Today in History for April 1:
In 1548, England's Parliament ordered the publication of the ``Book of Common Prayer.''
In 1564, All Fools' Day is said to have originated when King Charles IX of France changed the calendar. Prior to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, the date was observed as New Year's Day by cultures as varied as the Roman and the Hindu.
In 1734, Canada's first lighthouse -- at Louisbourg, N.S. -- began operation.
In 1868, Canada's postal service established a uniform postal rate of three cents a letter.
In 1868, Canada celebrated its first April Fools' Day on record.
In 1873, 547 people died when the liner ``Atlantic'' was wrecked on a reef near Mars Rock, outside Halifax harbour.
In 1918, the Royal Air Force was established in Britain.
In 1918, prohibition was declared in Alberta.
In 1924, the Royal Canadian Air Force was formed, six years to the day after the Royal Air Force was established in Britain.
In 1927, RCA in Germany introduced the first automatic record changer.
In 1932, the RCMP absorbed the provincial police forces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Manitoba and Alberta.
In 1942, gasoline rationing went into effect and Canadians first became acquainted with ration books. Food ration cards were issued a few months later. Official rationing remained in effect for five years.
In 1949, Tupperware was patented in the U.S.
In 1955, the revised Criminal Code of Canada went into effect. The original code, based on English law, came into force on July 1, 1893. The 1955 revision reduced the number of sections in the Code from 1,100 to 753. Changes to the original Code over the years have included amendments for gun control, the elimination of the death penalty and adding drunk driving as a criminal offence.
In 1960, the first weather satellite, ``TIROS-1,'' was launched from Cape Canaveral.
In 1960, Canada entered the jet age when Trans-Canada Air Lines (now Air Canada) began service between Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.
In 1968, the Board of Broadcast Governors became the Canadian Radio-Television Commission. The national broadcast regulator is now the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). On this date in 1976, the commission received the authority to regulate all forms of broadcasting in the country.
In 1969, Quebec legalized civil marriages.
In 1970, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon signed a measure banning cigarette advertising on radio and television, to take effect after Jan. 1, 1971.
In 1975, Canadian radio stations first started giving the temperature in Celsius.
In 1976, the Canadian Actors' Equity Association was formed, transferring 2,000 members from the U.S.-based Actors' Equity Association that had represented Canadian professional entertainers since 1954.
In 1983, thousands of anti-nuclear demonstrators formed a 22-kilometre human chain spanning three defence installations in rural England.
In 1992, the NHL Players Association launched the first full players' strike in the league's 75-year history. The walkout ended after 10 days, with the players saying they'd made gains in free agency and licensing.
In 1999, dignitaries including Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Gov. Gen. Romeo LeBlanc dined on muskox, whale skin, Arctic char and raw seal to celebrate the creation of Nunavut in the eastern Arctic. Canada's third territory gave the Inuit title to an area more than five times the size of Alberta.
In 2001, Halifax became the first municipality in North America to restrict the use of insecticides, pesticides and herbicides.
In 2003, Air Canada filed for bankruptcy protection.
In 2003, The World Health Organization issued a travel advisory for Hong Kong and China's Guangdong Province because of the SARS outbreak. In Hong Kong, hundreds of people were sent to quarantine camps after several cases of SARS were found in an apartment complex.
In 2009, Albania and Croatia became the newest members of NATO, increasing it to 28 members. It represented a historic expansion of NATO into the volatile western Balkans region, where the alliance had operated as peacekeepers a decade earlier.
In 2010, Zofia Cisowski, the mother of Robert Dziekanski, received a formal apology from the RCMP for the 2007 tasering death of her son at Vancouver's airport. The Mounties also paid her an undisclosed financial settlement and donated $20,000 to a scholarship in her son's name.
In 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously upheld a provincial appeals court decision that found P.E.I. had no duty of care toward children sent to the P.E.I. Protestant Orphanage by family members or guardians. The institution was established in 1928 and shut down in 1976. A group of 57 survivors banded together in 2002 to seek damages from the province, saying they were subject to beatings and sexual abuse for years.
In 2010, Canada and the U.S jointly announced new regulations to set a uniform standard across North America for new domestic or imported cars and light trucks to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and become more fuel efficient starting in 2011.
In 2010, a jury found Louis Woodcock and Tyshaun Barnett guilty of manslaughter and aggravated assault in the 2005 Boxing Day shooting of 15-year-old Jane Creba. She was caught in the crossfire of a gun battle between rival gangs on a crowded downtown Toronto street packed with shoppers. Six others were wounded. Jeremiah Valentine and Jorrell Simpson-Rowe had already been sentenced to life for second-degree murder.
In 2010, thousands of people poured into the streets of Montreal to protest the bad-news provincial budget which piled new costs on Quebecers, including a sales-tax hike and historic health-care user fees. Police in riot gear fended off a crowd outside Finance Minister Raymond Bachand's office.
In 2011, five tiny First Nations on Vancouver Island began new chapters in their collective histories, when a land-claims treaty that took almost 20 years to negotiate took effect. In addition to 24,550 hectares and resource and program payments, it gave powers of self-government, including taxation rights, to the bands representing about 2,500 people near the communities of Bamfield, Port Alberni, Campbell River and Ucluelet.
In 2011, in a quiet reorganization, all military police would now report directly to the Canadian Forces provost marshal instead of the local commander. The change was made in the aftermath of the Afghan prisoner scandal.
