Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
Sept. 14
1901: Toledo and the nation are in mourning as word is received that Ohio’s native son, President William McKinley, is dead after being shot earlier in the month while attending an exposition in Buffalo, NY.
1902: The Toledo Auto Club is formed, later becoming AAA of Toledo.
1903: A statue of the late President William McKinley is unveiled at the Lucas County Court House. Thousands of people attend the celebration. It is the first monument to the late president, who had died from a gunman’s bullets two years prior.
1906: Nine Italian railroad construction workers plunge to their deaths in the Maumee River when their hand car runs off the rail drawbridge at Ironville in East Toledo.
1929: General Anthony Wayne’s Fallen Timbers monument and historical site is dedicated.
1934: The newly constructed Page Stadium at Devilbiss High School hosts its first football game with a ceremony to honor Henry Page of Page Dairy. The competition is Point Place High School.
1942: Crooner Bing Crosby performs at the Commodore Perry Hotel and for soldiers at Camp Perry near Port Clinton.
1962: Toledo native Foy Kohler and wife Phyllis leave for Moscow as he becomes the new Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Within weeks he would become the U.S. “point man” in Moscow as the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded.
1974: Toledo Police Chief Corrin McGrath fires two warning shots at a man he found rifling through the back of his car. He is formally reprimanded for violating policy against the firing of warning shots.
Sept. 15
1886: A doctor and a medical student are arrested in Toledo for robbing the grave of a 17-year-old, Belle Bowen, near Attica. They put it aboard a train to Toledo for use as a cadaver at the Medical College. The body was found in a trunk at the Wheeling Lake Erie Rail Depot.
1914: Bowling Green State Normal College (later to become BGSU) is opened.
1920: Baseball legend Babe Ruth plays in an exhibition game at Swayne Field in Toledo.
1934: The newly constructed Reptile House is dedicated at the Toledo Zoo. It was built by relief labor using salvaged materials from the canal locks, the Wabash Railroad, the old Jefferson School and from the old sidewalks along Cherry Street.
1938: The city of Toledo cuts off all relief money to about 8,000 people.
1953: The township of Oregon forms its first fire department.
1961: Genoa Banking Co. is selling a square foot of the historic Gettysburg Battle site in Pennsylvania for one dollar. The money goes for site preservation efforts.
1971: Death claims the life of Toledo's Frazier Reams, Sr., former Ohio Attorney General, renowned prosecutor and owner of WTOL-TV and AM and FM radio stations.
1967: The Toledo Mud Hens win the Governors’ Cup Championship of the International League for the first time.
Sept. 16
1896: Abolitionist and Toledo congressman during the Civil War, James Ashley, dies of a heart attack at the age of 74. In addition to being a champion of the abolition of slavery, Ashley was also a governor of the Montana Territory and the builder of the Ann Arbor Railroad.
1904: Mrs. Feltman in Bowling Green was injured severely by an exploding fruit jar, which exploded without warning, sending pieces of glass into her flesh and opening a vein on her arm.
1930: The so-called “Chinese Lindbergh” Lien Tia Wang visits Toledo. An aviator and researcher, he is writing a book to inform Chinese residents of life in America. He also notes that if Chinese men wore their trousers two inches longer it would mean an extra $10 billion a year for American cotton growers.
1933: The search begins for a missing mail plane along shore of Lake Erie near Toledo. Wreckage is found five days later 100 miles off course near Jackson, Mich. The pilot, Harold Neff, is alert and talking when rescued, but strangely dies two days later.
1959: The first edition of the Oregon News is distributed on the streets.
Sept. 17
1909: Four “tramps” are picked up by Fostoria police and taken to court, where they are ordered to be washed down with hoses and put in jail for five days on bread and water.
1930: Fiesty Prudence Lamb of Perrysburg confronts city workers with a rifle as they try to tear down her new white picket fence. Police return the next day with a posse and a machine gun, proceeding to remove what they say is an illegal fence. Lamb's husband, Edward, a well-known attorney, contends the city has no right to zone a town that was laid out by federal planners many years before.
