This Week In Toledo History

September 22
1863 - A troop train carrying Union army recruits from the Wood County area collides with a freight train at Perrysburg. The crash sends two of the boxcars off the track in splinters. Two recruits are killed and 24 others are injured.
1907 - Toledo Police officers arrest a very large man from Maumee for lying down on the scales at the city market to weigh himself. So heavy he was unable to register a weight.
1914 - Milburn Wagon Works in Toledo will now begin producing electric automobiles at the factory. More than 4000 Milburn Electrics were produced the next few years.
1930 - Four bootleggers are killed in the explosion of their "still" in a building on Champlain Street.
1950 - Thousands attend the opening of Toledo’s new Union Station in South Toledo. Within a few years, though, most passenger train travel operations through Toledo would stop and give way to air travel.
1990 - Six years after opening, Portside Festival Marketplace in downtown Toledo is shut down and padlocked.

September 23
1858 - Balloonist from Adrian accidentally taken aloft in giant balloon in Riga Township, Mich., never heard from again.
1919 - Toledo motorcycle patrolman George Zapf dies after his motorcycle is hit by a streetcar at Madison and Superior Streets.
1921- Pearl diving is a new pastime on the Maumee River after news that Adam Rose, keeper of the locks at Defiance, found a 41 grain (10 carat) pearl in a freshwater clam in the river. It sold for $200.
1967 - Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Bono, Ohio is dedicated.

September 24
1911 - Three workers from Italy are found murdered in a quarry at Kelleys Island. A fellow immigrant is later arrested, found guilty and executed.
1936 - Teamster union leader Jimmy Hoffa drives down from Detroit and gets married in Bowling Green because there is no waiting time for weddings in Wood County.
1937 - A 12-year-old Robert Snyder shoots and wounds the principal at Arlington School in Toledo. He then flees the school grounds and shoots himself. Both he and the principal recover. Police say the boy had listened to violent radio programs. The boy says he just wanted his principal to take him out for ice cream.

September 25
1895 - Much of downtown Haskins in Wood County is destroyed by flames.
1911 - Toledo Police Patrolman Harry Smith dies from injuries sustained while trying to arrest two men six weeks earlier.
1917 - Silent film “The Birth of a Nation” plays at Auditorium Theater and is given rave reviews by Toledo News Bee. The reviewer calls it thrilling and the KKK on horseback display "wonderful and reckless, riding".
1921 - Waite High School copes with severe overcrowding as student enrolment exceeds 600 more pupils than what it was designed for.
1934 - City health officials report the 10th death in Toledo from a contagious “sleeping sickness,” which has been a problem for two months.
1936 - Toledo's "gas bomb terrorists" strike again. This time they toss gas grenade into an ice cream social being held at the "South Side Workers Alliance" hall affecting scores of children and parents.

September 26
1918 - George Smith, the editor of a Leipsic newspaper in Wood County faces federal charges for printing stories deemed to be hurting America's war effort in World War One. Smith also claims he has been beaten up by area men.
1927 - Toledo’s Mud Hens win the American League pennant defeating Indianapolis in two games, and would go on to win the "Junior World Series" the next month against Buffalo.
1942 -The oil tanker “Transoil” and a tugboat, catch fire on the Maumee River. The blaze injures twelve men who were trapped on the Hocking Valley docks. Two of the crew members later die from their injuries.

September 27
1925 - Toledo News Bee reports that some women in Toledo are now wearing notes on their garters as a warning to men, that "if they read the note, they are too close."
1937 - First home game for UT Football team is played at WPA-built "Rocket" Stadium which was renamed the "Glass Bowl" in 1946.
1943 - The Fiske Brothers Oil Refinery on Oakdale in East Toledo catches fires and sends thick black smoke skyward visible for miles.

1944 - Toledo hunters find an alligator along the banks of the Maumee River near the town of Florida. They shoot and kill the four-foot-long reptile and tack it to a tree. Many motorists are stopping to get a better look at it.
1948 - Polio is claiming more lives in Toledo area. Scores of children are stricken and special isolation wards are set up at area hospitals.

September 28
1911-The Toledo Health Department is using university students to test various foods from Toledo groceries to develop a “white list” of foods that are safe to eat.
1931 -The Colored Protective Union is formed in Toledo. They aim to protect the rights of “blacks” in the city and pass laws that would be “in the interest of the colored race,” says group President Charles Carson.
1933 - A bank robber is killed in Luckey, Ohio during a shoot-out with village Marshal Ben Stone. The first African-American police chief in Ohio. Stone is wounded in the attack but survives to become local legend.