This Week In Toledo History

Jan 1
1860 - Temperatures in Toledo fall to 15 degrees below zero.
1900 - Toledo ice yacht racers hold their annual racing event on Maumee Bay on a frozen course from Point Place to Turtle Island, competing for the "Torpedo" cup.
1923 - Six thousand fans of Scott High School fill the Terminal Auditorium to listen to the special radio broadcast from Corvallis, Oregon as the Scott High School football team plays a championship game against a high school there.
1930 - Toledo police arrest a well know crime character in the city they think may be responsible for a series of bank robberies in Wayne, Rising Sun, and Bradner.
1935 - Economy is so bad, the Toledo News Bee refuses to wish Toledoans a Happy New Year.
1937 - Point Place is officially annexed to City of Toledo.

Jan. 2
1910 - Toledo Policeman George Casey becomes first officer ever to arrest an entire police department when he takes the Perrysburg Marshal and a deputy into custody for fighting on an Interurban station platform. They were fined $5 each in police court.
1925 - Larry Weiss born in Toledo. He later changed his name to Larry Harmon and portrayed "Bozo the Clown", helping the character become an American icon.
1930 - Current Toledo Hospital building opens for patient admissions.
1932 - Five top officers of Toledo’s Security Home Bank are indicted by Lucas County for swindling millions from bank depositors.
1938 - Toledo's Phyllis Welch joins movie legend and producer Harold Lloyd to co-star in "Professor Beware". Welch enjoyed a short but popular Hollywood career.
1940 - Toledo public schools reopen after six-week financial shutdown.
1953 - Nine inmates escape from the Lucas County jail after sawing their way through a barred window and dropping to the ground. Sheriff Timiney says he suspects an "inside" job.

Jan. 3
1894 - Quayle Grain elevator burns to the ground in Toledo at present site of Promenade Park at Madison and Water Streets. Fire Captain James Fraser is killed. His body is never recovered.
1907 - Christian Feilbach, a top Toledo public school official, asserts that too much money is being spent on girls' physical education classes. He says "girls do not need to be jumping over chairs", if they want exercise, "let them wash dishes, cook and other household work and the family washing."
1911 - A detained man hauled before Judge Austin's police court explains that he hurled a can of pickles at the Toledo streetcar because it wouldn't stop for him as he stood in a downpour of rain on the street. The judge said he would have been incensed too, the prosecutor agreed and the charges of malicious destruction were dismissed.
1920 - As part of nationwide crackdown on communist radicals, Toledo police raid the local Communist Labor Party headquarters at Front and Consaul streets. They arrest 13 immigrants from Hungary they alleged to be "Reds".
1931 - Fire destroys interior of St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church on Cherry Street.

Jan. 4
1887 - Major train wreck near Republic in Seneca County. Twenty people killed, three coach cars are burned in the pileup. The tragedy remains as the worst rail accident in Northwest Ohio history.
1895- Reform movement gathering momentum in Toledo with formation of Committee to Oppose Corruption.
1904 -The Toledo parks department begins its annual tradition of giving all young school children horse drawn sleigh rides.
1922 - John Jones of South Toledo arrested while sleeping in another man's home. Jones admitted that he was drunk and entered the wrong house, went to bed and fell fast asleep.
1924 - Bob Stranahan, Champion Spark Plug president, tells a Rotary group he remembers that his first factory in Toledo was built over a laundry in downtown Toledo and he still recalls the smell of boiling laundry wafting up from below while he and his brother Frank were making spark plugs.
1950 - City of Toledo council members consider an end to garbage incineration in favor of burying garbage in landfills.

Jan. 5
1894 - Toledo Hospital reports that it had 239 patients in the past year; 71 operations were performed and there were 25 deaths.
1920 - Deadly explosion and blaze at the National Refrigeration Company factory in 100 block of Nebraska Avenue in Toledo kills two workers.

1936 - Toledo area experiences two major fires in one day. Fire does heavy damage to the mansion of Toledo industrialist George Mather on River Road between Parkersburg and Rossford. The second major fire was the landmark Toledo Coliseum at Bancroft and Ashland streets.
1946 - Wood County Sheriff Clarence Marsh says owners of the El Rancho Ballroom, an illegal casino on Woodville Road, offered him tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to reopen the club.
1955 - Toledo Express Airport's official opening day is marked by cancellation of all flights because of bad weather.

Jan. 6
1905 - A formal protest is lodged against the Toledo Zoo by the Ancient Order of Hibernians objecting to the name of a monkey at the zoo. They say its name “Mrs. Murphy” is an insult to the Irish. The zoo says it will change the name.
1912 - Amos Jacobs, later to become Toledo’s Danny Thomas, is born to immigrant parents in Deerfield Michigan. They later moved to North Toledo where Danny spent much of his early life, before moving on to stardom in the entertainment world.
1923- Newspaper reports indicate that Lake Erie's ice will be so rough and bumpy this year that it will prevent the rum runners from using their autos to drive across the lake to smuggle booze from Canada.
1937 - The Ohio Highway Department announces it will begin the long awaited paving of “Canal Boulevard” or what would later become the Anthony Wayne Trail from Toledo to Waterville.
1972 - Gangster Thomas “Yonnie” Licavoli is paroled from prison after serving 38 years for notorious mob slayings in Toledo.

Jan 7
1837 - Toledo incorporates and becomes an official Ohio community. (This becomes Toledo's Birthday)
1904 - Popular long time Toledo civic leader Elijah Woodruff dies at 101 years of age.
1923 - Police Chief Lanker of Lima says he will start taking photos of people who are arrested for intoxication and then show them their antics when they are sober. He thinks if people know how foolish they look when they are drunk, it may stop them from drinking.
1947 -Police officer Lt. John McCarthy shot and killed near Safety Building by a suspect that he was taking into the building for questioning.
1951 - WSPD TV (channel 13) debuts its first news program with well known radio announcer, Jim Uebelhart as the main anchor, on Sunday nights from 10:30-11 p.m.