Today in history

On this date:

In 1771, Mother Marie Marguerite D’Youville, the founder of the Grey Nuns or Sisters of Charity, died in Montreal. The Nuns, a Roman Catholic Community which still operates to this day, performed charity work in hospitals, orphanages and schools. She was declared venerable in 1890 and in 1959 she became the first Canadian to be beatified. In 1990, Pope John Paul canonized her as Canada’s first saint.

In 1788, Maryland passed an act to cede an area “not exceeding ten miles square” for the seat of the national government; about two-thirds of the area became the District of Columbia.

In 1823, the poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” more commonly known as “The Night Before Christmas,” by Clement C. Moore was published anonymously in the Troy (N.Y.) Sentinel.

In 1865, Canadian publisher Joseph E. Atkinson was born in Newcastle, Ont.

In 1888, a depressed Vincent Van Gogh sliced off half of his left ear.

In 1900, “One Two Three Four — is it snowing where you are Mr. Thiessen? If it is, telegraph back to me.” Canadian Reginald Fessenden spoke these first words ever transmitted by radio from a site on Cobb Island in the middle of the Potomac River near Washington. A kilometre away, Mr. Thiessen, his assistant, quickly reported by Morse code that it was snowing, and he could hear Fessenden’s voice. This was the birth of radio broadcasting. However, it was six years later, after much fine-tuning, that radio’s potential was demonstrated. Fessenden presented radio’s first program on Christmas Eve 1906, from Boston.