Today in history: The infamous Studio 54 opens, 47 years ago

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On this date, April 26, in history:

In 322, St. Basil was martyred by torture and beheading after he sheltered a young Christian woman named Glaphiga from the clutches of Roman Emperor Lucinius.

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In 387, St. Augustine, author of City of God, was baptized. He recorded his entrance into the church: “And we were baptized and all anxiety for our past life vanished away.”

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In 1564, William Shakespeare was baptized at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-on-the-Avon.

In 1625, the first Roman Catholic Jesuits arrived in Canada at Quebec.

In 1778, British Captain James Cook sailed from Nootka Sound, tracing the coast of British Columbia and Alaska.

In 1860, the Second Batallion Volunteer Militia Rifles of Canada was formed from six independent militia units. It later became the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada, the oldest regiment in the Canadian regular army.

In 1865, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, was surrounded by federal troops near Bowling Green, Va., and killed.

In 1898, John Grierson, the founding head of the National Film Board of Canada, was born in Kilmadock, Scotland.

In 1900, Charles Richter was born in Hamilton, Ohio. Along with German-born seismologist Beno Gutenberg he invented the earthquake magnitude scale. He wrote two textbooks that are still used as references in the field of seismology. Richter was so devoted to his work he even had a seismograph installed in his living room. He died Sept. 30, 1985.

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In 1918, women in Nova Scotia were granted the right to vote.

In 1922, Jeanne Sauve was born in Prud’homme, Sask. She became a journalist, a federal cabinet minister, the first woman Speaker of the House of Commons and the first woman governor general. She died on Jan. 26, 1993.

In 1923, Prince Albert, Duke of York, married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. He later became King George VI, while she became Queen Elizabeth and — after her husband’s death in 1952 — the Queen Mother.

In 1942, more than 1,500 people died in the world’s worst mining disaster in Japanese-occupied China.

In 1956, the first Godzilla movie, Godzilla, King of the Monsters, premiered in New York.

In 1964, the African nations of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.

In 1968, beneath the Nevada desert, the U.S. exploded a one-megaton nuclear device called The Boxcar.

In 1977, the disco haven, Studio 54, opened in New York. It became the centre of the jet-set disco society in the late ’70s, attracting the likes of Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger.

In 1986, the worst nuclear accident in history occurred at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union. An experiment went awry, causing an explosion and fire that sent radioactivity into the atmosphere; 40,000 people were forced from the area and at least 31 died. The outside world did not learn of the accident until Scandinavian technicians detected abnormally high radiation levels two days later.

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In 1989, pioneering television comedian Lucille Ball died of a heart attack at age 77.

In 1991, former New Brunswick premier Richard Hatfield died at age 60 of a brain tumour.

In 1992, worshippers in Moscow openly celebrated the Russian Orthodox Easter for the first time in 74 years.

In 1999, BBC anchorwoman Jill Dando, host of a crime-fighting program, was fatally shot on the steps of her London home. Barry George was convicted in July 2001 of killing Dando. However, he was acquitted in a retrial.

In 2003, Rosemary Brown, the first black woman to be elected to a major political office in Canada, died at age 72.

In 2004, the Newfoundland and Labrador government introduced tough back-to-work legislation to end a 27-day strike by about 20,000 government, health-care and school-board workers, the largest public service strike in the province’s history.

In 2005, Syria pulled its troops and intelligence agents from Lebanon — ending a 29-year military presence in Lebanon.

In 2008, police in Austria arrested Josef Fritzl, freeing his daughter Elisabeth and her six children, whom he had fathered while holding her captive in a cellar for 24 years. Fritzl was later sentenced to life in a psychiatric ward.

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In 2009, labour union CAW approved a historic deal with Chrysler that would save the automaker $240 million a year and paved the way for Chrysler’s technology-sharing alliance with Fiat.

In 2012, in a historic ruling, an international court convicted former Liberian President Charles Taylor of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity for supporting notoriously brutal Sierra Leone rebels in return for blood diamonds. Taylor was the first head of state convicted by an international court since the post-World War II Nuremberg military tribunal. (He was sentenced to 50 years in prison and was upheld on appeal.)

In 2013, a fire swept quickly through a psychiatric hospital outside Moscow, killing 36 patients and two doctors. A nurse and two patients managed to escape.

In 2018, Bill Cosby was convicted of drugging and molesting Toronto native and Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. It was the only criminal case to arise from a barrage of allegations from more than 60 women who said the former TV star drugged and molested them over a span of five decades.

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In 2018, the Clevaland Browns selected Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Baker Mayfield with the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL draft.

In 2021, a Quebec woman pleaded not guilty to added charges related to allegations she mailed a letter containing ricin to former U.S. president Donald Trump. U.S. federal prosecutors allege Pascale Ferrier sent a note saying that if the poison didn’t work, the writer would use their gun. Ferrier faced new charges of sending threats through the mail and violating biological weapons prohibitions.

In 2021, the minority Liberal government survived the last of three confidence votes on the budget. The House of Commons approved the government’s general budgetary policy. The vote was 178-157. Liberals were joined by New Democrat MPs in voting in favour. Conservative, Bloc Quebecois and Green MPs voted against.

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