Today in History: January 17

Today in History for Jan. 27:

In AD 398, John Chrysostom, the greatest preacher of his age, was consecrated bishop of Constantinople.

In 1302, poet Dante Alighieri, author of "The Divine Comedy," was charged with financial corruption by the Catholic Church and fined. Later that same year, he was condemned to death by burning and fled into exile from Florence.

In 1721, a mail stagecoach service was inaugurated between Montreal and Quebec City.

In 1822, Greece proclaimed its independence from Turkey.

In 1832, Charles Dodgson was born in Cheshire, England. He would gain fame as Lewis Carroll, author of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."

In 1880, Thomas Edison received a U.S. patent for his electric incandescent lamp.

In 1888, the National Geographic Society was founded.

In 1916, Manitoba became the first province to grant women the right to vote, two years after suffragette leader Nellie McClung staged a mock parliament in which men had to ask women for the right to vote. Saskatchewan followed on March 14th and Alberta on April 17th the same year. Ottawa gave women the franchise in 1918.

In 1926, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated the first working television in London.

In 1931, author-critic Mordecai Richler was born in Montreal. After university studies in Montreal, he settled in London in 1954 to begin two decades as a freelance journalist, radio and TV scriptwriter and novelist. His breakthrough came with the 1959 publication of "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz," the basis of the 1974 movie for which he wrote the screenplay. Richler won Governor General's Awards for "Cocksure" in 1968 and "St. Urbain's Horseman" in 1971. After returning to Montreal in 1974, his later works included acclaimed children's novels starting with "Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang," his final novel, "Barney's Version," and controversial writings attacking the Quebec separatist movement. He died of cancer on July 3, 2001.

In 1943, some 50 bombers struck Wilhelmshaven in the first all-American air raid against Germany during the Second World War.

In 1944, the Soviet Union announced the complete end of the deadly German siege of Leningrad, which had lasted for more than two years.

In 1945, the Soviet army liberated the Auschwitz death camp in southern Poland, where the Nazis had murdered 1.5 million people.

In 1951, a new era of atomic testing began in the Nevada desert as a U.S. Air Force plane dropped a one-kiloton bomb on Frenchman Flats.

In 1961, the city of Montreal authorized the building of a subway.

In 1965, Queen Elizabeth signed a Royal Proclamation permitting Canada's new Maple Leaf flag to be flown. It was flown for the first time on Feb. 15.

In 1967, Canada, the U.S., the Soviet Union and 59 other countries signed a treaty limiting military activities in space.

In 1967, three American astronauts (Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee) were killed in a flash fire during a routine test aboard the "Apollo 1" spacecraft at Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral), Fla.

In 1973, a ceasefire went into effect in Vietnam after the signing of a peace treaty in Paris.

In 1977, the Vatican reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's ban on female priests, declaring a priest must bear a "natural resemblance" to Christ, who "was and remains a man."

In 1980, the Israeli-Egyptian border was opened for the first time since 1948.

In 1984, Wayne Gretzky's NHL record streak of 51 games with at least one point ended as his Edmonton Oilers lost 4-2 to the visiting Los Angeles Kings.

In 1986, fierce winds and a stubborn hatch bolt forced NASA to again scrub the launch of the space shuttle "Challenger." The shuttle lifted off the next day, with catastrophic results. It broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing seven crew members.

In 1987, Col. Sheila Hellstrom was named the first woman brigadier-general in the Canadian Armed Forces.

In 2001, Lorne Calvert was elected leader of the Saskatchewan NDP and premier, replacing Roy Romanow.

In 2002, PanCanadian Energy and Alberta Energy announced they would merge to form Canada's largest energy company, to be called EnCana.

In 2004, Cpl. Jamie Brendan Murphy, 26, of Newfoundland, was killed and three other Canadian soldiers were hurt in a suicide bomb attack on their military jeep in Kabul, Afghanistan.

In 2004, China reported the discovery of bird flu on a duck farm close to the border with Vietnam and slaughtered 14,000 ducks.

In 2009, iconic American writer John Updike died in Beverly Farms, Mass., at age 76. He was a prolific writer, releasing more than 50 books in a career that started in the 1950s. He won virtually every literary prize, including two Pulitzers, for "Rabbit is Rich" and "Rabbit at Rest," and two National Book Awards.

In 2010, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad tablet computer during a presentation in San Francisco.

In 2010, J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth hero and fugitive from fame whose "The Catcher in the Rye" shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, died of natural causes at his home in Cornish, N.H. He was 91.

In 2012, a federal judge in Seattle sentenced "Barefoot Bandit" Colton Harris-Moore to 6 1/2 years in prison for his infamous two-year, international crime spree of break-ins and boat and plane thefts.

In 2013, a band's pyrotechnics show ignited a fire that raced through a crowded windowless nightclub in the college town of Santa Maria, Brazil, killing 242 people as panicked partygoers stampeded toward the single exit.

In 2016, Edmonton city council passed a bylaw that made the Alberta capital the first Canadian city to legalize ride-sharing services such as Uber. It came into effect on March 1.

In 2018, Scott Moe was elected leader of the Saskatchewan Party, replacing three-term premier Brad Wall who announced his retirement in August 2017.

In 2018, Caroline Wozniacki won her first Grand Slam title by defeating top-seeded Simona Halep in three-sets at the Australian Open.

In 2018, IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad died at age 91. He turned a small-scale mail order business he founded at age 17 on his family's farm into a furniture empire by letting customers piece together his simple and inexpensive furniture themselves. There are a total of 313 IKEA stores in 38 countries.

In 2018, a Taliban suicide bomber killed 103 people and injured 235 others in Kabul. A militant drove an ambulance filled with explosives through a security checkpoint and detonated it in the heart of the Afghan capital near government buildings.

In 2018, casino mogul Steve Wynn resigned as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee amid allegations of sexual harassment and assault. The Wall Street Journal reported a day earlier that a number of women said they were harassed or assaulted by Wynn.

In 2019, a big jump in the WTA rankings for Canadian teenager Bianca Andreescu. The 18-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., moved up 38 spots to Number 68 in the world after she earned her first WTA tournament title, defeating American Jessica Pegula 0-6, 6-4, 6-2 at the Oracle Challenger Series.

In 2020, the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg confirmed Canada's first case of what was then known as "the new coronavirus." At the time of the confirmation, the man was in quarantine in Toronto's Sunnybrook Hospital. Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario's associate chief medical officer of health, said the testing process was being repeated for the man's wife.

In 2020, federal prosecutors in New York formally asked to talk to Prince Andrew as part of their criminal investigation into his friend Jeffrey Epstein. But although Andrew said he was willing to help law enforcement, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said so far the prince had provided zero co-operation. Virginia Roberts Giuffre claimed she had several sexual encounters with the prince at Epstein's behest, starting when she was 17. Epstein died in his jail cell in the summer of 2019, while he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

In 2024, Britain, Italy and Finland followed Canada and the U.S., along with several other countries in suspending aid to UNRWA, a United Nations agency serving Palestinians, after reports several of its employees may have played a role in the deadly Oct. 7 militant attacks in Israel.

In 2024, a ghostly shipwreck drew a steady stream of admirers to the southwestern tip of Newfoundland. The massive, overturned hull of a seemingly ancient ship appeared without warning just off the beach in Cape Ray. Neil Burgess, president of the Shipwreck Preservation Society of Newfoundland and Labrador, said the ship was likely built in the 1800s, adding that if its hull is made of oak, it wasn't built in North America.