April 19, 1910.
Mayor Bennett and Lansing’s aldermen have been placed in an embarrassing position. “It seems that city officials who attend these annual meetings, at the expense of the taxpayers in most instances, to obtain valuable ideas from others regarding methods of conducting municipal affairs are not now in favor of having their meeting in dry Lansing.” The Detroit delegation are the prime movers of having the convention switched to Saginaw, or some other wet city. At the last meeting Mayor Bennett had assured the membership that Lansing would remain wet and would offer the attendees a good time!
Source : “Dry Lansing May Lose Convention; Movement Started To Transfer State Municipal League Meeting to Saginaw”, Detroit Free Press, April 20, 1910.
Note : The Main Library now provides the MSU community online access to the historical Detroit Free Press from 1858 through 1922.
Throughout his long career as a scientist of the first magnitude and popular speaker at prestigious scientific gatherings, Glenn Seaborg always liked to mention that he was born in Ishpeming and “I can see by the looks on your faces that are a few people here who don’t know where Ishpeming is. Well let me put your minds at ease : It’s right next to Negaunee!”
Seaborg who died in 1999 was a scientist of the first order — probably the most esteemed scientist to be born in the Great Lakes State. His list of accomplishments is long and varied; at the top is the Nobel Prize for Chemistry and the 1991 National Medal of Science (the U.S.’s highest award for scientific achievement) as well as the discovery or co-discovery of 10 elements and 100 isotopes. He was a trusted advisor to 10 Presidents and an internationally respected figure in the field of atomic energy. He was a key contributor to the Manhattan Project during World War II, allowing the U.S. to win the race in developing the atomic bomb which led to the end of the war. Seaborg was also one of the seven signers of a letter to President Truman asking him to drop the bomb on a deserted Pacific Island rather than on a Japanese city. Later in life he would travel to more than 60 countries to promote international cooperation in science and the peaceful uses of atomic and nuclear energy, as well as helping negotiate the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and laying the groundwork for the later Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In addition to an element (106, Seaborgium) and an asteroid, dozens of research centers, scholarships, and awards still carry his name.
Source : Peggy House, “Glenn Seaborg Citizen-Scholar”, Michigan History, March/April 2015, pp.15-20.
On April 19, 1917, Gov. Albert Sleeper created the Michigan State Troops Permanent Force, also known as the Michigan State Constabulary. With Col. Roy C. Vandercook as the first commanding officer, this new force consisted of five troops of mounted, dismounted and motorized units.
On March 26, 1919, Public Act 26 reorganized the Constabulary as the permanent, peace-time Michigan State Police. When Michigan adopted a new Constitution in 1963, authorizing up to 20 departments, Public Act 380 of 1965 reorganized the MSP as one of these departments. The Director of the MSP holds the rank of Colonel and is appointed by the Governor.
Today, the MSP is a modern-day, full-service law enforcement agency with statewide jurisdiction consisting of nearly 2,500 enforcement and civilian members. For more information on the MSP, visit http://www.michigan.gov/msp
For historical photos, visit the Michigan State Police Facebook Page.
Michigan State Police history
April 19, 1917: The Michigan State Troops Permanent Force, also known as the Michigan State Constabulary, was founded. It initially was created as an emergency force to protect homeland security as the threat of World War I loomed.1917: The institution’s wooden headquarters was built on a 90-acre parcel of land leased from Michigan Agricultural College, now Michigan State University.
1924: The Michigan State Police began using motorcycles instead of calvary units as its main form of transportation. Marked patrol cars were not used until 1929.
1935: The School of Police Administration and Public Safety, now known as the MSU School of Criminal Justice, was founded. Administrators and representatives of the Michigan State Police wanted to provide students the opportunity to learn police tactics while still in college.
1970s: Portions of the East Lansing Michigan State Police Post began to be sourced to other areas to accommodate for the institution’s growth and to create space for new technology.
March 2012: The Michigan State Police Post in East Lansing was formally decommissioned by Michigan State Police officials. The land will be returned to the university by May 1, and the buildings currently on the property are slated to be demolished.
Source: Phillip Schertzing and the Michigan State Police
For more information, see Lauren Gibbons, “Michigan State Police History Month celebrates MSU roots”, State News, April 11, 2012.
For another see Justin A. Hinkley, “Happy birthday, State Police”, Lansing State Journal, April 23, 2015.
Kathleen Gray, “Michigan State Police celebrates 100th birthday“, Detroit Free Press, April 19, 2017.
On April 19, 1927, Ty Tyson provided the play-by-play on WWJ for the first radio broadcast of a regular season Detroit Tiger game, an 8-5 win over Cleveland Indians.
