Champlain travelled to New France; Yellowstone park was created; a Canadian jet plane made dubious history; and firsts for planes, trains, and striptease during than annals of travel history this month…

In 1493, Christopher Columbus returned to Spain from his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere.

In 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sighted present-day Florida.

In 1521, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrived in the Philippines during his round-the-world voyage. He died in a battle with natives on April 27.

In 1603, French explorer Samuel de Champlain made his first voyage to New France as a member of a fur-trading expedition. The expedition explored the St. Lawrence River as far as the rapids at Lachine. In 1604, Champlain returned with the Sieur de Monts, who had a monopoly of trade in the region, to found a colony in what is now Port Royal, N.S.

In 1699, French explorer Sieur d’Iberville located the mouth of the Mississippi River.

In 1778, British explorer Sir James Cook landed at Nootka, now Vancouver, becoming the first European on the island.

In 1804, the United States acquired control of the Louisiana Territory in a deal with France.

In 1855, the first train crossed the suspension bridge at Niagara Falls, the day after it had been declared open.

In 1871, American journalist Henry Morton Stanley began his legendary expedition to Africa to locate the missing Scottish missionary David Livingstone. Stanley found him – frail and short of supplies, but alive – on Nov. 13 on the edge of Lake Tanganyika.

In 1872, US President Ulysses S. Grant signed an act creating Yellowstone National Park.

In 1894, a Paris nightclub presented the first professional striptease.

In 1903, the Wright brothers applied for a patent on their airplane.

In 1907, the Canadian Pacific and Grand Trunk Railways were ordered to reduce fares to three cents per 1.5 km.

In 1907, the first cabs with taxi meters began operating in London.

In 1919, the world’s first international airmail was flown from Vancouver to Seattle, Wash.

In 1939, Trans Canada Airlines, now Air Canada, inaugurated the trans-continental airmail service.

In 1953, the world’s first commercial jet crash took place. Eleven people died when a Canadian Pacific Comet jet crashed in Karachi, Pakistan.

In 1957, Elvis Presley purchased a 23-room manor at 3764 South Bellevue Blvd. in Memphis. He paid $100,000 to the home’s original owner, Ruth Moore, who had christened the home Graceland after her great-aunt Grace. More than 700,000 people visit Graceland annually.

In 1961, the Soviet Union launched “Sputnik 10” with a dog aboard.

In 1963, the Alcatraz federal prison island in San Francisco Bay, now a tourist attraction, was emptied of its last inmates at the order of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

In 1964, the House of Commons approved a bill changing the name of Trans-Canada Air Lines to Air Canada. The law, proposed by then Liberal MP Jean Chretien, took effect the following Jan. 1.

In 1966, a Canadian Pacific Airlines DC-8 with 72 persons on board caught its wheels in approach lights while landing in dense fog at Tokyo airport, and smashed into a retaining wall, killing 64 people, including 18 Canadians.

In 1966, the Soviet “Venus 3” spacecraft touched down on Venus.

In 1969, the first of two prototype Concorde supersonic airplanes made its maiden flight from Toulouse, France.

In 1970, the first overseas direct-dial phone calls were made between New York and London.

In 1977, in the world’s worst airplane disaster, 582 people died when two jumbo jets collided and burned on a runway at Tenerife in the Canary Islands. (The worst single-plane disaster was the 1985 crash of a Japan Air Lines jet, which killed 520.)

In 1979, NASA’s “Voyager 1” space probe flew past Jupiter, sending back photographs of the planet and its moons.

In 1993, North America’s east coast was battered by what was dubbed the “storm of the century.” Snowfalls a metre deep were common all along the Canadian and US seaboard. Whipped by strong winds, drifts ran as high as three and four metres. The storm stranded Canadians heading to Florida for spring break. It was also responsible for more than 100 deaths in Canada, the US, Cuba and the Gulf of Mexico.

In 1999, Swiss psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard and English balloon instructor Brian Jones completed a historic non-stop flight around the globe in a hot-air balloon, one of the last great challenges in
aviation. The pair set off March 1 from Chateau d’Oex in the Swiss Alps and crossed the finish line over Mauritania on March 20. They touched down in the remote Egyptian desert after a record-breaking flight of 19 days, 21 hours, and 55 minutes, floating more than 42,000 km around the Earth in their “Breitling Orbiter III.”

In 2003, the World Health Organization issued a global travel advisory and named the mysterious pneumonia that hit China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore and Canada “severe acute respiratory syndrome” – or SARS.

In 2005, Canadian discount airline Jetsgo declared bankruptcy – leaving thousands of passengers stranded.

In 2005, American adventurer Steve Fossett made aviation history by completing the first solo, around-the-world, flight without stopping or refuelling.

In 2011, a catastrophic 9.0 magnitude offshore earthquake struck Japan, triggering a massive tsunami that carved a path of destruction along the country’s northeastern coast and touched off the worst nuclear crisis since Chornobyl in 1986. The disaster left more than 21,000 people dead or missing and thousands of buildings and homes damaged or destroyed.

In 2014, a Malaysia Airlines jet carrying 239 people, including two Canadians, vanished on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Despite a massive multinational search and wide-ranging theories about what might have happened, Flight MH370 has not yet been found.

In 2019, Canada grounded all Boeing 7-37 Max 8 and Max 9 airplanes. It meant the jets were not allowed to fly into, out of, or over Canada.

In 2020, on March 11, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Canadians were urged to avoid non-essential travel outside the country and the Canada-US border was essentially closed.