Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
March 8
1906: A mystery woman sends a large shipment of flowers to the shut-ins at the Toledo Infirmary. The rooms are filled with the bright, vivid blooms of roses, carnations, violets, and lilies. Many inmates are moved to tears.
1907: Escape artist Harry Houdini thrills the audience at the Valentine Theater when he frees himself from the so-called "Oregon Boot," involving four handcuffs and a heavy piece of steel.
1926: WTAL, Toledo’s first licensed radio station, begins on-air testing with a new transmitter.
1948: An ammonia explosion at Page Dairy on Wade Street kills two men and sends 27 people to the hospital for injuries.
March 9
1822: Sam Ewing is killed in a bar fight at Roche de Boeuf in Waterville. It was the first recorded bar fight and murder in Toledo-area history.
1868: Ice and floods slam downtown Toledo. Buildings on the riverfront are damaged, and part of the Cherry Street Bridge is destroyed.
1921: President Warren Harding gets a gift of a dog from Charles Quetschke of Toledo. “Laddie Boy,” a male Airedale, would become the first celebrity White House dog. He was beloved by both children and adults.
1929: The old fairgrounds in Bowling Green is sold to the city, set to become a park and golf course.
1943: Jacob Rinebold, Toledo’s last Civil War Veteran, dies at the age of 92. He joined the Union Army as a 14-year-old runaway and lived his last years on Walbridge Avenue in South Toledo.
March 10
1894: The business district of Main Street of Cygnet in Wood County is leveled by flames from a runaway fire. Townspeople were said to have made a valiant effort to stop the flames, but they had little water to fight the fire.
1913: In Toledo, William Knox rolls the first 300 game ever recorded at a national bowling tournament.
1918: A tornado rips through Northwest Ohio, killing five people near Van Wert.
1919: The Bowling Green to Toledo Interurban slams into a Cloverleaf train near Maumee. Screaming victims were said to be scrambling out of broken windows in the debris. More than 40 people were injured.
1920: The city of Toledo brings in a pollution expert to determine why so many fish are dying in the Maumee River and the city’s drinking water has developed a bad taste. Dr. J.W. Stuber says it is from bacteria that is depleting the oxygen in the water and killing the fish and causing the water’s foul taste. He lays blame to factories along the river that are dumping pollutants into the river.
1936: A grand jury panel is hearing evidence in a morals case against two nightclubs in Toledo near Dixie Highway that feature cross-dressing exotic dancers.
March 11
1906: A head-on locomotive crash occurs on the B&O tracks near Bloomdale in southern Wood County. Two people are killed and 14 others are injured.
1924: Howard Vine, a local mechanic in Genoa, survives a collision with a train at the Washington Street New York Central crossing in Genoa. His truck is overturned, but he miraculously escapes.
1961: Toledoan Captain William Morgan is executed by Fidel Castro in Cuba. Morgan had gone to Cuba in 1958 to help Castro to power, but he later became disillusioned by Castro’s new communist government, which had him arrested and executed.
2002: A large and potentially dangerous hole is discovered in the reactor head of the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Ottawa County. The lakefront plant is shut down over a year for repair.
March 12
1872: The Lakeshore and Michigan Southern Railway train makes its first run from Cleveland to Toledo on a northern passing through Port Clinton, Oak Harbor, and Clay Center. The southern route started earlier through Fremont, Elmore, and Genoa.
1886: Toledo’s House of Refuge for young boys on Broadway is burned to the ground. The 26 boys who lived there, ages 10-17, managed to escape the flames and were put to work to help salvage items from the building. They have been taken to an alternate building for housing. The fire department had great difficulty getting to the house because the road conditions on Broadway were so poor.
1928: Citing a lack of formal charges, a Toledo judge releases 219 people from custody who had been rounded up at an illegal speakeasy.
1943: It’s reported that Genoa and Clay Township have 162 men and two women now is the service in WWII, and 23 of them are stationed overseas.
1937: The city of Toledo ends its use of paddy wagons to take people to hospitals after a 10-year-old boy dies in a patrol wagon.
March 13
1905: Genoa Bank is robbed by safe-crackers using dynamite to blow open the safe to get $3,000 in cash. The safe door was blown across Main Street. The bandits escape in a stolen horse and buggy.
1938: Florence Scott Libbey, widow of Edward Drummond Libbey and the driving force behind the building of the Peristyle at the Toledo Museum of Art, dies in California.
1951: St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in East Toledo at 4th and Euclid Streets is gutted by flames.
1977: A lost pilot, low on fuel, lands his single engine plane on the Ohio Turnpike near the Bryan exit. No injuries and no accidents, but traffic was backed up for miles.
March 14
1911: Toledo estimates that it has about 160,000 shade trees along city streets and half of them are elm trees.
1926: The city of Toledo is getting ready for its move to the new Safety Building on Erie Street, which will house most city offices, the municipal courts, and the police department. The current offices at the Valentine Theater building are being packed and organized as city workers get ready to move into the new building on April 1.
1933: Heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey visits a welfare house in Toledo. He tells jobless men “not to give up hope,” and that “the sun will shine sooner or later.”
1952: Noah Hetrick, an old-time wagon builder from Lindsay, has been picked to repair and rehab Fremont’s famous cannon, “Old Betsy,” which played a crucial role in defeat of the British at Ft. Stephenson.
1975: It’s the end of an era for east suburban residents as the Buckeye Stages bus company closes down and halts runs from Port Clinton to Toledo.
