This Week In Toledo History

July 21-27

July 21
1915 - Toledo Housewives League protests the demolition of the farmer's market on Superior Street.
1927 - Dancer Fritzi Bigelow dances to the “Black Bottom” on a wing of a large airplane flying over Toledo’s Maumee River. She was accompanied by her musical group, which usually plays at the Bayshore Inn.
1948 - WSPD Television, Channel 13, signs on the air.
1971 - Fire destroys the Harborview village hall and tavern.
1983 - Jobless rate in Lucas County hits 12.8 percent.

July 22
1864 -Major General James McPherson of Clyde is killed at the Battle of Atlanta. Highest ranking Union officer ever killed in the Civil War.
1922 - The first commercial parking lot opens for business in downtown Toledo. The Huebner's Auto Park charges 25 cents a day or a dollar per week.
1926 - Two rum runners from Detroit intentionally sink their 40-foot boat loaded with Canadian liquor while being pursued by Coast Guard patrols. The men were arrested and sent to prison; the boat presumably still lies at the bottom of lake near West Sister Island loaded with well-aged booze,
1927 - Sad onlookers gather along the Maumee River docks on Elm Street as dry agents dump 15,000 bottles of confiscated Canadian beer into the river.
1940 - Excessive heat caused several concrete roadways in Ottawa County to explode, including the road to Fremont from Port Clinton and Ste. Route 163 in Erie Twp.
1971 - Toledo’s second indoor mall, the Franklin Park Mall at Talmadge and Monroe, opens for business.

July 23
1927 - The arrest of Joe Foley at Union Station in Toledo gets national press attention when it's revealed the dapper looking lad who once worked the lake freighters, is actually Alice Lovejoy of Massachusetts.
1928 - Aviator Amelia Earhart visits Toledo by train while on a special tour of America following her historic solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. She is given a special welcoming ceremony by the mayor and other dignitaries as thousands of fans turn out to greet her.
1942 - Residents of West Toledo sickened after rolling clouds of sulfur gas escape from a chemical factory near Lewis Avenue. Many residents report a burning in their lungs.

July 24
1899 - Million-dollar grain elevator fire erupts in East Toledo along the riverfront as 900,000 bushels of grain are destroyed.
1902 -The haying season near Williston and Jerusalem Twp. took a sad turn as lightning hit several barns. The barn of poor farmer William Neal was burned down. All the newly harvested hay inside and his horse were lost in the blaze.
1931 - Scores of treasure hunters scour an area off Central Avenue west of Toledo in search of a $3,000 diamond ring. Paula Wundish of New York claims she tossed the ring into the weeds to hide it from thugs who forced her car off the road in a robbery. The ring was never found.
1951 - The State of Ohio purchases Magee Marsh and Crane Creek and the Lake Erie Beach shoreline for $266,000. The state says the 1600 acres of land and beach will be used in the future for public summer recreation, wildlife conservation and migratory fowl hunting.

July 25
1914 - Toledo’s famous Lotus Blossoms on the lagoons are in full bloom on the Maumee. It is the only place in America that has these “sacred flowers of the Nile” but where they came from remains a mystery of history.
1942 - The “Red Hot Mama” Sophie Tucker appears in Toledo to sing for sailors at the Hollywood Theater Cafe.
1963 - New A & P store opens on Navarre in Oregon.
1967 - Racially charged rioting erupts on city streets of Toledo as fires are set amid heavy looting and vandalism. Police keep control, but arrest 60 people during the melee. Curfews imposed city-wide.

July 26
1877 - A national train strike begins. Toledo Streets are patrolled by citizens trying to avert any mob violence in the streets.
1904 - Toledo News Bee reports that local “Chinamen” in Toledo are the frequent buyers in a growing market for opium.
1932 - Eighty-one-year-old vagrant James Leiby, who wandered the roadways of the U.S. for decades, dies in Toledo. Hospital nurses find $6,900 in cash pinned beneath his heavy clothes.

July 27
1887 - A natural gas standpipe at Cherry Street Bridge is opened amid great celebration as giant flames are ignited, heralding a new era of “cheap gas” and an economic boom.
1897 - “Old Klondike,” Toledo’s first oil well, hits a small gusher on Millard Avenue in East Toledo. It flowed so hard that men were paid a dollar a day to help build a dike around it to contain the oil. It continued producing oil for decades.
1972 - Toledo’s most famous “stripper”, and Town Hall burlesque theater owner, Rose La Rose, dies of cancer at the age of 59. Many Toledo residents and others from the world of show business attend her funeral.