HEADLINES IN HISTORY
What was making news in our area during this week in years past? The History Museum offers these newspaper excerpts to give you an idea.
Dec. 31, 1900: “The Mishawaka Woolen Manufacturing company, one of the largest concerns of its character in the world, will not yield to the importunities, demands and threats of the rubber trust, but proposes to follow along the lines of careful business policy, the best goods of the kind made, reasonable profits and good wages for its employees established long ago and which have made the company the great, strong and progressive institution that it is to-day.”
Jan. 1, 1912: “Write it 1912! The birth of the new year was hailed last night throughout the city with noisy demonstrations, song, story, feasting and red fire. While the new year was receiving its joyous welcome, old 1911 was not forgotten. Speakers at watch night services and other gatherings told of the good things that had been recorded on the history pages of the dying twelvemonth. Remembering the proverb, ‘Say nothing but good of the dead,’ they refrained from recalling the disasters, and other dire things that were also recorded.”
Jan. 2, 1924: “Members of the South Bend International Optimist club will at 6:45 o’clock this evening go to the Pierre Navarre cabin in Leeper park where they will be the guests at dinner of the Optimist Super troop of Boy Scouts.”
Jan. 3, 1932: “One thousand, eight hundred eighty-one airplanes of the Trans-American Airlines stopped at and took off from the municipal airport during 1931, according to an announcement Saturday by Carl Fites, South Bend agent for the company.”
Jan. 4, 1944: “A dense fog which halted air and street traffic in Chicago enveloped South Bend this morning and limited the visibility to a quarter mile at 8:15 o’clock. By noon, however, the fog dispersed sufficiently to increase the visibility to three-quarters of a mile.”
Jan. 5, 1956: “A blaze in a clothes dryer in the plant of the Ziker Cleaners, 251 E. Sample St., caused damage estimated at $150 shortly after 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. Firemen said that a spark in the tumbling action of the dryer ignited lint, with the flames traveling through a ventilating shaft to the motor, which was burned out.”
Jan. 6, 1962: “Twelfth Night religious ceremonies scheduled for tonight at Pinhook Park were called off today after a huge pile of discarded Christmas trees, intended to be burned as part of the service, were set afire prematurely by vandals."