TODAY IN HISTORY

On this day in 1814

Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone, was born in Belgium.

In 1854, John Philip Sousa, the king of American march music, was born in Washington, D.C. He died in 1932. In 1860, oil was struck at Petrolia, Ont. In 1861, the inventor of basketball, Dr. James Naismith, was born in Almonte, Ont.

In 1867, the first session of Canada’s first Parliament opened at the new Parliament buildings in Ottawa. The first speech from the throne was read by the country’s first governor general, Sir Charles Stanley Monck, 4th Viscount Monck. The first government was led by the country’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. Members earned $6 a day.

In 1879, Thanksgiving Day was first observed in Canada. On Jan. 31, 1957, Parliament proclaimed Thanksgiving as a holiday on the second Monday in October. In 1889, the Eiffel Tower opened in Paris. In 1893, Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky died at age 44 of cholera after drinking contaminated water in St. Petersburg.

In 1906, the first long-distance telephone line was completed from Winnipeg to Regina.

In 1987, an iceberg 225 metres thick broke away from Antarctica. Scientists estimated the iceberg had enough water to supply a city the size of Los Angeles for nearly 700 years.

In 2003, George Radwanski, the former privacy commissioner, became the first Canadian to be found guilty of contempt of Parliament in 90 years, although he escaped penalty with an apology after five months of denying any wrongdoing. He had been accused of deliberately misleading Parliament by altering documents and misrepresenting lavish expense claims.