Annie Edson Taylor, a Niagara Falls daredevil, died on this day.
On October 24, 1901, Annie Edson Taylor, a teacher of dance and physical culture in Bay City, Michigan, became the first person and the only woman to survive a ride over Canada’s Niagara Falls in a barrel. Seeking a new career that would earn her fame and fortune, Taylor plunged over the falls in a specially designed barrel and suffered no injuries. She called herself “the Queen of the Mist” and toured around the nation with a replica of her original barrel.
Source : Michigan Historical Calendar, Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University.
To the chagrin of St. Joseph, Michigan, Governor Alexander Groesbeck announced on April 30, 1925 he was putting an end to instant marriages in Michigan, requiring a five day waiting period after a license was issued before a wedding could legally take place.
From the end of the 1800s through the summer of 1925, thousands of couples from Chicago would elope by steamer to St. Joseph for quickie marriages, making St. Joseph the Las Vegas of this period.
However, the new law would not take effect until August 27, allowing the summer brides ample time to tie the knot before the new waiting period took effect.
Source : Colleen Burcar, It Happened in Michigan (Guilford, CT : Globe Pequot Press, c2010)
How long will someone walk for $1,000 in cash? During the Depression, it was 88 days, four hours, 20 minutes and 30 seconds. It began on January 31; it concluded on April 30, 1935, more than 12 weeks.
In 1935, an interstate walkathon was sponsored by the Regent Cafe, 218 E. Cortland St., Jackson, Michigan. The grueling event drew 42 couples and four individuals.
The winning pair was team No. 6, consisting of Tommy McGeer of Detroit and Jackie Airgood of Pontiac. The pair hoofed around the former Elks Temple, 312 S. Jackson St., the building that is now the Jackson County Courthouse. Walkers circled the dance floor while the spectators kept watch from the surrounding balcony.
For the full article with picture, see Susanne Weible, “Walkers strolled around dance floor for 88 days”, Jackson Citizen Patriot, September 29, 2008.
On April 30, 1954, following several ceremonial speeches, a London-bound DC6B “Great Lakes Clipper” sped down a lone runway past a skinny control tower and climbed into sunny skies as the first passenger flight to lift off from Wayne Major (now Metropolitan) Airport.
Source: Mich-Again’s Day
John Sinclair, Joe Mulkey and Billy Reid of the Detroit Artists Workshop after obtaining the license to hold the Love-In from the City of Detroit at Police Headquarters at 1300 Beaubien in the spring of 1967.
It was April 30, 1967.
The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper” album was to be released in just one month, celebrating love, peace, and flowers. But beating it to the punch was Detroit’s Belle Isle Love-In, kicking off the infamous 1967 “Summer of Love”.
News media at the time described it with words like ‘drug-laden’… ‘protests’… ‘rebellion’… ‘rioting’… ‘stoners’… and an ‘uprising’.
It was, in reality, very peaceful. At least for six hours.
So what defines a love-in?
Dancing, colorful clothing, all races getting along, music, peaceful protesting, painted faces, meditating, gifts, beads, artwork, loving, balloons, food, long robes, chanting, flowers, bare feet, candy, touching, and yeah, some drugs here and there.
Announcement in the Ann Arbor Sun, April, 1967
The 1967 love-in was arranged by John Sinclair and other members of the Detroit Artists Workshop, who were granted a permit by the police to hold the event. Of course, the police sent their own troops in to make sure everything didn’t get too out of control. Thousands of kids – hippies, non-hippies, bikers, straights, you-name-it…all began arriving that morning…approximately 8,000 of ’em. Traffic was backed up for miles and it took drivers over an hour just to get across the bridge. Compared with the 2000s, it seems so amazing that all these different kids got along. Yup…..bikers, hippies, and kids of all races got along together just fine.
Plus, music was being provided by The MC5.
Hours later, as night began to fall, the police brought out the shotguns and riot gear to get everyone off the island. This was the only blot on an otherwise peaceful, pleasant day for those involved.
Sources :
John Robinson, “FLASHBACK: The Detroit Love-In at Belle Isle, 1967 “, 99.1 WFMK Blog, February 17, 2021.
