This Week In Toledo History

March 31-April 6

March 31
1892 - Lynch mob of 1,000 breaks into county jail in Findlay and abducts Joseph Lytle who was being held on charges of killing his wife and daughter with an ax. The mob drags Lytle outside and hangs him from a telegraph pole where he is then riddled with bullets.
1909 - Toledo labor official expresses concern that young boys aren’t entering the harness-making trade. He fears that there will soon be no harness-makers left in the city.
1924 - Toledo police deploy their new “sponge squad” designed to clean up the illegal booze in the city. They go to numerous locations and round up more than 70 people for bootlegging.
1949 - Pinball machine cash payouts outlawed in the City of Toledo.
1973 - Singer Patrice Munsel, performing at the Masonic Auditorium in Toledo, is reunited with her pet boa constrictor "George" after leaving it in a Lansing, Michigan hotel.

April 1
1903 - Ground is broken at Elmore for the Toledo-Port Clinton Lakeside Railroad. It would be the first Interurban passenger and freight line to run eastward from Toledo. It would later become the Ohio Public Service line.
1918 - Toledo police officer Louis Jazwiecki dies after being shot the previous night during an arrest attempt of two men at Erie and Walnut.
1941 - WPA announces opening of second “toy lending library” in Toledo to help poor children.
1943 - It is reported that Nelson and Bernard Moss – a father and son from Toledo – have enlisted in the Navy and are now at boot camp together at Great Lakes Training Center near Chicago.
1969 - City bulldozers destroy the 50- year-old “Garden of Eden” created by the minister Cassius Hettinger at his home on Upton Ave. The odd statuary of sea shells and concrete hosted many weddings and busloads of weekend tourists over many decades.

April 2
1920 - Tiedtke’s Department Store says it expects to sell more than 1,000 bunny rabbits during Easter this year.
1932 - Lake freighter sailors report another sighting of the phantom rum runner, the “Grey Ghost”. The boatmen say they saw visions of the ghostly lost craft near Pelee Island in the waters of Lake Erie. The cruiser has been spotted almost every season since it vanished in 1929.
1943 -Toledo Rockets basketball team loses NIT championship game to St. Johns 47-27 at Madison Square Garden in New York.
1997 - Toledo born scientist and visionary, Lyman Spitzer Jr., passes away at the age of 82. Spitzer was best known as the man who envisioned the Hubble Space Telescope and oversaw the project from its inception to its launch into space.

April 3
1924 - Canton Avenue druggist Meyer Selzman and three clerks arrested for manslaughter in the deaths of 18 men, who died from poisoned alcohol they consumed from Selzman’s drugstore. Selzman is later convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.
1957 - Flame and smoke snuff out lives of 27 race horses in blaze at Fort Miami Racetrack at Maumee. It is not known what started the tragic blaze.
1984 - Last edition of the East Toledo Sun is published.

April 4
1908 - The 524-foot lake freighter “Fred Hartwell” is launched at the Toledo Shipbuilding Company.
1915 - The Niagara Hotel in 300 block of Summit Street destroyed by fire. A newlywed couple from Adrian, Michigan is killed in the blaze.
1919 - A “monster” parade of thousands is lead by Mayor Schreiber to welcome home the more than 1500 soldiers who had been serving in the trenches of Europe in World War One.
1920 - Safecrackers break into safe at Grace Smith’s cafeteria in downtown Toledo, getting away with at least $1,000 in cash.

April 5
1867 - Ohio legislature creates a full-time police force in Toledo and released city marshals from their duties.
1897 - Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones, one of Toledo’s most colorful and controversial mayors, is elected to office. The Welsh born self-made millionaire was an ardent social reformer and is considered one of the most influential mayors in U.S. History.
1918 - Grace Doyle, 20, school teacher near Perrysburg hailed as a hero for flagging down a troop train at Roachton Road that was about to hit a saboteur's barricade of spiked planks across the tracks.
1957 - Lake Freighter Champlain ripped loose from its moorings on Maumee River by 90 mph winds and crashes into Fassett Street Bridge in South Toledo. The bridge is never rebuilt.
April 6
1906 - Construction begins on Camp Perry near Port Clinton in Ottawa County.
1932 - In Genoa, grocers Nick Cashen and Al Camper are selling bread for 7 cents a loaf this week and a 24-pound bag of flour is just 69 cents.
1941 - Commercial fishermen on Lake Erie complain that raw sewage pollution being pumped into the lake is killing too many fish.
1977 - Kenny Rogers' hit song Lucille, which takes place in a "bar room in Toledo" reaches number one on the record charts.
1990 - The end of a Toledo industrial era as Champion Spark Plug of Toledo announces the closing of its Toledo plant after 80 years of operation.