June 13, 2013

1,700 years ago
313

Religion
The Edict of Milan, signed by Constantine the Great and co-emperor Valerius Licinius granting religious freedom throughout the Roman Empire, was posted in Nicomedia.

640 years ago
1373

Diplomacy
The Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373 between England and Portugal was signed between King Edward III of England and King Ferdinand and Queen Eleanor of Portugal. It established a treaty of "perpetual friendships, unions [and] alliances" between the two seafaring nations, and is the oldest active treaty in the world.

360 years ago
1653

War
In the First Anglo-Dutch War, English forces defeated Dutch forces in the second and last day of the Battle of the Gabbard off the coast of Suffolk, England, ensuring that England's control of the English Channel now extended to the North Sea.

340 years ago
1673

Canadiana
René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle built Fort Cataraqui at the mouth of the Cataraqui River at what is now Kingston, Ontario on the orders of Count Frontenac.

200 years ago
1813

War
In the War of 1812, Philip Vere Broke, commanding the British ship HMS Shannon, with 38 guns, defeated the U.S. warship Cheseapeake, commanded by James Lawrence, off Boston Harbor and towed her to Halifax as a prize.

180 years ago
1833

Died on this date
Robert Lyon. Canadian law student. Mr. Lyon was killed in Toronto by John Wilson in the last fatal duel in Upper Canada. The two law students and former friends quarrelled over remarks made by Mr. Lyon about a local teacher, Elizabeth Hughes. Mr. Wilson was acquitted of murder, and later married Miss Hughes and became a Member of Parliament and a judge.

160 years ago
1853

Transportation
The Northern Railroad reached Bradford, Ontario.

120 years ago
1893

Born on this date
Dorothy L. Sayers. U.K. authoress. Miss Sayers wrote fiction and non-fiction, but was best known for 11 novels and two collections of short stories featuring the detective Lord Peter Wimsey. Miss Sayers was also known for her defense of traditional Anglican doctrine. She died of a heart attack on December 17, 1957 at the age of 64.

Politics and government
U.S. President Grover Cleveland noticed a rough spot in his mouth; on July 1, he underwent secret, successful surgery to remove a large, cancerous portion of his jaw. The operation was not revealed to the public until 1917, nine years after Mr. Cleveland's death.

100 years ago
1913

Born on this date
Ralph Edwards. U.S. radio and television host. Mr. Edwards created and produced a number of game shows, most notably Truth or Consequences, which ran on radio and television from 1940-1978. He's best remembered as the producer and host of the biographical program This is Your Life on radio and television from 1948-1961 and 1971-1972. Mr. Edwards died on November 16, 2005 at the age of 92.

70 years ago
1943

War
Two large formations of U.S. Flying Fortresses bombed the German U-boat bases at Bremen and Kiel without escort, losing a record 26 bombers, mostly over Kiel. Algiers radio declared that German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was reorganizing Axis defenses and had established headquarters n Perpignan, France. The small Italian island of Linosa, 25 miles north of Lampedusa, and its garrison of 140 soldiers and sailors surrendered to the U.K. destroyer Nubian.

60 years ago
1953

Hit Parade
#1 single in Australia (Kent Music Report): Hi-Lili Hi-Lo--Dinah Shore

#1 singles in the U.S.A. (Billboard): The Song from Moulin Rouge (Where is Your Heart)--Percy Faith and his Orchestra (Best seller--5th week at #1; Disc Jockey--5th week at #1; Jukebox--4th week at #1)

U.S. top 10 (Cash Box)
1 The Song from Moulin Rouge (Where is Your Heart)--Percy Faith and his Orchestra (6th week at #1)
--[Mantovani and his Orchestra]
2 April in Portugal--Les Baxter and his Orchestra
--[Ralph Marterie and his "Down Beat" Orchestra]
--[Vic Damone]
3 I'm Walking Behind You--Eddie Fisher
--[Frank Sinatra]
4 Ruby--Richard Hayman and his Orchestra
--[Les Baxter and his Orchestra]
5 Say You're Mine Again--Perry Como
6 I Believe--Frankie Laine
--[Jane Froman]
7 Anna--Silvana Mangano
8 The Ho Ho Song--Red Buttons
9 Pretend--Nat "King" Cole
10 The Doggie in the Window--Patti Page

Singles entering the chart were My One and Only Heart by Perry Como (#27) and Dennis the Menace by Rosemary Clooney and Jimmy Boyd (#31). My One and Only Heart was the B-side of Say You're Mine Again.

