1497 Sailing from Bristol with a commission from English King Henry VII, Venetian navigator Giovanni Caboto landed on the coast of Newfoundland and claimed it for his sponsor. To make it easier to cash pay cheques he called himself John Cabot. He landed at the spot shown below.
1648 Margaret Brent, an unmarried woman, demanded a voice and a vote in the Maryland Assembly, and was refused. She owned property in her own name thanks to the intervention of Governor Leonard Calvert who also made her executor of his will. The English Civil War spread to the colony with Protestant seaboard raids on the largely Catholic immigrants in which Calvert died. She used the proceeds from his will to pay the soldiers who defended the colony. None of this would convince the Assembly to hear her. She moved shortly thereafter to inland Virginia.
1947 Mount Rainer, WA. Pilot Kenneth Arnold while air spotting for the forest service coined the term ‘flying saucer’ when he reported seeing nine bright objects in a chain formation nearby. The free press exercised its usual responsibility.
1964 The U.S. Federal Trade Commission required cigarette packing to include warnings about the harmful effects of smoking. See if you can spot it below.
1968 Montréal. Politics. Newly incumbent Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was pelted by rocks and bottles from Separatists at the annual parade for the patron saint of Quebec, St Jean Baptiste. He refused to leave the exposed viewing platform despite the barrage, and eventually the police restored order. It was part of his life’s work to see-off Quebecois Separatists in favour of Canadian unity. He is shown in the circle below in the front row while others went to take cover. He, of course, was the target, not the others. René Lévesque, then the unofficial leader of the Separatist movement, denounced this assault as cowardly and despicable and walked the streets thereafter with Trudeau in a show of civility. This event is one of the first things I saw on CBC television.
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