Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
Aug. 9
1894: Electric streetcars make their first run from Toledo to Perrysburg as part of the Toledo-Maumee Valley Streetcar Company.
1905: A Cherry Street Bridge tender is fired after almost failing to get draw spans up in time to allow a loaded passenger ship to pass through. With little warning to traffic, a streetcar nearly plunged into river. The tender is said to be in “no condition” to work that night.
1929: Federal and state agents raid an illegal 1,000-gallon moonshine still on Matzinger Road and arrest two men.
1930: Three recent Libbey High School graduates make news by driving to California and back to Toledo in their $20 flivver (car).
1932: Radio broadcasting of fire alarms begins in the city.
Aug. 10
1877: Today's excitement in Toledo is for the second annual “Butcher's Picnic” as more than 100 members of the “Butcher's Protective Association” throw a feast at Metropolitan Park. The menu includes four oxen and 22 sheep. They will be cooked on the grounds and given away for free. Other events include sack races, dancing and greased pig catching.
1905: The “Pope-Toledo” automobile, manufactured in Toledo, is now selling nationwide for $3,500. It is called the “quiet mile-a-minute car.”
1927: Aviation hero Charles Lindberg performs a low altitude flyover of a ballgame at Armory Park in Toledo. He drops a message of goodwill to the spectators below.
1933: Well-known area racketeer and underworld figure, Jacob “Firetop” Sulkin, is indicted for the murder of Toledo-area bootlegger Jackie Kennedy in Point Place.
1964: Toledo school lunches in the area are going to increase to 35 cents.
Aug.11
1853: The cornerstone is laid at Adams and Michigan for what would become Toledo’s first high school building. It was built on the current site of the Toledo Lucas County Public Library.
1905: Two men are seriously injured at 111 Superior St. in Toledo in a nitroglycerin blast. The paper says the men may not survive their injuries. The men were walking through a construction yard when police say a bottle filled with the explosive detonated. The men, say police, were blown out of their clothes and suffered massive injuries.
1911: Bishop Joseph Schrembs is appointed as first bishop for the Toledo Catholic Diocese.
1916: A tribe of Iroquois Native Americans is presenting Longfellow's “Hiawatha” at Jermain Park. The cast of 50 players has a “set” made up of tepees, campfires and birch bark canoes along the Ottawa River as the classic story is played out to large audiences. While they were in Toledo, their 104-year-old chief of the tribe, Gwan-ha-day (Falling Snow), dies at Toledo Hospital leaving behind his 98-year-old widow, Nokomia, and 15 children.
1923: The Toledo Police Department gets six new “speed” cars, three Cadillacs and three large Studebakers, for their fleet. The vehicles can reach speeds of up to 60 miles per hour.
1932: Rookie Toledo Police patrolman, 28-year-old Edward Keim, is shot and killed during a shootout with a robbery suspect at a gas station on Indiana Avenue. Responding fellow officers shoot and kill the suspect. Keim, a former boxer, had been with the department for about a month.
1966: B & O passenger train service to Bowling Green and other points south is discontinued.
1986: Bob Tway wins the PGA Championship at Toledo’s Inverness Club with a dramatic chip-in on No. 18.
Aug. 12
1905: Toledo police continue their investigation into the drownings of three young women in the Maumee River near Walbridge Park. The women's deaths came in separate incidents within a few days of each other. In one case, the girl’s death was thought to be a suicide, but some family members are not convinced and say a former boyfriend had been threatening to harm her.
1908: A Toledo courtroom is shocked when police bring in a bandaged and dying woman, Bertha Hood, to testify against a man, Eddie Simpson, who she claims stabbed her repeatedly. She was so weak she couldn’t hold up her hand to take the oath.
1916: The city of Toledo is so financially pressed, the city's zoo at Walbridge Park had to sell its lion named “Gunk,” which was named for the founder of The Newsboys. It was said the three-year-old Gunk was a favorite at the park, but the city decided it needed the money and sold him for $300 to a private animal show.
1918: Overnight garbage collection is ordered for downtown Toledo because garbage wagons were too smelly for daytime use.
1921: President Harding’s 76-year-old father, Dr. George Harding, spends his wedding night at the Secor Hotel in Toledo after marrying a 52-year-old nurse in Monroe, Mich.
1949: An arctic fox escapes from its cage at the Toledo Zoo, leading zoo workers on a chase through South Toledo streets.
1961: Count Basie plays for a special opening at the Hines Farm Blues Club near Swanton.
Aug. 13
1900: Former Union Army General and reconstruction governor of South Carolina Robert Kingston Scott dies at his home in Napoleon.
1919: The Walbridge Park pavilion burns to the ground. Two people living at the business are saved by their barking dog.
1922: Toledo patrolman Fritz Bacon is killed on duty after he was hit by drunk driver.
1926: Three fishermen on Lake Erie near Harborview are nabbed by seven armed hijackers who wanted information about a “liquor shipment” that was supposed to have been dropped off by rum runners in the area. One of the captives said he was beaten on the head by the outlaws, who demanded he give them information about the 350 cases of beer and 250 cases of liquor that were missing.
1930: Local farmer, Perry Coy, on Pickle Road in Oregon, shoots and kills a destitute father Elmer Tilton, 36, and son Louis, 17, because they were stealing potatoes from his five-acre field. The community is outraged by the killings as Coy admitted he was waiting with his rifle when the father entered the field. Coy is later charged but acquitted in the killings, while Mrs. Tilton and her six other children are left in poverty.
1938: Leonard Guerin, a volunteer with the Trilby Fire Department, is killed while battling a gasoline tank explosion. He was on the scene of the Driggs Dairy truck fire at Sylvania and Talmadge, and as crews were dousing the truck with water, the fuel tank exploded and showered him with burning gasoline. He died later at Toledo Hospital.
Aug. 14
1919: The large, historic Hotel Victory at Put-in-Bay burns to the ground in a spectacular blaze that can be seen from Toledo.
1922: Ten-thousand people jam Toledo Beach in an attempt to cool off in the high summer heat.
1927: Three people drown when squalls hit Lake Erie near Willow Beach at Port Clinton.
1945: Downtown Toledo streets are flooded with over 100,000 people in an official and rowdy celebration to mark news that the Japan has surrendered, ending World War II.
1998: Wayne, Ohio native Chris Hoiles of the Baltimore Orioles hits two grand slams in one game against the Cleveland Indians.
Aug. 15
1834: The Toledo Herald is published by James Irvine Brown as the first newspaper in Toledo. It is also reported that it was Brown who first suggested the name of Toledo for this new community on the banks of the Maumee River.
1888: The first glass factory begins operation in Tiffin.
1941: Nationally famous exotic snake dancer Zorita is arrested by the Toledo morals squad at the Kentucky Club on North Detroit Avenue. She was released the next day on a $200 bond.
1976: Olympic track team member from Toledo, Brenda Morehead, is honored with a parade in downtown Toledo. Morehead ran for Scott High School and was part of the first girls high school meet, winning four events. She also earned Olympic honors competing in the women's 100-meters at the 1976 Summer Olympics.
1980: St. Vincent Hospital initiates Life Flight medical rescue helicopter service in Northwest Ohio.