Listen to Tyson announcing a game September 20, 1934 NY Yankees Vs Detroit Tigers
Source : Detroit Historical Society Facebook page.
For more information, see “Ty Tyson, the world’s first sports broadcaster”, Detroit News, February 1, 1996.
Ty Tyson wikipedia entry.
On this date, two Detroit statues were forever linked by a spring prank, possibly undertaken by a University of Detroit fraternity but never proved. That night, huge green footprints were painted from “The Sprit of Detroit” (the big green guy outside the City-County Building, now the Coleman A. Young Municipal Building) to the “Passo di Dazna”, the nude woman in front of the former Michigan Consolidated Gas Building. According to a Detroit Free Press story on the following day, “Did the Jolly Green Giant have a date across the street?”
Source : Zlati Meyer, “You haven’t lived here until..you know the love story of two Detroit statues and their late-night rendezvous”, Detroit Free Press, June 9, 2013.
Spirit of Detroit entry from Encyclopedia of Detroit
It was April 19, 1973 when hundreds of craters and geysers mysteriously appeared around the small Northern Michigan community of Williamsburg near Traverse City. The 100 to 150 craters ranged from teacup-size fissures to sinkholes measuring up to 25 feet wide and 15 feet deep.
State officials eventually determined the outbreak was caused by gas seeping underground from a natural gas drilling operation four miles away, but not before most of the town’s 450 people were evacuated and displaced for months.
M-72, a highway that was just 3 years old at the time of the incident, was virtually destroyed and the community’s town hall was also threatened, according to a United Press International story published on April 20, 1973.
“The town hall was on the verge of toppling today as gaseous, bubbling craters popped open threatening a massive gas eruption,” the article stated.
“The earth around town hall is almost completely eaten up,” said Grand Traverse County Police Sgt. Tom Schmuckal in the article. “It is less than a foot from surrounding the entire foundation.”
Well E1-22, located south of Williamsburg and owned by Amoco Production Co., then a subsidiary Standard Oil of Indiana, was first indicted by a Department of Natural Resources spokesmen as the cause of the eruptions in the article. The well was immediately sealed.
Many feared that a single spark could set off a massive explosion in the community. The DNR issued an emergency order on April 24, 1973 which required drillers of all new wells to install a layer of protective casing extending below porous rock formations through which the gas can leak.
For the full article, see Brandon Champion, “Natural gas leak nearly destroyed Michigan village this week in 1973“, MLive, April 21, 2016.
On April 19, 1995, a truck-bomb explosion outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, left 168 people dead and hundreds more injured. The blast was set off by anti-government militant Timothy McVeigh, who in 2001 was executed for his crimes. His co-conspirator Terry Nichols received life in prison. Until September 11, 2001, the Oklahoma City bombing was the worst terrorist attack to take place on U.S. soil. Both men were found to be members of a radical right-wing survivalist group based in Michigan.
| Oklahoma City bombing | |
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The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building two days after the bombing
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Sources:
Oklahoma City Bombing via History.com
Oklahoma City Bombing wikipedia entry.
Dominic Adams, “Oklahoma City bombing memories fade in rural Michigan town at center of plot”, MLive, April 19, 2015.
A small earthquake rattled parts of Ontario and southeast Michigan on Thursday night and sent startled residents outside and online looking for answers.
A magnitude 3.6 quake — the largest in Michigan since 1947 — originated near Amherstburg, Ontario, according to the United States Geological Survey, just across the Detroit River, about 15.5 miles south of Detroit, and was felt at least 40 miles away in parts of Downriver and Dearborn.
For the full article, see 3.6 earthquake shakes Ontario, Downriver“,
Whoa! 3.6-magnitude earthquake rattles southeast Michigan“, Detroit Free Press, April 19, 2018.
April 2o, 1861 : Eight days after South Carolina fires on Fort Sumter, starting the Civil War, government officials in Detroit flood the Griswold Street post office to take an oath of allegiance. Photo courtesy of the University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library.
The nation’s first mile of concrete highway is laid.
With Detroit moving rapidly to become the nation’s automobile capital, residents demanded better roads. In response, the Wayne County Road Commission laid the first stretch of concrete highway on Woodward Avenue between Six and Seven Mile roads. Cost: $13,000.
Sources :
This Day in History, courtesy of the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University.
Scott Pohl, “‘One Mile’ : The history of Detroit’s First Concrete Road“, WKAR, July 11, 2016
This Week in Michigan History, Detroit Free Press, April 20, 2008, B.4.