This Week In Toledo History

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.
1913 - Bodies of those killed in Battle of Lake Erie at South Bass Island are reburied in the rotunda of the still unfinished Perry’s Monument.
1970 - Toledo Police Patrolman William Miscannon 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 shot to death near his home as he attempts to rescue his daughter during an attack by the notorious Cook brothers.

Sept. 19
1863 - Battle of Chickamauga begins with Toledo’s 14th Regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry, commanded by General James Blair Steedman, in the thick of it. The unit took many casualties in this deadly Civil War battle in Tennessee and Northwest Georgia.
1864 - Plot by Confederate conspirators in Canada to hijack passenger boats on Lake Erie and use them to free the rebel prisoners at the POW camp on Johnson’s Island is thwarted. The leader of the plot, John Yates Beall, is later executed on orders of President Lincoln.
1884 - Earthquake tremors felt in Toledo and throughout Northern Ohio.
1929 - Roger Conant, curator of reptiles at Toledo Zoo, is bitten by rattlesnake at the zoo. The bite is very serious and Conant develops lock jaw and loses a thumb.

Sept. 20
1864 - Toledo ends the volunteer police force and begins formation of paid police department.
1898 - Toledo’s deadliest fire occurs when flames race through the Paddock and Hodge Grain Works in East Toledo. Fourteen people die in the explosions and fires. Some of the victims were children who were visiting their fathers at work.
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 and power is cut off to 150 communities.
1985 - Young Michael Palicki becomes a Toledo policeman and in doing so, joins the first father-mother-son police family in the Toledo police ranks. Father is Dan Palicki, who joined in 1963, while his mother Barbara Palicki joined in 1972.

Sept. 21
1904 - Home rental ads in Toledo list a small cottage in East Toledo at $6 a month, or a new two-story home on Cherry at $30 a month.
1911 - A large bull being led to the slaughter pens in the West Toledo stockyards escapes and goes on a rampage ripping up fences and lawns and terrorizing the neighborhood Police finally corner and rope the beast which sold the next day for 8 cents a pound.
1921 - A huge boatload of grapes arrives at Toledo's riverfront from Kelly's Island. They are to be sold at $3.25 a bushel. The grape producers, affected by prohibition, are now selling product directly to consumers to use as they might during this time of prohibition.
1934 Waite High School’s new 15,000-seat football stadium is dedicated. Waite Indians defeat visiting team - from the Mooseheart School for Boys in Illinois, 6-3.
1966 - A riot occurs at Toledo House of Corrections. The riot was triggered by the capture of an escapee. Other inmates however begin yelling and fighting with guards.

Sept. 22
1863 - A rail collision in Perrysburg involving a troop train carrying Union army recruits from the area. The crash sends two of the boxcars off the tracks and in splinters. Two recruits from Webster Twp. 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. The officers said he was too heavy for the scales.
1914 - Milburn Wagon Works in Toledo says it will produce electric automobiles at the factory. The first Milburn Electric was produced the next year. The company turned out 4,000 electric vehicles before it was sold in 1923.
1924 - Seven Toledo area men stage a nighttime armed raid on several farm homes near Lambertville, looking for a stolen alcohol still. The houses were riddled with bullets and the families escaped, however one of the farmers was wounded.
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 operations through the city would cease as air and car travel became even more popular.
1990 - Just six short years after it opened, Portside Festival Marketplace in downtown Toledo is shut down. The doors are padlocked and this retail center that was intended to spark the revitalization of downtown Toledo was abandoned.

Sept. 23
1858 - Balloonist from Adrian is accidentally taken aloft in giant balloon in Riga Township, Michigan and 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 becoming a new pastime on the Maumee River after it was revealed 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 it for $200.
1967 - Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Bono, Ohio is dedicated.

Sept. 24
1911 - Three workers from Italy are found dead in the quarry at Kelly's Island. The victims are believed to have been victims of murder. A fellow immigrant is later found guilty of the murders and executed.
1936 - Teamster union leader Jimmy Hoffa drives down from Detroit and gets married in Bowling Green at the Wood County court house because there is no waiting time in Wood County.
1937 - A 12-year-old Toledo boy shoots and wounds June Mapes, the principal at Arlington School. The boy then flees the school grounds and shoots himself. Both student and Mapes recover. Police say the young boy had violent delusions of radio gangsters but the boy says he just wanted the teacher to take him out for ice cream.
1967 - Advertisement for McDonald’s in Toledo says they can feed a family of five for $2.55.