This Week In Toledo History

July 23
1927 - The arrest of Joe Foley at Union Station in Toledo gets national press attention when it's revealed the dapper looking lad who once worked the lake freighters, is actually Alice Lovejoy of Massachusetts.
1928 - Aviatrix Amelia Earhart visits Toledo and is given special medal from Roulet Jewelers.
1942 - Residents of West Toledo sickened after rolling clouds of sulfur gas escape from a chemical factory and blanket the area near Eleanor and Lewis avenues.
1963- Lucas County Fairgrounds opens in Maumee for first time.

July 24
1877 - Civil War hero General James Steedman takes populist stand and urges Toledoans to stage a general strike for higher wages.
1899 - Million-dollar grain elevator fire erupts in East Toledo along the riverfront as 900,000 bushels of grain are destroyed.
1901 - Toledo city officials determine they have found the oldest buildings in the city. The oldest wooden cottage is on Lagrange St. next to the Lagrange Street School, built in the 1830. And the oldest brick building at Summit and Cherry is Newcomer Drugs. Estimated to have been built in 1831.
1941 - The “unsafe” steel highway bridge over the Maumee River at Waterville collapses, sending a milk truck into the waters below. The driver and helper receive minor injuries. Local residents had been warning the state for years about the old span.
1967 - Deadly race riots terrorize the streets of Detroit. Five people are killed and a thousand injured in a widening melee of civil unrest.

July 25
1914 - Toledo Beach advertises that the Lotus Blossoms on the lagoons are in full bloom. It is the only place in America with such a “profusion” of these “sacred flowers of the Nile”.
1942-The “Red Hot Mama” Sophie Tucker appears in Toledo to sing for sailors at the Hollywood Theater Cafe.
1951- Three UT Basketball players indicted in New York for fixing point margin in a game against Niagara University in 1950 season.
1963 - New A & P store opens on Navarre in Oregon.
1967 - Racially charged rioting erupts on city streets of Toledo as fires are set amid heavy looting and vandalism. Police keep control, but arrest 60 people during the melee.

July 26
1877 - A national train strike begins. Toledo Streets are patrolled by citizens trying to avert any mob violence in the streets.
1904 - Toledo News Bee reports that local “Chinamen” in Toledo are the frequent buyers in a growing market for opium.
1932 - Eighty-one-year-old vagrant James Leiby, who wandered the U.S. for decades, dies in Toledo. Hospital nurses find $6,900 in cash pinned beneath his heavy clothes.
1967 - Second night of rioting and arson continues on Toledo city streets. Some police officers pelted with rocks and bottles.

July 27
1887 - A natural gas standpipe at Cherry Street Bridge is opened amid great celebration as giant flames are ignited, heralding a new era of “cheap gas” and an economic boom.
1897 - “Old Klondike,” Toledo’s first oil well, hits a small gusher on Millard Avenue in East Toledo. It flowed so hard that men were paid a dollar a day to help build a dike around it to contain the oil.
1936 - A brawl between several local toughs and 13 Toledo Police officers breaks out at the Speedway Inn in the 3100 block of Lagrange.
1972 - Toledo’s most famous “stripper”, and Town Hall burlesque theater owner, Rose La Rose, dies of cancer at the age of 59.

July 28
1813 - British army attacks Ft. Stephenson in Fremont, but is repelled by the American troops and the clever use of a cannon named “Old Betsy”.
1909 -Toledo police conduct a raid on an opium den in 700 block of Washington and find several people smoking the drug and a 7-month-old baby boy lying nearby. The baby is rescued from the den.
1945 - One-hundred-thousand people witness a spectacular mock battle as 1000 marines and 40 Navy planes storm the beach at Riverside Park to demonstrate what American troops face in the war.
1948 - Toledo men Robert Bauman and John Riddle, for second year in a row, win the Fort Wayne to Toledo canoe race on the Maumee River for the annual Aquarama Fest. Total time for the 135-mile journey: 25 hours and 38 minutes.

July 29
1891 - Explosion at sawmill in Cummings, Ohio (now a ghost town near Moline) in Wood County. Four men are killed.
1915 - BGSU (then Bowling Green Normal School) holds first commencement at a downtown Bowling Green theater
1920 - A tombstone from the government of Italy has arrived in Toledo to be placed on the grave of
Toledo hero, Joseph M. King who is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery. King, a Red Cross ambulance driver was killed on the Italian front in 1918 by German shelling. The first Toledoan to die in Italy.
1940 - An arson-caused fire destroys the historic Horton Hall in Perrysburg’s downtown. The massive home was believed to have hosted many important guests, including President Harrison and Daniel Webster.
1958 - Pennsylvania Railroad says it will be shutting down three of its passenger routes out of Toledo to Pittsburgh leaving only one passenger train a day.