TODAY IN HISTORY: Railway open across Canada
In 1538, Geneva expelled Protestant church reformer John Calvin. His rigorous plans for reform of church and city clashed with the Swiss city’s long-standing moral indifference.
In 1805, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned King of Italy.
In 1874, the Dominion Elections Act became law. It introduced the secret ballot and simultaneous elections, and abolished property qualifications for MPs.
In 1887, Canada was given the power to negotiate commercial treaties with foreign countries.
In 1887, the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway was opened for public traffic – 18 months after the last spike was driven at Craigellachie, B.C. Trains had been running from Montreal to Vancouver for a year, but passengers now could ride all the way on 4,700 kilometres of track.
In 1896, the Imperial Privy Council gave the Canadian government power over fisheries.
In 1896, 55 occupants of a streetcar died when a bridge collapsed in Victoria.
In 1906, the city of Saskatoon was incorporated.
In 1908, the first major oil strike in the Middle East occurred in Masjid-iSuleiman,
Persia (Iran).
In 1913, the first woman magistrate in Britain was appointed.
In 1913, the Actors’ Equity Association was organized.
In 1919, actor Jay Silverheels was born Harold J. Smith on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ont. Silverheels, who was also a star boxer and lacrosse player, gained fame as “The Lone Ranger’s” sidekick “Tonto” on television and in movies during the 1950s. He died on March 5, 1980.
In 1940, the evacuation of allied troops from Dunkirk, France, began during the Second World War.
In 1943, Quebec passed a law requiring free and compulsory education in the province.
In 1966, British Guiana became independent and took the name Guyana.
In 1969, the Apollo 10 astronauts returned to Earth after an eight-day dress rehearsal for the first manned moon landing.
In 1972, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in Moscow.
In 1989, riding “Commander Bond” to victory at New York’s Yonkers Raceway,
Canada’s Herve Filion became the first harness racing driver to win 10,000 races.
In 2001, Eric Fairclough was acclaimed leader of the Yukon NDP, becoming the first aboriginal to head a major political party in Canada.
In 2003, a CF-18 jet crashed during training exercises near Cold Lake, Alta., killing the 38-year-old pilot.
In 2003, Prime Minister Jean Chretien announced the creation of the Canadian History Centre, a $90 million institution in Ottawa that would display Canada’s political and civic history.
In 2003, an airplane carrying Spanish peacekeepers back home from Afghanistan crashed into fog-shrouded mountains near the Black Sea port of Trabzon in Turkey, killing all 75 people on board.
In 2004, the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement signed peace accords with the Sudan government to end their 21-year war, in which two million people died.
In 2004, Labrador Inuit voted overwhelmingly to accept a historic land claim that would create a region of self-government on 15,800 square kilometres of northern Labrador, to be called Nunatsiavut.