Literature
The June 13 issue of Collier's magazine contained the short story The Adventure of the Sealed Room by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr, the fifth in a series known as The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes.

50 years ago
1963

Hit parade
#1 single in the U.K. (Record Retailer): From Me to You--The Beatles (7th week at #1)

40 years ago
1973

War
Representatives of the U.S.A., South Vietnam, North Vietnam, and the Viet Cong--the original signers of the January 27 cease-fire agreement in the Vietnam War--signed a new 14-point agreement calling for an end to all cease-fire violations in South Vietnam. The accord, the result of month-long negotiations between U.S. representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Le Duc Tho, called for all military activities to cease on June 15 at 12 noon in South Vietnam. The U.S. pledged to end all reconnaissance flights over North Vietnam; to resume mine-sweeping operations in North Vietnamese waters within five days of signing; and to resume talks on aid to North Vietnam within four days of signing the document. Commanders of opposing forces in South Vietnam were to meet wherever their armies were in direct contact within 24 hours after the new cease-fire to prevent outbreaks of hostilities and insure medical supplies and care for all. Mr. Kissinger stressed that there was nothing in the agreement that committed the U.S. to cease its military operations in Cambodia.

Economics and finance
In an attempt to fight inflation, U.S. President Richard Nixon imposed a freeze on retail prices for 60 days. The freeze included food prices but excluded rents, interests, and dividends. Mr. Nixon said the 60-day period would be used to devise a new scheme to fight inflation and give Congress time to act on his request for broader authority to control exports on agricultural products and approve five other requests he had already put before Congress: new authority to reduce tariffs; approval of the Alaskan oil pipeline; authority to dispose of materials in the strategic stockpile; farm legislation to encourage higher production; and spending bills which followed his prescriptions rather than "noble-sounding budget-busters." He warned that controls could never "substitute for a free economy...We must not let controls become a narcotic and we must not become addicted."

Hockey
The Vancouver Canucks named Bill McCreary as their new coach, replacing the departed Vic Stasiuk.

30 years ago
1983

Hit parade
#1 single in Australia (Kent Music Report): Total Eclipse of the Heart--Bonnie Tyler (3rd week at #1)

Space
The U.S. probe Pioneer 10, launched on March 2, 1972, became the first spacecraft to leave the solar system when it passe beyond the orbit of Neptune, the furthest planet from the Sun at the time.

Defense
The U.S.A. asked Canada for formal authority to test the cruise missile in Canada; approval was granted on July 15.

Politics and government
Four days after the U.K.'s governing Conservative party under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had been re-elected in a landslide and one day after British Labour Party leader Michael Foot had announced his resignation, Social Democratic Party leader Roy Jenkins announced that he would also resign. The Social Democratic Party-Liberal Party Alliance had won just 23 seats in the House of Commons to 397 for the Conservatives and 209 for Labour, although the Alliance had captured 25% of the vote, just 3% less than Labour.

25 years ago
1988

Hit parade
#1 single in Australia (Australian Music Report): The Flame--Cheap Trick (3rd week at #1)

War
Iran invaded southern Iraq and claimed to have inflicted heavy casualties. Iraq said that Iran had broken through border defenses, but had subsequently been defeated in a 19-hour battle east of Basra, in territory taken by Iraq three weeks earlier.

Diplomacy
Suren Arutyunyan, the new leader of the Armenian Communist Party, told a crowd of 100,000 that a "positive solution" would be found to a dispute over the Nagorno-Krabakh Autonomous Region in Azerbaijan, which was predominantly Armenian. A Soviet foreign ministry spokesman said that the situation in the Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan was out of control.

Mubarak-Awad, a Palestinian-American who had advocated civil disobedience in protest against Israeli control of occupied terrirories, was expelled by Israel and placed on a flight to New York. The United States protested the move.

