25 years ago:
The Globe and Mail reported that the royal commission probing the baby deaths at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children said eight babies were murder victims and another 15 may have been murdered.
50 years ago:
The Globe and Mail reported that Quebec, stunned and grieved by the death of its second Union Nationale premier in less than four months, began to look for a successor to a man many believed was destined to become the province's greatest leader. The death of Paul Sauvé in the early hours on Jan. 2, 1960, plunged Quebeckers and many other Canadians into the deepest consternation. Words, almost unnoticed when he pronounced them New Year's Day in greetings to the Quebec people, had taken dramatic significance. "What does 1960 hold in store for us? Tomorrow belongs to no one," the 52-year-old premier said on the eve of his death. The next morning, Sauvé, who succeeded Maurice Duplessis on Sept. 11, 1959, was mortally stricken by a coronary thrombosis.
100 years ago:
The Globe reported that a woman, believed to be a suffragette, attempted to destroy a quantity of campaign literature at the political headquarters of John Burns in London with acid. The clerk in charge was seriously burned about the face and hands by the fluid before he could prevent her from caring out her scheme. The offending woman gained entrance to the headquarters under the pretense of assisting in addressing envelopes. Charles W. Morse, once known as the "Ice King" because of the fortune he made by shipping ice, was taken from New York to serve his term of 15 years (for banking violations) in the federal prison in Atlanta. [There Morse served along side the infamous swindler Charles Ponzi.]/p>