TODAY IN HISTORY

On this day in 1228

Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, died. Langton formulated the original division of the Bible into chapters. He is also credited with creating much of the “Magna Carta.”

In 1793, Upper Canada, now Ontario, prohibited the importation of slaves and ruled that slaves’ children should be freed at age 25. But the act didn’t free any existing slaves in the colony. Slavery had been accepted by the natives and by the first French and English settlers in Canada, finally being outlawed by the British Parliament in 1833.

In 1942, Otto Frank’s family went into hiding from the occupying Nazis in a backroom area of his Amsterdam food-products business. The family, including young diarist Anne Frank, was discovered and arrested on Aug. 4, 1944 and sent to concentration camps. Only Otto Frank survived.

In 1952, the first diesel locomotives in the Rocky Mountains went into operation, replacing steam power on the CPR between Calgary and Revelstoke, B.C.

In 1960, seven-year-old Rodger Woodward became the first person to survive an accidental plunge over Niagara Falls. Roger, his 17-year-old sister Deanne and 40-year-old family friend James Honeycutt were boating on the Niagara River when their motor failed and the current began carrying their boat towards the Canadian Horseshoe Falls. Roger suffered only a slight concussion when he was swept over the Falls wearing only a life jacket and bathing suit. He was picked up by a “Maid of the Mist” tourist boat and spent three days in hospital. Deanne was rescued at the very edge of the Falls, but Honeycutt drowned.