[Fortress Louisbourg was a ruin when, in 1961, the reconstruction of about one-quarter of the site was undertaken at the behest of Victor Malm; with as many of its original stones as possible, and availing themselves of the labour of unemployed coal miners who were specially trained in 18th Century building techniques, the archaeologists, historians, engineers, and architects responsible for one of Canada's most popular National Historic Sites have managed to plausibly recreate what fort life must have been like in Colonial Cape Breton Island in the 1740s.]
1487 - The
Battle of Stoke Field - considered the final battle of the
Wars of the Roses - pitted the Yorkist forces of the pretender
Lambert Simnel under
John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln (who died in battle on that day) against those of the Lancastrian usurper
Henry VII.
1745 - Sir William Pepperell captured Nova Scotia's French-held Fortress Louisbourg during the War of the Austrian Succession.
1755 - The French surrender to the British at New Brunswick's
Fort Beauséjour during the
French and Indian War would eventually lead to the expulsion of the
Acadians from Nova Scotia - a time in Canadian history known as the
Great Upheaval.
1858 -
Abraham Lincoln delivers his
House Divided speech in
Springfield, Illinois.
1883 - At the
Victoria Hall Disaster 183 children were crushed or trampled to death during a stampede at a theatre in
Sunderland.
1891 -
John Abbott became Canada's third prime minister.
1897 - A treaty annexing the
Republic of Hawai'i to the United States, was signed, although the Republic would not be dissolved until a year later, when - under the terms of the
Newlands Resolution - it became the
Territory of Hawai'i.
1903 - The
Ford Motor Company was incorporated.
1904 - Irish author
James Joyce began a relationship with
Nora Barnacle, and subsequently used the date to set the actions for his
1922 novel Ulysses; in the literary world - and especially in Dublin - today is traditionally regarded as
Bloomsday.
1911 - A stony meteorite weighing 772 grams fell to Earth near the Wisconsin town of
Kilbourn, damaging a barn.
1924 - China's
Whampoa Military Academy was founded.
1958 -
Imre Nagy,
Pál Maléter and other leaders of 1956's
Hungarian Uprising were executed.
1963 - On the Soviet Union's
Vostok 6 mission,
cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.
1967 - The three-day
Monterey International Pop Music Festival began in
Monterey, California.
1976 - The
Soweto Uprising - initially a non-violent march by 15,000 students in the Johannesburg township of
Soweto - turned into days of rioting when police opened fire on the crowd, killing 566; the anniversary of the massacre is now commemorated as
Youth Day in South Africa.
1977 -
Oracle Corporation was incorporated by
Larry Ellison,
Bob Miner, and
Ed Oates as Software Development Laboratories (SDL) in
Redwood Shores, California.
1989 -
Imre Nagy, the former Hungarian
Prime Minister, was reburied in Budapest - 31 years to the day after his death.
1997 - At the
Dairat Labguer massacre in Algeria, 50 people were killed by some 30 guerrillas; the massacre has been attributed to Islamist groups such as the
GIA.
2008 - On the first day they were allowed to marry in California, many gay couples tied the knot throughout the state; despite the fact that their marriages were later ruled invalid by the passage of
Proposition 8, their relationships remained intact - no doubt much to the chagrin of the haters responsible for denying as many as 18,000 couples their civil rights.
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