In 2011, BCE Inc. announced it had completed the $3.2-billion acquisition of CTV and launched Bell Media, a new business unit that includes CTV and other Bell content assets.
In 2012, Nobel Peace prize winner and Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi won a parliamentary seat in the country's byelection, where the military ruled almost exclusively for a half-century and where a new reform-minded government was seeking legitimacy and a lifting of Western sanctions.
In 2013, B.C. returned to the former seven per cent PST after voting to dump the controversial HST in a 2011 referendum. Meanwhile, the HST took effect in P.E.I.
In 2014, the Northwest Territories Devolution Agreement came into force, giving the territory control over its Crown lands and resources.
In 2018, Emmy Award-winning writer-producer Steven Bochco, known for creating the groundbreaking police drama ``Hill Street Blues,'' died after a battle with cancer. He was 74. Bochco created several other hit television shows including ``L.A. Law,'' ''NYPD Blue,`` and ''Doogie Howser, M.D.``
In 2018, Arike Ogunbowale's 3-point buzzer beater lifted Notre Dame to its second NCAA women's basketball title, a 61-58 victory over Mississippi State.
In 2018, Ian Poulter made a 20-foot birdie putt on the final hole to force a playoff with rookie Beau Hossler and won the Houston Open on the first extra hole with a par to earn the last spot in the Masters.
In 2018, former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt died at age 91. He seized power in a 1982 coup and presided over one of the bloodiest periods of the country's civil war as soldiers waged a scorched-earth campaign to root out Marxist guerrillas.
In 2018, Japanese two-way player Shohei Ohtani won his major league pitching debut by throwing three-hitter over six innings of the Los Angeles Angels' 7-4 win at Oakland. (He remained out of the batting lineup after going 1-for-5 as the Angels' DH on March 29, singling in his first at bat.)
In 2019, the federal government's carbon tax kicked in for Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. The levy was imposed because those provinces opted not to impose their own pricing schemes on carbon emissions.
In 2019, customers lined up to purchase pot as Ontario's first brick-and-mortar cannabis stores opened their doors. Fewer than half of the province's government-licensed outlets were ready to open as some were still working through a lengthy approval process.
In 2019, a new scientific report from Environment and Climate Change Canada warned Canada is warming up twice as fast as the rest of the world and it is ``effectively irreversible.'' The report said the average temperature in Canada is 1.7 C higher than it was 70 years ago, while the average global temperature is up 0.8 C. The Canadian Arctic has been hit even harder, with a 2.3 C increase, creating a risk that by the middle of this century most marine regions in the Canadian North will be ice-free for at least a month at a time.
In 2020, Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced a $71-billion price tag on the Liberal wage subsidy program for large and small businesses that was created in response to COVID-19.
In 2020, Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu said the federal government likely did not have enough protective equipment in its emergency stockpile to meet needs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. She stated that governments around the globe have not been spending enough money on public-health preparedness.
In 2021, more than five million Canadians had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose -- or almost one in six. About 690,000 of those had received both doses. Deputy chief public health officer Dr. Howard Njoo said 384 serious reactions to vaccine shots had been reported.
In 2022, Pope Francis apologized for the role the Roman Catholic Church played in Canada's residential school system. A Métis delegation travelled to the Vatican to talk about what happened in the schools. In Italian, Francis told the delegates that, "for the deplorable conduct of those members of the Catholic Church, I ask forgiveness of the Lord,'' adding "And I want to tell you from my heart, that I am greatly pained.''
In 2022, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced $214 million in federal funding to fix the water system in Iqaluit. The Nunavut capital's water had been contaminated with fuel twice in the last six months. Trudeau said the money would be used to create a new water reservoir and water distribution system.
In 2022, Will Smith resigned from the motion picture academy following his slap of Chris Rock on Oscars night. He said he would accept any further punishment the organization imposed.
In 2024, Nunavut became 25 years old. Premier P.J. Akeeagok said the anniversary reminded him that his job is both a privilege and an immense responsibility. The creation of Canada's newest territory on April 1, 1999, was part of a historic land claim settlement. It was also the first major change to the country's map since Newfoundland and Labrador joined Confederation.
In 2024, politicians from all sides of the political aisle paid tribute to former Quebec Liberal cabinet minister Benoit Pelletier. The well-known constitutional expert died at age 64. His family did not release his cause of death, but note he survived a severe bout of COVID-19 in 2021. Pelletier was a University of Ottawa law professor and later served as a cabinet minister in former premier Jean Charest's government, where he held numerous portfolios between 2003 and 2008. Charest described Pelletier as a "colleague, adviser and a friend" who left a strong intellectual and political legacy.
In 2024, an Israeli airstrike against the Iranian consular building in Damascus killed two Iranian generals and five officers, marking an escalation of Israel's targeting of military officials from Iran.
In 2024, health officials in Gaza said four international aid workers and their Palestinian driver were killed after they helped deliver food and other supplies which had arrived earlier by ship. Footage showed the bodies of the five dead at a hospital in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah – with several of them wearing protective gear with the World Central Kitchen charity's logo. The Israeli military said it was conducting a review to "understand the circumstances of this tragic incident.''
In 2024, Joe Flaherty, one of the stars of the Canadian sketch series "SCTV," died at the age of 82. His daughter confirmed his death came after a brief illness. Flaherty was born in Pittsburgh but moved north to help establish the Second City theatre's Toronto outpost. He went on to star alongside John Candy, Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara in "SCTV," playing characters that included network boss Guy Caballero and the vampiric TV host Count Floyd.
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The Canadian Press