's 100-metre butterfly at the world short course swimming championships in Abu Dhabi. She did it in a Canadian record time of 55.04 seconds.
In 2021, the Canadian Press reported that NHL players won't be going to the 2022 Beijing Olympics. The league and NHLPA officially committed to going to China for the 2022 Games back in September, but the agreement allowed either party to withdraw if COVID-19 conditions rendered participation “impractical or unsafe.”
In 2023, Aydin Coban had his sentence cut by an Amsterdam court to six years from 13. Coban was extradited from the Netherlands to Canada in 2020 to stand trial on charges linked to Amanda Todd, who took her own life in 2012 at the age of 15 after posting a video that described being tormented by an online harasser. He was sent to Canada on condition that his sentence would be served in a Dutch prison. Prison time imposed by the British Columbia Supreme Court last year had to be converted into a sentence in the Netherlands.
In 2023, Hockey NL said it was banning end-of-game handshakes in amateur leagues in Newfoundland and Labrador because of issues that had led to suspensions for players and coaches.
In 2023, a student at Charles University in Prague opened fire in the philosophy department, killing 14 people. Dozens more were injured in one of the Czech Republic’s worst mass shootings. The gunman later killed himself.
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The Canadian Press