Michigan State University Museum has this original Sparty costume in its collections. It’s very popular during collection tours.
Source : MSU Archives Tweet, April 10, 2019
Political leaders representing the City of Detroit, the State of Michigan and the halls of Congress reflected Monday on the life and contributions of the Rev. Nicholas Hood Sr., who served the Detroit community in the political and religious arenas for several decades.
Rev. Hood served on the Detroit City Council for 28 years, according to his biography on his church’s website, before retiring in 1993. Elected to the council in 1965, Rev. Hood worked to help economically disadvantaged, those who were discriminated against and developmentally‑disabled adults.
Rev. Hood also founded Cyprian Center in honor his daughter, Sarah Cyprian Hood, according to his biography, to help developmentally‑disabled adults. Rev. Hood has served on many governing and advisory boards including the advisory board of the Federal National Mortgage Association, the Detroit Economic Development Corp. and the Hannan Foundation.
Hood himself dealt with with a childhood spinal deformity that was corrected through extensive surgery and therapy at the Children’s Hospital of Indiana after he graduated from high school in Terre Haute, Ind., where he was the last of eight children born to Orestes and Daisy Hood, according to an an online autobiography.
He wore a steel body brace on his upper body during his freshman year at Purdue University, where he majored in biology and chemistry in preparation for entering medical school.
It was at Purdue, Hood wrote, that his career plan changed. He said he spent his spare time working with a Methodist student group on building bridges across the racial divide in rural, white churches in northwest Indiana, and he decided to make that his life work. He later spent a year studying liberal arts at North Central College in Naperville, Ill., from which he was the first African American to receive a degree. He enrolled at Yale University Divinity School in 1946 and graduated in 1949.
His first assignment was as pastor of the Central Congregational Church in New Orleans, and was one of the founding members of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. served as leader.
In 1958, Hood moved to Detroit to become senior pastor at Plymouth Congregational Church. His son, the Rev. Nicholas Hood III, is its current pastor and senior minister.
At the church, the senior Rev. Hood created a housing ministry and spearheaded the building and development of the 230-unit Medical Center Courts apartments in 1963, according to his biography. In 1975, Rev. Hood led the construction of the Medical Center Village Apartments, which consisted of 450 apartments, town homes and high‑rise building for senior citizens.
For the full article, see Rev. Nicholas Hood Sr., religious, civic leader, dies“,
Renamed street honors former pastor, civic leader Hood“,
Street sign dedication ceremony for Rev. Nicholas Hood, Sr.”,
April 10, 2017 : For the second night in a row, metro Detroit will bid farewell to a sports arena. On Sunday, it was the Detroit Red Wings playing their final game at Joe Louis Arena. Tonight, the Detroit Pistons host the Washington Wizards at 8 p.m. for the last game at the Palace of Auburn Hills, ending a 29-year tenure. The teams will share new Little Caesars Arena beginning in September.
For the full article, see Bill Shea, “After 29 years, Pistons say goodbye to the Palace tonight“, Crain’s Detroit Business, April 10, 2017.
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James Vernor, Sr. was an American pharmacist, druggist, and American Civil War Lieutenant who became famous for the invention of Vernor’s Ginger Ale. Born on April 11, 1843 in Albany, New York, Vernor moved to Detroit, Michigan with his parents during his youth. As an employee at Higby and Sterns’ Drug Store in Detroit, Vernor began to experiment with flavors in an attempt to create a new recipe for ginger ale. With the onset of the American Civil War, he enlisted and served with the 4th Michigan Cavalry in 1862. Serving in the military until 1865, Vernor became a Second Lieutenant before being discharged.
According to Vernors company legend, before Vernor left to serve in the Civil War, he stored some of his experimental ginger ale in an oak cask. When he returned to Detroit four years later, he opened the cask and found that the drink had been changed by the aging process, tasting even better than it had before. He declared the ginger ale to be “Deliciously Different,” which became one of the many slogans for the drink. However, in a 1936 interview, son James Vernor, Jr. suggested that his father did not develop the formula until after the war, a theory confirmed by former company president James Vernor Davis in a 1962 interview. Around 1880, Vernor opened his own drug store on Woodward Avenue at the corner of Clifford Street, where he sold “Vernor’s Ginger Ale” at the store’s soda fountain. He closed the drug store in 1896, opening a soda fountain closer to the center of the city on Woodward Avenue, south of Jefferson near the riverfront ferry docks, so that he could concentrate solely on his soda business.
Vernor’s Ginger Ale was originally a local drink that was only available in Detroit. However, Vernor quickly opened a manufacturing and bottling plant, which soon made his famous beverage available across the Midwestern United States. Vernors was bottled in Detroit for more than one hundred years, finally ending production in 1985. Today, the soda is made by the Dr. Pepper Corporation, so it has a much larger realm of distribution than ever before. Vernors has become one of the best known brands of ginger ale throughout the world but remains the most popular in the Midwestern United States.
Although he will always be most well known for creating Vernors Ginger Ale, James Vernor was also one of the original members of the Michigan Board of Pharmacy, which was formed in 1887, and he held License No. 1 throughout his career. In addition, he served on the Detroit City Council for 25 years. On October 29, 1927, at the age of 84, James Vernor died in Grosse Ile, Michigan from pneumonia and influenza.
