This Week In Toledo History

Jan. 8
1884 - Assets of the University of Toledo are turned over to the City of Toledo, establishing it as a municipal school.
1900 - Mayor Samuel Jones’ plan for a city-owned power plant is defeated by Toledo City Council.
1900 - Huge fire in Prairie Depot (now Wayne) in Wood County destroys 11 businesses and homes.
1957 - New interstate (I-280)drawbridge over the Maumee River is dedicated in honor of Medal of Honor recipient Toledoan Lt. Robert Craig, who was killed in Italy in World War II.

Jan. 9
1904 - Former Ohio Governor and Seneca County native Charles Foster dies at the age of 75.
1933- In a dramatic shootout on Toledo's north side, suspected fugitive cop killer, Bob Zwick, is wounded and captured along with his "gal-pal" "Dago Rosie".
1909 - Design for the City of Toledo flag is adopted.
1940 - Major fire levels three retail businesses in downtown Luckey.
1919 - More than $30,000 worth of diamonds and jewelry is stolen from Mrs. Michael Owens while she and her famed inventor husband were dining at the Toledo Club.
1971 - Fireman Ralph Arthur dies of heart attack in Maumee Bay trying to save his two children, who plunged through the ice on a snowmobile near Cullen Park.
1997 - Com Air flight 3272 crashes in rural Monroe County en route to Detroit Metro Airport. All twenty-nine people aboard are killed.

Jan. 10
1838 - First railroad accident near Toledo. One person killed.
1907 - City health records show that the most lethal disease in Toledo is tuberculosis with 207 deaths reported in 1906.
1933 - The grand Peristyle Auditorium opens at Toledo Museum of Art in a debut performance with the Philadelphia Symphony. Mrs. Florence Libbey had the new wings of the museum built to give employment to hundreds of jobless men.
1987 - Inventor and world famous glass artist Dominick Labino dies at his home in Grand Rapids at the age of 76.

Jan. 11
1805 - Territory of Michigan created by Congress.
1899 - Actor Frank Murphy at the People's Theater in Toledo is hit by a real brick, instead of a fake one, during a fight scene. Severely wounded, with blood streaming down his back, he keeps right on playing the scene.
1906 - Toledo Zoo reports that a female black bear has killed her newborn cubs.
1911 - Lucas County Common Pleas Judge John Manton rules that some couples seeking divorce should be spanked instead.
1918 - Lions store selling ladies corsets for 79 cents.
1936 Louis Hirschy, a long time East Toledo resident recluse and scholar, credited with planting thousands of trees in the East Side, dies at his home at Greenwood and Walden. Two streets that he had renamed in honor of nature.
1942 - Lonz Winery on Middle Bass Island burns to the ground.

Jan. 12
1859 - Temps in Toledo plunge to 12 below zero.
1904 - A mother and her seven children are found living in an old freezing shanty in a Jerusalem Twp. marsh near Lake Erie. The family was huddled in straw for warmth to survive. Local farmers take them in to care for them.
1918 - Severe deep freeze and blizzard hits the Toledo area. Railroads are stopped; ambulances and street shovelers are overwhelmed. Two hundred Overland factory workers are treated for frostbite they suffered as they walked to work.
1944 - Colony Shopping Center at Monroe and Central is destroyed by fire. Blaze starts in basement of bowling alley and spreads. Toledo fireman James Fakeheny is killed by a falling slab of concrete in the basement. Nine other firemen are injured.
1963 - Mass rescue operation on Lake Erie at Reno Beach. The Coast Guard plucks 150 fishermen from floes of breaking ice.

Jan. 13
1895 - Powerful nitroglycerin blast in Gibsonburg. Shock waves felt in Findlay.
1905 - Safe crackers from Toledo blow up safe in Fulton County courthouse in Wauseon and steal more than $10,000 in treasury money. They flee the scene in a horse and buggy.
1911 - A report from Columbus and the board of pharmacy says Toledo sells more illegal cocaine than any other city in the state of Ohio, and not just to "lower classes", but dealers are also selling to children.
1930 - Toledo health officials are investigating reports of the rare “Parrot Fever” in Toledo, said to have come from imported birds.
1958 - Frank Elementary School in Perrysburg opens for classes.
1959 - A 15-year-old boy at Libbey High School makes news for refusing to cut his hair and is facing suspension. His mother says she thinks the boy's hair is just fine.

Jan. 14
1875 - University of Toledo opens in basement of the half-finished Unitarian Church on the corner of Adams and 10th Street.
1906 - Toledo police raid a "Sunday" burlesque show at Empire Theater and arrest entire company of performers for violation of the Sunday amusement prohibitions.
1914 - Fifteen inches of snow falls in Wood County.
1935 - Toledo Mayor Solon Klotz vetoes an ordinance that would close grocery stores on Sundays. He considers the law unconstitutional.
1943 - Some Maumee High School boys wear skirts to school in protest of girls who are starting to wear slacks.
1953 - Toledo police uncover 15 pints of nitro-glycerin buried at Willys Park and then bring in an explosives expert to detonate it on site. The nitro had been buried three years before, by a would-be safe cracker.