June 3 - Chimborazo Day

Did you know that Mount Everest is not the point on Earth closest to the Moon? Personally, I never considered it in those terms, but apparently, the volcano Chimborazo, having the honour of sitting higher on the equatorial bulge, is closer to the moon than Everest - by about 1.5 miles!

Today we celebrate Chimborazo Day, and hopefully feel a little more knowledgeable for it!

Today is also National Leave the Office Early Day - did you?

Here are some interesting things that happened on this day in history:

- Construction began on one of the oldest stone church in French North America, Notre-Dame-des-Anges, in Quebec City in 1620.
- The name of Island of Saint John was formally changed to Prince Edward Island in 1799.

- York General Hospital (forerunner of Toronto General) received its first patients in 1829.
- Cullen Whipple patented a screw machine in 1856.
- Jesse James and his gang robbed the Obocock Bank in Corydon, Iowa of $15,000 in 1871.
- The last military engagement in Canada took place when a NWMP force commanded by Samuel Benfield Steele met Cree led by Big Bear at Steele Narrows, NWT in 1885.

- The first CP train arrived in Saint John, New Brunswick from Montreal in 1889, making the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway as a coast-to-coast railway.
- Journalist and television panelist Gordon Sinclair, who was an original panelist on the CBC's enduring "Front Page Challenge", was born in Toronto in 1900.

- The Goodyear airship "Pilgrim" made its 1st flight in 1925.
- Politician Flora MacDonald, who was Secretary of State for External Affairs, the first woman to hold such an important federal Cabinet post, was born in New Sydney, Nova Scotia in 1926.
- 1000 unemployed Canadian workers boarded freight cars in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1935, beginning a protest trek to Ottawa, Ontario.
- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled race separation on buses unconstitutional in 1946.

- The Canadian government decided to establish a 22.2 km (12 nautical miles) exclusive fisheries zone off the Canadian coast in 1963, to begin in May 1964.
- Aretha Franklin's "Respect" reached #1 on the charts in 1967.
- The last episode of Star Trek, "Turnabout Intruder", aired on NBC in 1969.

- The Ontario government halted construction of the Spadina Expressway in 1971, due to intense public opposition to the project.
- During a performance by the Rolling Stones at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver in 1972, a riot broke out, injuring at least 31 police officers.
- Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" went gold in 1976.
- ESPN began televising college world series games in 1980.
- "Big," starring Tom Hanks, premiered in 1988. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yu62StlsMY

Stay tuned for our next, "On This Day in History"!