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| A view of the the original store that was opened in 1866 by James Vernor at 235 Woodward Avenue at the corner of Clifford Street. The view shows the front and side of a 3-story brick building with the address and name, “235 James Vernor 235,” shown over the front door. It was in this store that the pharmacist developed Vernors Ginger Ale. Photo courtesy of the Detroit Historical Society. |
Source : Julia Teran, Encyclopedia of Detroit
Wunderlich, Keith (2008). Vernors Ginger Ale. Arcadia Publishing
Visit the MSU Special Collections Rare Books and consult Vernor’s ginger ale recipes : invigorating ; easy to make… deliciously different (1953) to come up with a special concoction!
On April 11, 1884 the first effort in the country to introduce brown trout took place in Lake County.
The 4,900 fry came from Germany, and took hold in Michigan’s waters.
Source: Michigan Every Day
On this day in 1888, 24-year-old Henry Ford marries Clara Jane Bryant on her 22nd birthday at her parent’s home in Greenfield Township, Michigan. Clara Ford would prove to be a big supporter of her husband’s business ideas: Fifty years later, Henry Ford–who by then had founded the Ford Motor Company, invented the top-selling Model T car and revolutionized the auto industry with his mass-production technology–was quoted in a 1938 New York Times Magazine article as saying, “The greatest day of my life is when I married Mrs. Ford.”
The couple, both of whom came from farm families, first met at a New Year’s dance in Michigan in 1885. During their courtship, they enjoyed such activities as dancing, corn-husking parties and boating excursions. According to “Clara: Mrs. Henry Ford,” a biography by Ford R. Bryan: “The two were impressed by each other, Clara with Henry’s unique mechanical talents and Henry with Clara’s serious and appreciative disposition.” They were engaged in April 1886, but the future bride’s mother thought she was too young to wed and made them wait another two years.
After their marriage, the Fords lived on farm land given to Henry by his father. By 1891, however, the couple moved to Detroit, where Henry Ford began working as an engineer for Edison Illuminating Company. The couple’s only child, Edsel, was born in November 1893. In 1896, Ford completed a four-wheel, self-propelled vehicle with a gasoline engine called the Quadricycle. During the early years of their marriage, the couple lived in 10 different rental homes while Henry worked to develop an automobile. After incorporating the Ford Motor Company in 1903, Henry launched the Model T in 1908. The car, which was in production until 1927, held the record for the world’s top-selling vehicle until it was surpassed by the Volkswagen Beetle in 1972.
In 1915, the Fords moved into a mansion built on land they owned in Dearborn, Michigan. The home, named Fair Lane, included an indoor swimming pool, billiard room, bowling alley and dance floor, as the Fords had always liked to dance. Clara Ford managed the estate staff, pursued such interests as gardening and traveled around the world on business trips with Henry.
Henry Ford died at the age of 83 on April 7, 1947; Clara Ford died three years later, on September 29, 1950, at the age of 84. Their son Edsel, who worked for the family business, preceded both his parents in death, dying at the age of 49 from cancer on May 26, 1943.
Source : “Henry Ford Marries”, This Day in History, History Channel, April 2010.
“Clara Bryant Ford: Henry’s “Great Believer“, Ford Motor Company.
On 11, 1936, the Detroit Red Wings defeated Toronto and won their first Stanley Cup.
A huge crowd gathered at Michigan Central Station to welcome the team home from Toronto the day after it won Lord Stanley’s cup for the Motor City.
Source :
Historical Society of Michigan.
Zlati Meyer, “This week in Michigan history: Red Wings win first Stanley Cup”, Detroit Free Press, April 6, 2014
The World War Two era saw some of the largest civil rights protests in Michigan history focused on ending discrimination in area hiring and segregation in housing, notably at Willow Run. Here, Detroit demonstrators called by the NAACP and the UAW-CIO march down Theodore St. to Cadillac Square to end Jim Crow in Michigan. April 11, 1943.
The tornado outbreak on Palm Sunday 1965 was the deadliest in Michigan’s recorded history.
The series of storms April 11 killed 53 people and injured at least 100 more, according to the National Weather Service.
Twelve tornadoes were reported that day, including two F4s that followed almost the exact same path eastward through Branch, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties. The first one hit at 7p.m., the second 40 minutes later.
Spinning columns of air devastated parts of the Midwest that day, including Indiana and Ohio. In 12 hours, 47 tornadoes killed 271 people, injured approximately 3,400 others and caused more than $200 million in damage ($1.4 billion in today’s dollars).
The violent weather ripped the roof off a fire station in Unionville in Tuscola County; killed most of the 20,000 scattered chickens at a farm in Burnips in Allegan County; knocked down 72 telephone poles between Grand Rapids and Big Rapids; ripped the chimney off Milan Junior High School and destroyed the roof, and made six new homes in the Westgate subdivision north of Grand Rapids vanish.
Sources :
This Week in Michigan History, Detroit Free Press, April 8, 2012.
Andrew Krietz, “Deadly Palm Sunday tornado survivors recall ‘end of the world’ 50 years later”, MLive, April 12, 2015.
On April 11, 2000, the first home opener at Comerica Park took place, with the Tigers defeating the Seattle Mariners 5-2 before a crowd of 39,168 that braved sleet and temperatures in the 30s to be a part of history.
Source : Detroit Historical Society Facebook page