1980: Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington state, after 2 months of earthquakes and steam venting episodes, causing 57 deaths and $1.1 billion in damage, and partially collapsing the northern flank of the volcano. It remains the only significant volcanic eruption in the contiguous 48 United States since 1915.

An Ounce of Prevention – Eruption of Krakatoa

1765: Fire destroys one-quarter of Montreal, and one-third of the value of the property, the loss estimated at $464,000. In a few hours the fire destroys 108 houses. The population at the time was 7,000.

1994: A fire in an overcrowded Honduras prison kills 103 people. An overheated refrigerator motor sparks the blaze that races through the outdated jail. Built to accommodate 800 prisoners, it held nearly 2,000 at the time of the fire.

1973:  Televised hearings of the Watergate affair begin. Senator Sam Ervine heads the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. Former White House legal counsel John Dean testifies that President Nixon had been aware of the Watergate break-in and cover-up. A little over a year later, facing impeachment, President Nixon resigns.

1961: U.S. President John Kennedy and his wife, Jackie, begin a state visit to Ottawa. The President addresses Parliament. A crowd of 50,000 people gather on Parliament Hill in hopes of seeing the new President and his wife.

1960: In the wake of the Soviet downing of an American U-2 spy plane on May 1, Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev lashes out at U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower at a Paris summit meeting between the two heads of state. Khrushchev’s outburst angers Eisenhower and dooms any chances for successful talks or negotiations at the summit.

1963: The final Mercury mission is launched, with astronaut Gordon Cooper on board. He becomes the first American to spend more than one day in space.

1896: An intense tornado hits Sherman, Texas, killing 73 people. It is estimated that the tornado was a rare F5 tornado, in which winds exceeded 260 miles per hour (418 kilometres per hour.) Storms of that strength happen, on average, less than once a year.

1955: The Soviet Union and seven of its European satellites sign a treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact, a mutual defense organization that put the Soviets in command of the armed forces of the member states. The treaty is signed in Warsaw, and includes the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria as members.

1940: John Diefenbaker takes his seat in the House of Commons for the first time. He later becomes Prime Minister.

1972:  A fire at a nightclub in Osaka, Japan kills 118 people. Faulty electrical wiring is the cause. Only 48 people survive because safety procedures are not followed. The fire exits are hidden by drapes and elevators do not function.

1939: The first commercial FM radio station in the U.S. is launched in Bloomfield, Connecticut. FM offers superior sound with less interference than AM radio. More people now listen to FM than AM.

1990: The separatist Bloc Québécois party is formed under the leadership of Lucien Bouchard, after several MPs from Quebec leave the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives.

1987: Firefighters finally contain a giant fire sweeping eastward across China, but not before 193 people are killed. The fire begins a week earlier, and from the start, authorities mishandled the blaze, failing to contain it while the size was still manageable. The Forestry Minister was later fired for the incompetent firefighting response.

1963: Prime Minister Lester Pearson says Canada will buy nuclear war heads after meeting with President Kennedy. Pearson’s predecessor, John Diefenbaker, had refused.

1919: The German delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference, convenes in Paris after the end of the First World War and pore over their copies of the Treaty of Versailles, drawn up in the previous months by representatives of their victorious enemies. They prepare to lodge their objections to what they consider to be unfairly harsh treatment.

1920: The Canadian government sends its own ambassador to Washington, instead of being represented by the ambassador from Great Britain.

1877: President Rutherford Hayes has the first telephone installed in White House. He embraces the new technology, though he rarely receives phone calls as phone service is in its infancy in 1877. It will be another 50 years until President Hoover has the first telephone line installed on the President’s desk in the Oval Office.

1974: The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee opens impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon, and votes to impeach him on three counts on July 30. The impeachment is the result of the scandal involving the bungled burglary of the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate apartment complex in 1972.

1955: West Germany formally joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense group aimed at containing Soviet expansion in Europe. This action marks the final step of West Germany’s integration into the Western European defense system.