1792 Captain George Vancouver landed at the site that is now Vancouver though Wikipedia does not mention him in the entry on the city. He had earlier claimed King George Sound near Albany Western Australia for the crown. I have been to Rain City many times and it rained each time while I dined on sable, sturgeon, and halibut.
1912 Ottawa. The Chateau Laurier Hotel opened. Its owner was Charles Hays who had drowned a week earlier while travelling home for the event on the Titanic. Was it named for the Liberal Prime Minister of the time, Wilfred Laurier? Is it haunted by Hays’s ghost? While I stayed there once at a conference these questions I cannot answer.
1923 From Appleton Wisconsin Harry Houdini freed himself from a straight-jacket while suspended forty feet in the air upside down. He had toured Australia in 1910. He spent much of the latter part of his career debunking spiritualists and mediums who were defrauding the public. In do doing he clashed with Arthur Conan Doyle.
1931 The separate territories of North Australia and Central Australia were re-united as the Northern Territory. It had been entire until 1926 when it was split to make the vast real estate more manageable. However the Great Depression made it impossible to sustain two administrative centres, one in Alice Springs and one in Darwin, and the parts were re-united.
1991 Bois Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian Federation. The impossible happened when sales of vodka increased.
Skip to content