1170 - Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, 52, returned to England after six years of exile in France

1586 - Sir Thomas Herriot introduces potatoes to England, from Colombia

1621 - Galileo perfects the telescope

1838 - 400 republicans and Canadian exiles cross from Detroit and attack Windsor

1855 - Opening of Great Western Railroad from Hamilton to Toronto

1878 - Canadian Pacific Railway connects Winnipeg with Emerson, Minnesota

1880 - Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa and Occidental Railway extends its line from Hull to Chaudière over the Prince of Wales Bridge

1887 - Edmund Ernest Sheppard founds Saturday Night magazine in Toronto

1894 - Robert Louis Stevenson, English writer (Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde), dies from a cerebral haemorrhage

1907 - Future movie star Mary Pickford and future director Cecil B. DeMille both appear in the Broadway play The Warrens of Virginia

1910 - Neon lights, first publically seen at Paris Auto Show

1912 - Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro sign an armistice with Turkey, ending the first Balkan War

1917 - Quebec Bridge (railway bridge) opens across St Lawrence river. At the time, it was the world's longest cantilever truss span (in which stiff trusses extend from the bridge piers, without additional support)

1919 - Pierre A Renoir, French painter/sculptor, dies at 78

1921 - Founding of the Canadian Badminton Association

1922 - First successful technicolor movie (Tall of the Sea), shown in NY City

1931 - Alka Seltzer goes on sale

1947 - Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" premieres in NY City

1951 - The federal and Ontario governments agreed on proceeding with power development on the St Lawrence river

1952 - First TV broadcast in Hawaii

1952 - Marcos Perez Jiménez elected President of Venezuela

1954 - William Walton's opera "Troilus & Cressida" premieres in London, England

1956 - Wilt Chamberlain's first collegiate basketball game in which he scored 52 points

1958 - Opening of the Autoroute des Laurentides from Montreal

1960 - Frederick Loewe/Alan Jay Lerner's "Camelot" premieres Majestic Theater NYC with Canadian raised Robert Goulet

1960 - Annette Toft arrives at Quebec City from Denmark; Canada's 2,000,000th immigrant since 1945

1960 - Opening of Edmonton International Airport, Canada's largest airport

1961 - Anton Geesink becomes the first non-Japanese judo world champion

1961 - The Beatles meet future manager Brian Epstein for the first time, at his Liverpool record store

1963 - Conductor Walter Susskind leads the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in its successful Carnegie Hall debut

1964 - "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" first airs on TV

1967 - 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky received the first human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa in surgery performed by Dr. Christiaan Barnard

1968 - Pitcher's mound drops from 15" to 10" & strike zone reduced from knees to shoulders to top of knees to armpits, to help hitters

1970 - James Cross taken to Cuban pavilion at Expo '67 site and released to Commissioner; FLQ terrorists Jacques Cossette, Jacques and Micheline Lanctôt, Marc Charbonneau, Pierre Séguin and two others given safe passage to Cuba

1971 - A fire at a Frank Zappa concert at the Casino in Montreaux, Switzerland is immortalized in Deep Purple's "Smoke On The Water"

1978 - Former FLQ terrorists Jacques Cossette and Micheline Lanctôt return from exile in Cuba and France

1979 - 11 trampled to death at Cincinnati Who concert. The band was not informed of the deaths until after the show

1979 - Chang Kuo-tao dies in a Toronto nursing home at age 82; last survivor of the 12 founding members of the Chinese Communist Party

1979 - The last Pacer is produced by the American Motor Company

1982 - First New Jersey Devil hat-trick (Steve Tambellini) defeat Hartford 5-4

1984 - One of the worst industrial disasters in history begins when a Union Carbide pesticide plant located in the densely populated region of Bhopal in central India leaks a highly toxic cloud of methyl isocyanate into the air; Of the estimated one million people living in Bhopal at the time, 2,000 were killed immediately, at least 600,000 were injured, and at least 6,000 have died since

 

