The military history of Canada entails millennia of armed actions in the territory encompassing modern Canada, and the role of the Canadian military in conflicts and peacekeeping worldwide. For at least 10,000 years, the area that would become Canada was the site of intertribal wars among First Nation groups. Beginning in the 10th century, the arrival of Europeans led to conflicts with the Natives and among the invading Europeans in the New World. Starting in the 17th century, the region was the site of fighting between the French and the British for more than a century. New challenges soon arose when the northern colonies chose not to join the American Revolution and remained loyal to the British crown. The victorious Americans looked to extend their republic and launched invasions in 1775 and in 1812. After Canada's independence, and amid much controversy, a fully-fledged Canadian military was created. Canada's links to Britain remained strong, and Canadian forces joined their British counterparts in the Boer War, the First and Second World Wars. Since the Second World War, Canada has been committed to multilateralism and has gone to war only within large, UN-sanctioned coalitions such as in the Korean War, the Gulf War, and the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Canada

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1639: Jeremiah Horrocks made the first observation of a transit of Venus from his home near Preston, England. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/transit_of_Venus)

1642: Dutch explorer Abel Tasman reached Tasmania. He named the island Anthoonij van Diemenslandt. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmania)

1859: The Origin of Species by British naturalist Charles Darwin was first published, and immediately sold out its initial print run. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Species)

1963: On live television, Jack Ruby shot and fatally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ruby)

1971: After collecting a ransom payout of US$200,000, "D. B. Cooper" leaped out of the rear stairway of the airplane he had hijacked and disappeared. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." -- Charles Darwin (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin)