Today in history

In 1608, English poet John Milton was born in London.

In 1755, the first post office in Canada opened in Halifax. A city stationer had begun an informal service the previous year, but in 1755 the British post office, in an attempt to improve military communication between Britain and North America, started a monthly packet run to New York.

In 1858, Robert Baldwin, former joint premier of United Canada (Quebec and Ontario), died after a long illness near Toronto at the age of 54. He’s remembered as one of the first proponents of responsible government and of co-operation between English and French Canadians.

In 1916, the Canadian Pacific Railway opened the eight-kilometre-long Connaught Tunnel near Revelstoke, B.C., the longest tunnel in Canada.

In 1985, Canadian financier Conrad Black bought controlling interest of the “London Daily Telegraph.”

In 2004, the Supreme Court of Canada said that the power to change the definition of marriage lay exclusively with the federal government, not the provinces, and that a proposed bill to legalize same-sex marriage was constitutional.

In 2008, the Bank of Canada reduced its key interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point, the biggest drop since October 2001, to 1.5 per cent, a level not seen since 1958, and declared for the first time that Canada had entered into a recession.