This Week in Toledo's past: Week of 3/1/2021

Events in the Toledo area over the past 150 years
Feb. 28 to March 6

Feb. 28
1900 - Massive blizzard paralyzes Toledo area with 20 inches of snow. Mail and passenger trains are snowbound. Downtown Toledo hotels are jammed with stranded travelers. All able-bodied men are being called to help shovel the city out.

1903 - Albert and Ben Wade are found guilty in the brutal murder of Kate Sullivan in her farm house in the Trilby area. Both brothers had been accused of attacking and killing the woman in a robbery attempt. They're sentenced to die in the electric chair and that double execution was carried out the next year in 1904.

1983 -Thousands of Toledoans join other American fans to say farewell to the TV show M.A.S.H. The local party for the final episode viewing took place at Tony Packo’s on Front Street, made famous by the show's Toledo native son, Jamie Farr, or Klinger.

March 1
1803 - Ohio is admitted to the Union. Toledo is still basically wild unsettled country and swampland in those years.

1901- Professor Foster, principal of Bowling Green High School, is pummeled by the fists of J.W. McKnight the head of the city's Power and Light Company. The beating which occurred at Main and Wooster Streets was in retribution for a severe punishment that Foster had inflicted to McKnight's son for misbehavior.

1926 - More than a dozen people are arrested after a rum runner's war breaks out on downtown Toledo streets. Police reports say there were gun battles and beatings between rival bootleg gangs.

1947 - Tom Scholz who would later started the music group Boston, is born in Toledo.

March 2
1900 - Inmates at the Toledo Workhouse on "Duck Island" in Swan Creek say they are being held in inhumane conditions and want an investigation. They allege everything from "rotten meat" being served to them to torture in dungeons.

1904 - Major flooding strikes Grand Rapids on the Maumee River and an old wagon bridge is torn loose and sent crashing into the rushing water.

1947 - Toledo bans the baking and sale of cream filled pastries after 50 people are sickened by contaminated chocolate éclairs from a Lewis Avenue bakery.

March 3
1928 - Construction begins on the new Central Catholic High School on Cherry Street.

1929 - Ground is broken for the construction of University Hall at the University of Toledo, the first building on the campus.

1944 - The USS Mackinaw Coast Guard cutter is launched into the Maumee River at the Toledo shipbuilding yards. The big cutter would become the most famous Coast Guard ship on the Great Lakes for the next 60 years. It is now a floating museum at Cheboygan Michigan

1981 - Ollie Czelusta, Toledo’s first Polish-American mayor, dies at the age of 85.

March 4
1919 -"Babe" the large Indian elephant at the Toledo Zoo is used to push a truck out of the snow at Dartmouth and Amherst Streets, near the zoo, but the giant beast crushes the truck in the effort.

1938 – More than 100 unemployed men stage a sit-down protest at the Fulton County Courthouse at Wauseon.

1955 - The old log cabin at the BGSU campus known as the "Falcon's Nest" is towed to nearby Portage, Ohio where it becomes a Legion Hall. It is still there.

1976 - Toledo bowler, 46-year-old John Pezzin rolls 33 consecutive strikes in back-to-back 300 games and finishes with an 859 series at Miracles Lanes. It sets a new national record for consecutive strikes.

March 5
1876 - Peter Lonz and his family make a home on Middle Bass Island and start a winery. The rest is history.

1877 - Rutherford B. Hayes of Fremont begins his term as the President of the United States following a controversial Electoral College win against Democrat Sam Tilden.

1880 - Toledo Policeman John Hassett is killed by debris from a tornado while he was on duty at the Buckeye Brewery.

1938 - A bomb is thrown at the house of Toledo School Board Chairman John Taylor. He was under fire by many parents for allowing a speech at Robinson Junior High by Earl Browder, Secretary of the American Communist Party.

March 6
1837 - Toledo holds its first municipal elections. John Berdan is chosen as the city's first mayor.

1908 - The Cherry St. Bridge is knocked into the Maumee River by the steamship Yuma.

1926 - Edward Drummond Libbey leaves $14 million dollars from his estate to endow the Toledo Museum of Art.

ToledoHistoryMuseum.org, 425 North St. Clair St., Toledo, OH 43604/419-215-2437