Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
April 12
1820: The Wood County Commissioners hold the organization’s first meeting.
1918: Thousands of people gather on the steps of the Toledo Museum of Art to honor naturalist John Burroughs and dedicate a statue of him.
1918: Toledo policeman C.C. Dersch is recovering at St. Vincent Hospital after a gun battle in East Toledo in which he killed a suspected auto bandit. Dersch, 24, was hit three times in his neck, stomach, and shoulder.
1927: More than 2,400 people converge at the Toledo Coliseum for a Ku Klux Klan rally and speech on the U.S. and Mexico. After the speech, hundreds march through the streets.
April 13
1917: Henry County Sheriff Reichert and Deputy Magill are killed, along with a prisoner they were transporting, when their patrol car was hit by a train in Napoleon.
1918: Three men accused of talking badly about Liberty Bonds are publicly tarred and feathered in downtown Toledo and put on display for a Liberty Bond rally. Eight men, including Toledo vice mayor Claude Kilbury, are accused of the assault.
1934: A strike begins at the Auto-Lite Plant on Champlain Street in North Toledo as workers walk off the job demanding union recognition and an end to some of the harsh conditions.
1984: Toledo underworld character Billy Scott earns eight years in federal prison for racketeering and gambling offenses. Scott was convicted of operating a massive bookmaking operation in the Toledo area and paying bribes for many years. The case also implicated a number of local people.
April 14
1911: Addie Joss, a professional baseball player and Toledo resident, dies at his home from spinal meningitis at age of 31. He threw baseball's third perfect game in 1908 and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1978. He was also a sportswriter for the Toledo News Bee.
1919: Port Clinton fishermen are reporting that their catches of large giant goldfish are getting more abundant. It's believed the goldfish got into Lake Erie after the floods of 1913 when they were washed out of retention ponds and aquariums.
1929: The “new” Central Catholic High School facility at Cherry and Page is dedicated by Bishop Samuel Stritch.
1938: Toledo police are searching for a woman who is giving "doped up" beer to shoemakers in the city and then robbing them when they pass out. She has struck twice and only targets shoe repairmen. Police want to stop her before she gives drugs to a cobbler with a bad heart.
1938: Danny Lyons, an infant boy from Montpelier, has his sight restored when Dr. Charles Lukens performs a rare pediatric cataract surgery.
1965: President Lyndon Johnson comes to Toledo to tour the areas that were devastated by the Palm Sunday tornadoes. He meets with numerous survivors and promises federal help will be coming.
1979: A piece of Toledo’s history is lost as a planned implosion brings down the old Willys administration building on North Cove Boulevard. Thousands of curious residents watch as the implosion reduces the piece of history to a pile of smoking rubble.
April 15
1833: The first recorded wedding takes place in Bowling Green, which would later become a so called "marriage mill" for quickie weddings.
1865: Toledo residents wake to the shocking news that President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated in Washington, D.C. at Ford Theater. Businesses and homes hang black crepe and patriotic bunting draped in black. Myron Lamson, who was the father of the brothers who started the department store, designs Lincoln's funeral train car.
1910: The Toledo Catholic Diocese is approved by Pope Pius X.
1911: A dozen suspected bank safe crackers known as "yeggs" are rounded up in Toledo by a police dragnet.
1930: Powerful northeast winds create flooding along western Lake Erie Shoreline and Point Place.
1936: A powerful dynamite bomb explodes at the home of prominent East Toledo attorney Mark Winchester on Euclid. No one is injured, but the blast was so powerful it broke windows at other nearby homes. The blast is thought by police to be a warning to Winchester from Toledo-area mobsters.
1964: Frank Emmick, an international seafood salesman from Rossford, is sentenced to 30 years in prison in Cuba after being accused of espionage by Fidel Castro’s government. He was later released in 1977.
April 16
1891: An organized mob of men storm the Hardin County Jail in Kenton, Ohio and take prisoner William Bales, who had been charged in the killing of a Kenton policeman Edward Harper. The mob lynches Bales from a nearby tree.
1900: Rev. H.F. MacClane of a Norwood Avenue church warns his congregants that Toledo is an immoral city and is known everywhere in America as a city that is "wide open" to every kind of vice.
1908: Toledo police begin a crackdown on robberies in the so-called “tenderloin” district, which is notorious for houses of ill-repute and gambling parlors.
1925: Two young Toledo teens, Phil Baldwin and Sunny Bullard, set out by canoe to go to New Orleans. They plan to use the old canal route through Indiana and then on to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
1928: An ambush by a band of robbers kills Toledo police officer George Zientara and wounds his partner. Among the suspects are Fred "The Killer" Burke and Raymond "Craneneck" Nugent. They were never brought to trial, although Burke was later captured and convicted for the murder of a Michigan state policeman.
1931: A deadly day occurs in Bowling Green as "Billy the Killer" Miller and his partner, "Two Gun" Frank Mitchell, aka "Pretty Boy Floyd," get into a gun battle with police on the city streets. Patrolman Ralph "Zeke" Castner is shot dead at Prospect and Clough Streets, and Billy the Killer also dies in the hail of bullets. Pretty Boy Floyd manages to escape.
1953: Employees of a LaGrange Street bank foil a hold up attempt and capture the bandit in a nearby shed before holding him for police.
April 17
1900: The famous Perry Willow Tree at Put-in-Bay collapses. The tree is where six American and British officers were buried together after the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812. The remains were later interred in a crypt beneath nearby Perry's Monument.
1916: Ground is broken for the new fireproof, six-story Mercy Hospital at Madison and 23rd Streets. It opened in 1918, just as the Spanish Influenza pandemic was starting to spread through the Toledo area.
1946: U.S. Labor Department statistics report that more than 145,000 people are employed in Toledo, with 1,630 job openings. Most jobs pay over 75 cents an hour.
1965: Baseball returns to Toledo as the Mud Hens restart their legacy in Toledo as a farm club for the New York Yankees. The new home park will be the Lucas County Stadium at the fairgrounds in Maumee.
1988: Two Ohio National Guardsmen drown near Camp Perry while patrolling Lake Erie in boats that were later deemed to be unsafe.
April 18
1901: The original Toledo Museum of Art opens in an empty storeroom in downtown Toledo.
1905: A group of Toledo officials hold a banquet to celebrate the construction of the Oakdale sewer. The 19 men, in hip boots, completed an inspection, and then in 12 inches of “clean” water, they sat down to a surprise meal hosted by the contractors.
1912: Toledo is stunned by the huge death toll in the Titanic disaster. The News Bee runs a photo of 1,500 people at Swayne Field to visually show how many people died on the giant ocean liner.
1932: Married teachers in Toledo launch a battle with TPS administration over a plan to fire the married women in favor of single female teachers who can be paid less.
1937: A fire at Secor Hotel in downtown Toledo sends guests out into the cold streets. The lack of aerial trucks hampers efforts as firemen couldn’t get hoses to 10th floor where the fire was centered.
1941: The U.S. Navy says the Bay View Park Armory in Toledo will start a school for 2,400 sailors to train for non-combat duties. A shortwave radio station will be set up to keep 24-hour contact with other Navy training centers.
1943: Lucas County Commons Pleas Court Judge Paul Alexander grants a divorce to a couple who didn't make it through their honeymoon. Dean and Mary Purcell of Toledo said they wanted a divorce because Mary was asthmatic and Dean couldn't stand her frequent sneezing during their honeymoon.
1949: The Ottawa County co-op elevator is destroyed by flames in Oak Harbor.
1967: Bishop John Donovan is installed as fifth bishop of Toledo Diocese at Rosary Cathedral.