Law
A jury in Newark, New Jersey found that Liggett Group, Inc., a tobacco company, was partly responsible for the death of Rose Cipollone, who had smoked cigarettes for 40 years until her death of lung cancer at the age of 58 in 1984. Mrs. Cipollone had smoked brands of three companies, but had smoked only Liggett products before 1966, when a U.S. federal label law required that all cigarettes be labelled as hazardous to health. The jury ruled that this labelling spared the other two companies from liability, but found that Liggett had breached an express warranty of safety by promoting its cigarettes with slogans such as "just what the doctor ordered." The jury found that because Mrs. Cipollone had learned of the dangers of smoking from other sources and had not quit smoking, she was 80% responsible for her death. The jury awarded $400,000 in compensation to Mrs. Cipollone, and found Liggett and the other defendants had not conspired to mislead the dangers of smoking before 1966 and had not fraudulently misrepresented facts.

20 years ago
1993

Hit parade
#1 single in New Zealand: (I Can't Help) Falling in Love with You--UB40

#1 single in Austria (Ö3): What is Love?--Haddaway (6th week at #1)

#1 single in Switzerland: What is Love?--Haddaway

#1 single in Ireland (IRMA): In Your Eyes--Niamh Kavanagh (4th week at #1)

Died on this date
Gérard Côté, 79. Canadian runner. Mr. Côté, a native of Saint-Barnabé-Sud, Quebec, won the Boston Marathon in 1940, 1943, 1944, and 1948. His 1940 win was in record time, and helped him to win the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada's athlete of the year in 1940, becoming the first francophone to win the trophy. Mr. Côté was inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame in 1956.

Donald K. "Deke" Slayton, 69. U.S. astronaut. Mr. Slayton, a native of rural Wisconsin, was a bomber pilot with the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II. On April 9, 1959, he was introduced as one of the original seven astronauts chosen for Project Mercury, the first program of United States manned missions. He was slated to fly Mercury-Atlas 7, the second orbital mission (following John Glenn's Friendship 7 mission on February 20, 1962), and had chosen Delta 7 as the name of his spacecraft. When he was diagnosed with idiopathic atrial fibrillation--a condition in which the heart occaasionally "skips" a beat--he was replaced for the mission by Scott Carpenter, and grounded by both the U.S. Air Force and National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Mr. Slayton then became NASA's "chief astronaut," the man who selected the crews for the various missions. In 1972 he was restored to active flight status, and was named as Docking Module Pilot for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, in which a U.S. Apollo spacecraft would dock with a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft. Mr. Slayton, along with Tom Stafford (Commander) and Vance Brand (Command Module Pilot) were in space from July 15-24, 1975, and were docked with the Soyuz 19 spacecraft manned by Alexey Leonov (Commander) and Valeri Kubasov (Flight Engineer) from July 17-19. Mr. Slayton retured from NASA in 1982, and later served as president of Space Services, Inc., a private company committed to sending commercial rockets into space. Mr. Slayton died of a brain tumour; his autobiography Deke!, written with Michael Cassutt, was published in 1994 and is well worth reading.

Politics and government
Canadian Defense Minister Kim Campbell was elected as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada at the party's convention at the Ottawa Civic Centre, succeeding Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who was retiring. Ms. Campbell's main challenger for the leadership was Environment Minister Jean Charest. Ms. Campbell took office as Canada's first female Prime Minister on June 25.

Tansu Ciller, an economist educated in the U.S.A., won the leadership of Turkey's ruling party, and was scheduled to take office as the country's first female Prime Minister in July.

War
Serbian forces bombarded a Bosnian first aid centre at Gorazde; 50 were killed by the shells.

Basketball
NBA
Finals
Phoenix 129 @ Chicago 121 (3OT) (Chicago led best-of-seven series 2-1)





10 years ago
2003

Died on this date
Malik Meraj Khalid, 86. Prime Minister of Pakistan, 1996-1997. A Marxist, Mr. Khalid served as Pakistan's interim Prime Minister from November 5, 1996-February 17, 1997, after President Farooq Leghari dismissed the government of Benazir Bhutto. After parliamentary elections, Mr. Khalid was succeeded as Prime Minister by Nawaz Sharif.

Basketball
NBA
Finals
San Antonio 93 @ New Jersey 83 (San Antonio led best-of-seven series 3-2)