Michael Jackman, “Fifty years ago this weekend: The Belle Isle Love-In“, The Metro Times, April 28, 2017.
“The Belle Isle Love-In of Detroit” courtesy of Detroit Artists Workshop.
The state loaned the nearly bankrupt Chrysler Corporation $150,000,000 in an attempt to save the jobs of thousands of Chrysler workers. With union cooperation and new designs including the K-car and the minivan, Chrysler returned to profitability and repaid all its state and federal obligations.
Source : The Historical Society of Michigan
More about Chrysler’s bailout from Encyclopedia Britannica.
Only weeks after the news broke that tennis star Arthur Ashe had contracted the HIV virus as a result of blood transfusions in the early 1980s, he came to Kalamazoo to receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. He had first come to Kalamazoo in 1958 to compete in the USTA Boys’ National Tennis Tournament, and was champion of both tennis and human rights for many years. Ashe received his degree at a private College dinner on April 30, 1992.
The Spartans received an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament Tuesday evening and will face Tulsa in the first round on Friday, May 10 in Waco, Texas. It marks MSU’s first appearance in the 64-team NCAA tournament in its 100-year program history.
Source : Brian Calloway, “Spartan men earn 1st ever NCAA tourney berth”, Lansing State Journal, May 1, 2013.
First came the “Unlock Michigan” protest. More than 1,000 cars, many draped with flags supporting President Trump, drove around the Michigan State Capitol, blaring their horns and decrying Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s coronavirus lockdown orders. Hundreds of others, many armed with military-style weapons, milled about on the lawn.
Two weeks later, on April 30, the dissent escalated. Gun-toting protesters rushed the State Capitol, not long after Mr. Trump tweeted “Liberate Michigan.” They demanded entry into the House of Representatives’ chamber, chanting “Let Us In.”
A handful of them, wearing camouflage fatigues with semiautomatic rifles slung over their shoulders, watched ominously from the gallery above the Senate chamber as the elected officials did their work. The lawmakers passed bills and resolutions and gave angry floor speeches about the extraordinary show of force looking down at them. At least two of the protesters were among 14 people later charged in a failed plot to kidnap Ms. Whitmer and bomb the state Capitol.
On Wednesday, January 11, 2021, as a mob of pro-Trump loyalists breached the U.S. Capitol in Washington after an angry rally focused on overturning the election President Trump had lost, Michigan State Senator Sylvia Santana watched in stunned — but not surprised — horror.
She had worn a bulletproof vest onto the state’s Senate floor back in April, and now was watching a similarly frightening episode unfold in Washington.
“Michigan was the precursor for what happened,” she said in an interview on Thursday. “The same feeling that I had Wednesday was the same feeling I had back in April, when I feared that I might not make it back home to my family. Those are the same feelings I felt on the Senate floor that day with those men up in the gallery with large weapons looming over us and knowing that they could get trigger happy at any time.”
Amy Cooter, an expert on domestic terror groups and a lecturer at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said it was not difficult to draw a line straight from those early rallies in Michigan to Washington — and even earlier, to Charlottesville, Va., when white supremacists marched through the streets in 2017, chanting racist and anti-Semitic slogans and clashing with counter protesters. And “given the general lack of consequences” in Michigan last spring, “this becomes normalized and legitimate and made it easier to scale up” to what unfolded in Washington.
Source: Kathleen Gray, “In Michigan, a Dress Rehearsal for the Chaos at the Capitol on Wednesday”, New York Times, January 9, 2021.
The 1st Michigan Regiment mustered at Campus Martius in Detroit on this date in 1861, called by Abraham Lincoln to protect the nation’s capital. After the regiment received its flags, made by the women of Detroit, they boarded a ship for Cleveland, then took the railroad to Washington, D.C. According to legend, President Lincoln said “thank God for Michigan” upon seeing the Michigan First arrive, the first troops arriving from the western states to reinforce the Capitol.
For the full article, see Scott Pohl, “MICHIGAN AND THE CIVIL WAR: 150th anniversary of the Michigan First”, WKAR News, May 11, 2011.