A day's news brings bumper crop of interest
Monday, 28 December 2009 05:00
December 28, 1905. In Florence, Italy, thieves broke into the "ancient house" of poet Alighieri Dante (1265-1321), the Toronto Star reports. They stole art treasures and relics, and left a note: "You Florentines are idiots. You have saleable things and don't know it."
Meanwhile, in Whitby, Ontario, the Star says a thief broke into a grocery store, stole about 50 cents in pennies from a cash register, and "wrote a profanely-worded note asking the proprietor to leave more change next time."
Toronto city council debated the plight of residents upset by a proposed change in the name of their street. Mayor Urquhart said, "A physician had informed him that one of his lady patients was quite ill over the matter and would not recover unless the matter was resolved."
On Tuesday night, "A runaway horse poked its head and shoulders through the parlor window" of the home of Mr. J.L. Bird.
Thomas Miller, chairman of a mayoralty election meeting, castigated candidate Alderman Coatsworth for his attendance at "that little free beer drinking episode," where "a lot of men" put up with an election harangue in return for the brew. Miller said Coatsworth "cannot represent me as a temperance man."
On the international scene, an estimated 70,000 people had been killed during 11 months of armed rebellions in Russia, aimed at overthrowing the Czarist regime. But in Moscow, the government was reportedly squashing the last of the uprisings.
Britain offered its battleship Dominion to transport to Halifax the body of Marine and Fisheries Minister Prefontaine, who died suddenly during a visit to Paris.
"Two Victoria [B.C.] boys," released from a Russian prison by the efforts of the British and Canadian governments, arrived home. Captain Thomson and his four-man crew of the sealing schooner Diana remained in a Russian jail serving terms of one year and four months. A Russian cruiser caught them raiding a Russian island for seals, arrested them, and destroyed their schooner. Captain Thompson, "who was looked upon as an old offender," was said to be kept in chains.
Among the advertisements, the Empress Hotel offered "steam-heated rooms" at rates to $1 to $1.50 per day… Tickets for a performance of Handel's Messiah by the Toronto Festival Chorus and Orchestra were priced at 25 cents to $1… The Intercolonial Railway advertised "Big game hunting" for moose, caribou and bear, said to be in "great abundance" in Quebec and the Maritime provinces, reached by its Maritime Express, "which traverses the best hunting region in North America"… The Grand Trunk Railway announced that its "Special Party will leave Toronto January 29 and the month of February will be spent touring Quebec."