On this day in history – January 6: In 1412, St. Joan of Arc was born at Domremy in the French countryside.
In 1643, Paul de Chomedy, Sieur de Maisonneuve, planted a cross on Mount Royal in what is now Montreal. It was his way of offering thanks that the settlement of Ville-Marie was saved from flooding.
In 1786, the first sitting of the New Brunswick legislature took place in Saint John.
In 1832, artist Gustave Dore, known for his drawings and lithographs for the Bible, “Dante’s Inferno” and other works, was born in Strasbourg, France.
In 1838, Samuel Morse made the first public demonstration of his telegraph in Morristown, New Jersey.
In 1884, Gregor Mendel, an Augustine monk who pioneered the study of heredity by crossing garden peas, died in Brno in present-day Czech Republic.
In 1918, while diving to escape German fighters, Canadian pilot Captain J. Hedley was sucked from his seat and out of the plane. When the plane levelled out, the aviator was sitting safely near the tail. The slipstream had pulled him back to the plane.
In 1936, Barbara Hanley became Canada’s first woman mayor when she was elected in the Northern Ontario town of Webbwood.
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In 1953, Vancouver’s longest wet spell on record began. The city had rain for 29 straight days. (Victoria received rain 33 days in a row in 1986.)
In 1966, “The Drum,” the first newspaper of its kind in the Arctic, began publishing in English, Inuit and Kutchin.
In 1974, the Global Television Network (now CanWest-Global), Canada’s third English-language television network, began programming in southern Ontario.
In 1978, the Sun Life Assurance Company set off a storm of controversy in Quebec when it announced plans to move its head office from Montreal to Toronto.
In 1992, a Quebec judge ruled that a 25-year-old woman known only as Nancy B. had the right to die. She had a rare neurological disease for which there was no cure and was paralyzed from the neck down. After a 30-day appeal period, she was removed from life support Feb. 13.
In 1993, celebrated Russian ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev died in Paris of AIDS at 54. He had electrified audiences for three decades after defecting from the Soviet Union in 1961.
In 1994, American figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on the leg by an assailant at Cobo Arena in Detroit. Four men, including Jeff Gillooly, ex-husband of Kerrigan’s rival, Tonya Harding, were later sentenced to prison for their roles in the attack. Harding, who denied advance knowledge of the attack, received probation after pleading guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution.
In 1997, the federal government apologized for suggesting Brian Mulroney was involved in criminal activity in what came to be known as the Airbus Affair. The apology was part of an out-of-court settlement of the former Tory prime minister’s $50-million libel suit against the government. Mulroney had been named in a document circulated among Swiss government and banking officials. It suggested that while in office, he was involved in an alleged kickback scheme involving Air Canada’s 1988 purchase of 34 Airbus jets.
In 1999, it was announced that Prince Edward, 34, the youngest son of Queen Elizabeth, would marry Sophie Rhys-Jones.
In 2008, two Canadian soldiers, Corporal Eric Labbe of Rimouski, Que., and Warrant Officer Hani Massouh, were killed when their armoured vehicle rolled over in wet, rugged terrain southwest of Kandahar city in Afghanistan. Massouh was born in Alexandria, Egypt and had lived in Quebec since 1968.
In 2010, former Montreal Expo Andre Dawson was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on his ninth try.
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