Birthdays

1368 - Charles VI - King of France (1380-1422)
1795 - Sir Rowland Hill - introduced the first adhesive postage stamp in 1840
1843 - William Otter, Clinton, Ontario - soldier, first Canadian-born chief of the general staff
1857 - Joseph Conrad [Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski] Berdichev, Ukraine - author: Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness
1902 - Mitsuo Fuchida, Japan - flew lead plane in Japan's air attack on Pearl Harbor
1911 - Nino Rota, Milan Italy - composer: Torquemada
1917 - Miriam Waddington [Dworkin], Winnipeg - poet: Green World, The Season's Lovers, The Glass Trumpet
1923 - Maria M Callas [Maria Anna Sofia Cecilia Kalogeropoulos], NY City - soprano: Carmen
1924 - John Backus - inventor: FORTRAN computer language
1927 - Ferlin Husky - singer: Born to Lose, Gone
1927 - Isabelle Harriet Lucas - actress/singer: Outland, Comics
1930 - Andy Williams Wall Lake Idaho - singer: Moon River, Andy Williams Show
1930 - Jean-Luc Godard, Paris France - film director: Alphaville, Hail Mary, Breathless
1931 - Jaye P Morgan, Mancos CO - singer/actress: Gong Show, Night Patrol
1934 - Nicolas Coster, London England - actor: Lionel-Santa Barbara, Robert Delaney-Another World, Electric Horseman
1937 - Bobby Allison - auto racer: 3 time winner of Daytona 500
1943 - Valerie Perrine, Galveston Texas - actress: Slaughterhouse 5, Superman
1948 - Ozzy [John Michael]Osbourne, Birmingham England - singer: Black Sabbath-Bark at the Moon
1949 - Heather Menzies, Toronto Ontario - actress: Jessica-Logan's Run
1949 - Mickey Thomas, Cairo Georgia - singer: Jefferson Airplane, Starship
1951 - Rick Mears - Indy-car racer
1953 - Franz Klammer, Austria - downhill skier
1955 - Melody Anderson, Edmonton, Alberta - TV and soap actor, Manimal, Jake & the Fatman, All My Children
1956 - Hart Bochner, Los Angeles - actor/director: Rich & Famous
1960 - Daryl Hannah - actress: Splash, Blade Runner
1960 - Julianne Moore [Smith] Fayetteville, North Carolina - actress: Lost World, 9 Months, Boogie Nights
1964 - Darryl Hamilton, Baton Rouge LA - baseball player: Texas Rangers
1965 - Katarina Witt, Staaken German Democratic Republic - figure skater
1968 - Brendan Fraser, Indianapolis Indiana - actor: School Ties, 20 Bucks, The Mummy
1970 - Laura Schuler, Scarborough Ontario - hockey player: University of Toronto Blues, member of the 1997 gold medal team at the World Championship in Kitchener, Ontario
1975 - Lauren E Roman, Wilmington NC - actress: Laura Kirk-All My Children
1980 - Anna Chlumskym, Chicago IL - actress: My Girl
1981 - Brian Bonsall - actor: Family Ties, Star Trek Next Generation

 

 

 

How do these people survive?

Recently, when I went to McDonald's I saw on the menu that you could have an order of 6, 9 or 12 Chicken McNuggets. I asked for a half dozen nuggets.
"We don't have half dozen nuggets," said the teenager at the counter.

"You don't?" I replied.
"We only have six, nine, or twelve," was the reply.
"So I can't order a half dozen nuggets, but I can order six?"
"That's right."
So I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets

 

 

I was checking out at the local Wal-Mart with just a few items and the lady behind me put her things on the belt close to mine. I picked up one of those "dividers" that they keep by the cash register and placed it between our things so they wouldn't get mixed. After the girl had scanned all of my items, she picked up the "divider", looking it all over for the bar code so she could scan it. Not finding the bar code she said to me, "Do you know how much this is?"

I said to her "I've changed my mind; I don't think I'll buy that today."

She said "OK," and I paid her for the things and left. She had no clue to what had just happened.

 

 

A lady at work was seen putting a credit card into her floppy drive and pulling it out very quickly. When I inquired as to what she was doing, she said she was shopping on the Internet and they kept asking for a credit card number, so she was using the ATM "thingy."

 

 

I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car. "Do you need some help?" I asked.
She replied, "I knew I should have replaced the battery to this remote door unlocker. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would have a battery to fit this?" "Hmmm, I dunno. Do you have an alarm, too?" I asked.
"No, just this remote thingy," she answered, handing it and the car keys to me. As I took the key and manually unlocked the door, I replied, "Why don't you drive over there and check about the batteries. It's a long walk."

 

 

Several years ago, we had an Intern who was none too swift. One day she was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?"
"Just use copier machine paper," the secretary told her.
With that, the intern took her last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five "blank" copies.