From early explorers setting to discover the world to planes flying into the World Trade Centre in New York, September has seen its share of eventful travel moments throughout history. This month’s listing concludes our monthly series which began in Oct. 2020.

In 1504, Christopher Columbus sailed from Hispaniola in the West Indies for Spain to end his fourth and last voyage to the New World. The explorer died after a long illness in 1506. In 1542, his remains were exhumed in Seville and taken back to Hispaniola. They are buried in the cathedral at Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic.

In 1513, Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and sailed into the Pacific Ocean.

In 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan began his voyage to circumnavigate the globe. Magellan was killed enroute, but one of his ships eventually circled the world.

In 1565, a Spanish expedition established the first permanent European settlement in North America at St. Augustine, Fla.

In 1609, English explorer Henry Hudson and his crew aboard the “Half Moon” entered present-day New York Harbor and began sailing up the river that now bears his name. (They reached present-day Albany before turning back.)

In 1781, Spanish settlers, led by Governor Felipe de Neve, founded Los Angeles, Ca.

In 1773, the ship, “Hector,” arrived at Brown’s Point, near Pictou, NS, Hector carried 178 Scottish immigrants – the first large wave of immigration that made Scots the predominant ethnic group in Nova Scotia. A replica ship was later built to commemorate the voyage and is on display in Pictou harbour.

In 1806, the Lewis and Clark expedition returned to St. Louis more than two years after setting out for the Pacific Northwest.

In 1825, the first locomotive to haul a passenger train was operated by George Stephenson in England.

In 1830, the first passenger railway opened, running between Manchester and Liverpool, England.

In 1835, Charles Darwin reached the Galapagos Islands aboard “HMS Beagle.”

In 1844, Canada’s first suspension bridge, a 74-metre span over the Ottawa River, was opened for traffic.

In 1852, the first controlled airship flight occurred in France.

In 1854, the American steamship “Arctic” collided with the French steamer “Vesta” in thick fog in the Atlantic and sank near Cape Race, Nfld., with 300 people onboard. As a result of the disaster, safety features such as side lighting on ships were made compulsory.

In 1859, the Victoria Bridge at Montreal was completed. It was the first bridge over the St. Lawrence and was opened in 1860.

In 1860, Edward, Prince of Wales, visited Niagara Falls, where he witnessed a performance of the great French tightrope walker Blondin.

In 1885, compulsory vaccination caused riots in Montreal.

In 1888, George Eastman patented the first roll of film and registered his trademark, Kodak.

In 1908, Orville Wright set a flying endurance record by keeping his plane aloft for one hour and 14 minutes in a demonstration for the US army. The army later made the Wright planes the world’s first military airplanes.

In 1912, the first Calgary Stampede began. It was instigated by Guy Weadick, an American trick roper who thought Calgary would be a prime location for a big rodeo. The Stampede, which takes place every July, is one of the largest rodeos in the world.

In 1929, the German dirigible “Graf Zeppelin” completed a trip around the world.

In 1930, French aviators Captain Dieudonne Costes and Maurice Bellonte completed the first non-stop Paris-to-New York flight in just over 37 hours.

In 1934, the “Queen Mary,” the first British liner to exceed 305 m. in length, was launched in Glasgow, Scotland. The 85,535-tonne vessel, built at Clydebank for the Cunard White Star Line, carried more than two million people in over 1,001 Atlantic crossings. In 1967, the huge liner docked at Long Beach, Calif., where it has since been fashioned into a hotel and museum.

In 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge opened in San Francisco.

In 1952, the Canadian liner “Princess Kathleen” ran aground and sank off Lena Point, Alaska. Her 300 passengers and crew of 115 were all rescued. The incident occurred during the highest tide of the season, and it was the falling tide that sank her.

In 1960, Halifax International Airport was opened.

In 1962, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker officially opened the Trans-Canada Highway from the summit of Rogers Pass, BC. Total cost of the world’s longest national highway, which stretched 7,821 km from St. John’s, Nfld., to Victoria, BC, was more than $1 billion. The target for completion was 1956, but the highway was not finished until 1970.

In 1967, the transatlantic British liner “Queen Mary” docked – for the last time – at Long Beach, Calif., and became a floating hotel and museum.

In 1968, Charles Lavern Beasley of Dallas was charged with Canada’s first hijacking after he ordered an Air Canada Viscount bound for Toronto from Moncton, NB, to go to Cuba. Describing himself as an American black-power militant sought by the CIA, he was arrested when the plane landed at Dorval, Que., for refuelling. He was sentenced to six years in prison.

In 1977, British entrepreneur Freddie Laker began his cut-rate “Skytrain” service from London to New York. Laker was later knighted. The carrier went out of business in 1982.

In 1983, the Canadian government suspended all flights of the Soviet Aeroflot airline into Montreal for 60 days, as a protest over the shooting down of a South Korean jet.

In 1998, Swissair flight 111 carrying 229 passengers and crew crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Peggy’s Cove, NS. The plane – enroute from New York to Geneva – was attempting an emergency landing at Halifax after the pilot reported smoke in the cockpit. All those aboard were killed.

In 2001, hijackers crashed two airplanes into New York’s World Trade Center, toppling its twin 110-storey towers. Not long after, another hijacked plane slammed into the Pentagon in suburban Washington and a fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers on board fought with hijackers. Approximately 3,000 people were killed in the four crashes, including two dozen Canadians. The attacks were blamed on Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, who was living in Afghanistan under the protection of that country’s Taliban government. The US responded by organizing an international coalition to drive the Taliban from power and find bin Laden, who was killed by US Navy SEALs in Pakistan on May 2, 2011.

In 2003, Montreal’s Dorval Airport was renamed Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport after the former Canadian prime minister.

In 2004, Air Canada emerged from 18 months of bankruptcy protection.

In 2014, a Canadian search team solved one of the world’s great exploration mysteries with the discovery of HMS Erebus in the Queen Maud Gulf. It was one of two lost ships from Sir John Franklin’s doomed Arctic expedition during an 1845 quest for the Northwest Passage.

In 2017, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft disintegrated as expected in the skies above Saturn in a final, fateful blaze of cosmic glory, following a remarkable journey of 20 years.

In 2019, British tour company Thomas Cook fell victim to multiple setbacks including shifting travel habits, the rise of online booking sites, the sinking pound and even unusually hot weather that encouraged fewer Northern Europeans to travel. It all added up to a perfect storm that led the 178-year-old company to cease operations, stranding hundreds of thousands of travellers. The company did push into online business, with 48% of its bookings from the internet as of last year.