1937: The newly built Naval Armory at Bay View Park opens with a ceremony and dinner. Thousands attend the gala event.
1938: Fourteen strikers are shot by guards on the picket line at the Federal Creosote Plant in Toledo. Two of the strikers were seriously wounded. Police say the picketers cornered the company guards and opened fire.
1973: Notorious Toledo gangster Thomas “Yonnie” Licavoli dies at his home in Columbus a few years following his controversial pardon by Governor Jim Rhodes.
Sept. 18
1902: Toledo pioneer and well-known community figure, Elijah Woodruff, celebrates his 100th birthday with a big party held at Navarre Park in East Toledo.
1931: H. J. Vogel, while fishing in the Portage River at the O.P.S. Interurban Bridge, is reported to have got so excited when he caught a fish that he dropped his pipe out of his mouth into the water. A few hours later, another fisherman downstream caught a large carp and found Vogel’s pipe in the carp’s mouth. Vogel is happy that he is reunited with his pipe.
1937: The Commodore Perry Statue is erected and dedicated in downtown Perrysburg.
1949: Toledo police raid the Continental Club for gambling.
1970: Toledo police patrolman William Miscannon is shot to death as he sat in his patrol wagon on Dorr Street. The man accused of the killing was put on trial twice and both times the jury was unable to reach a verdict.
1981: Toledo real estate developer Peter Sawicki is shot to death near his home as he attempts to rescue his daughter during an attack by the notorious serial killers, Nathaniel and Anthony Cook.
Sept. 19
1863: The Battle of Chickamauga begins as one of the bloodiest engagements of the Civil War. Toledo’s 14th Regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry, commanded by Gen. James Blair Steedman, took many casualties in this deadly clash. Steedman was credited with helping prevent the Union defeat from becoming a slaughter of Union regiments that were in grave danger. Steedman himself was wounded and had his horse shot out from under him.
1864: A secret plot by Confederate conspirators is thwarted on Lake Erie. Rebels based in Canada were to hijack passenger boats on the lake and use them to free the rebel prisoners held at the confederate POW camp on Johnson’s Island in Sandusky Bay. The plot was foiled and the hijackers were arrested.
1884: Earthquake tremors are felt in Toledo and throughout Northern Ohio. The shaking was so bad that the Williams County courthouse in Bryan suffered severe damage and had to be rebuilt.
1918: It’s reported in Toledo that young John Featherstone, who had moved to Toledo from Virginia, and an older woman, Mrs. Henrietta Johnstone, had become acquainted at a local restaurant. They struck up a relationship and decided to wed, but when they applied for their marriage license with the courts, they discovered they were mother and son.
1929: Roger Conant, curator of reptiles at Toledo Zoo, is bitten by rattlesnake. The bite is very serious and Conant develops lock jaw, loses a thumb and suffers other long-term complications.
Sept. 20
1864: Toledo ends the volunteer police force and begins formation of a paid police department.
1898: Toledo’s deadliest fire occurs when flames race through the Paddock and Hodge Grain Works in East Toledo. Fourteen workers die in the explosions and fires. It is reported in local papers that grain dust combusted and created the massive blast. Two children died among the workers while visiting their father, William Parks, who was the superintendent of the elevator. The newspapers reported that residents of East Toledo were shaken by the massive explosion and panic spread through the neighborhoods.
1918: The harvest season is underway in the Black Swamp region. Farmers and growers are looking for hundreds of corn cutters and apple pickers. Clause Grocery Store in Genoa says it has a new supply of fresh peaches, and the Shessler Orchard and Cider Mill outside of Genoa says they will be pressing fresh cider every Tuesday and Friday.
1958: Toledo fireman Ken Williams is killed in a blaze at S & S Distributors on Central Avenue.
1956: Northwest Ohio is hit by a massive electric blackout when the wrong valve is thrown on a turbine at the Bay Shore Power Station, severing power for 150 communities.
1985: Michael Palicki becomes a Toledo policeman and in doing so, joins the first father-mother-son family in the Toledo police ranks. His father Dan joined in 1963, while his mother Barbara joined in 1972.
