This Week In Toledo History

April 21-27

April 21
1906 -News of the great San Francisco earthquake shocks the nation, News Bee reports they have located six people from Toledo among the survivors.
1910 - One of last wooden elevators burns along Miami Street.
1930 - A deadly fire at the Ohio State Penitentiary and 322 inmates perish. Twenty-four of the victims were inmates from Lucas County. One Toledo inmate, George Mengione, is credited with saving over 20 lives.
1935 - Toledo residents mourn the death of Sylvanus. P. Jermain, the man considered the "Father of American Public Golf".
1937- Campaign gets underway by some disgruntled East Toledo residents to secede from the city. East siders complain they are not being treated fairly by the city.
1951- Four children die in a trailer fire on Woodville Road near Forest Park outside of Genoa. The children ranged from one to five years old.

April 22
1867 - Henry Breed is hired as Toledo's first Police Chief and the next day, the first paid “Metropolitan Police” force in Toledo begins to patrol the streets.
1908 - Eleven people in Maumee begin series of painful shots after being bitten by a rabid dog.
1922 - A wild shoot out unfolds on the streets of downtown Toledo as pedestrians dive for cover. At Erie and Madison, an irate husband shot his wife four times, and a nearby policeman drew his revolver and started firing at the husband. Bullets were flying everywhere, said witnesses.
1947 - Toledo health authorities say there is no evidence of a rabies epidemic, although 14 rabid dogs were found in the past week.

April 23
1911 - A deadly blast that killed 21 men at the Los Angeles Times in 1910 leads to Northwest Ohio. It is discovered that the 100 pounds of dynamite used in the blast was stolen from the stone quarry in Bloomville.
1913 - Two buffaloes escape from the Toledo Zoo. "Bill and Belle" sent neighbors of Harvard Terrace running to the safety of their homes. They were eventually rounded up.
1928 - Toledo Police arrest 63 people in a series of weekend vice raids targeting prostitution and gambling houses in the city.
1977 - Elvis Presley performs at Centennial Hall at the University of Toledo, drawing a sell-out crowd of nearly 10,000 fans.

April 24
1837 - First taxes are levied on Toledoans to pay for city services and salaries. The first city marshal, Calvin Comstock is hired.
1861 - More than 100 men leave Toledo for duty in the Union Army as a part of the 14th Ohio Volunteer Infantry as the Civil War begins.
1916 - Toledo's Food and Style show opens at the Terminal Auditorium where hundreds of food producers will display their products to demonstrate how "pure" and healthy they are.
1979 - State Representative Irma Karmol, 56, of Toledo is killed in an auto accident in Perrysburg. Passenger, State Representative Robert Brown was injured.

April 25
1937 - Opening day at Swayne field. Box seats to watch Mud Hens play sell for $1.00.
1947 - Virgil Gladieux announces that the “new” sports arena will be built at east end of Cherry Street Bridge on Main Street in East Toledo. It will occupy 18 acres on site of what used to be called “Cannon’s Landing.”
1955 - Mass inoculation begins at schools around Toledo with the Salk vaccine to prevent childhood polio.
1959 - The $459 million link between the Atlantic Ocean and Great Lakes called the St. Lawrence Seaway officially opens to ship traffic.

April 26
1835 - A military skirmish unfolds called the “Battle of Phillips Corners” between Ohio and Michigan forces in the Toledo War. Shots are fired between the opposing militias in the dispute over the so- called "Toledo strip".
1858 - Land given to City of Toledo for first public park. The plot in East Toledo - later named Prentice Park in honor of Fredrick Prentice, the first "white" baby born in Toledo area.
1865 - Everton Conger, of Fremont, a special detective with the War Department leads a unit of men to the barn where John Wilkes Booth is hiding in Virginia. Conger sets the barn ablaze and Booth is shot to death.
1946 - The Telegraph Drive in Theater opens on Telegraph Road with Hedy Lamarr in “Experiment Perilous”. Neighbors complain about the sound coming from the outdoor speakers.

April 27
1898 - Toledo soldiers muster at National Guard Armory as they get ready for duty in the Spanish-American War.
1923 - Famed British writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (author of Sherlock Holmes fame), attends seance in Toledo with Toledo psychic Miss Ada Besinnet. The writer calls her one of the best in the world.
1932- Tiffin sportsman Frank Callahan, spends $1,000 to stage a funeral for his beloved Pomeranian pet dog "Baby Ginter". Hundreds of curious mourners show up at his home to see the dog lie in repose in a $400 casket.
1966 - A Chicago woman, Mary Matz, takes a taxicab from Toledo to Richmond, California to see a doctor there because "she isn't feeling good." The 2,640 mile trip cost her $1200.

Authors note: As the 159th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination is observed this month, I note a couple of local connections to the tragedy. First, it was a local Fremont man, Everton Conger who tracked down assassin John Wilkes Booth to a barn in Virginia where Booth was killed; and second, it was a Toledo soldier, Myron Lamson, who designed and put together the Lincoln funeral car that took his body on the long tour to its final resting place in Illinois. Lamson, by the way, was the father of the two men who started the Lamson's store in Toledo.