The current Detroit Yacht Club traces its beginnings back to 1868. In addition there is a record of a Detroit Boat Club tracing its beginnings back to 1839, but it went out of existence in the 1990s.
Searching the word yacht in the Detroit Free Press turns up a September 22, 1868 announcement of a local regatta to be held on October 1, 1868, consisting of five yachts (The Coral, Humming Bird, Collins, Norma, and Ripple) which would race from a point off Woodward Avenue ten miles North of Grosse Point on Lake St. Clair and then back, so we will use that date. A year later the Detroit Free Press also reports in some detail on a second regatta between the Barker, Collins, The Coral, and Humming Bird, with the Humming Bird winning. In the latter article, the editor comments that it would seem like Detroit would sponsor more yacht races and aquatic contests of various locations given its location on the Detroit River.
Source : “Yacht Regatta, Detroit Free Press, September 22, 1868, p.1. via Proquest Historical Newspapers, Detroit Free Press (1858-1922).
“YACHTING: The Race Between the Collins, Barker, Humming Bird and Coral; A CLOSE AND VERY INTERESTING CONTEST; The Humming Bird the Winner, Detroit Free Press, September 29, 1869, p.1 courtesty of Proquest Historical Newspapers (1858-1922).
Detroit Yacht Club History from the Detroit Yacht Club website.
Bill Loomis, Detroit Yacht Club: Home for good times on the river since 1868, Detroit News, August 4, 2013.
The first production Model T Ford was built at the Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit on October 1, 1908. Over the next nineteen years, Ford would build fifteen million automobiles with the Model T engine. This was the longest run of any single model, with the exception of the Volkswagen Beetle. From 1908-1927, the Model T endured few changes to its design. By producing an affordable and readily available automobile, Henry Ford succeeded in his quest to produce a car for ordinary people.
Michigan Historical Calendar courtesy of the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University.
A Moment in Time- The Story of Henry Ford’s Piquette Avenue Plant (Stunt Multimedia) available from the MSU Library
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Behold, the birthplace of a revolution. The Ford Piquette Avenue Plant is the site of the production of the first Ford Model T. Visitors today can walk the very same wood plank floors worn smooth by hundreds of workers and thousands of cars!
The University of Michigan’s winged helmet made its successful debut in the 1938 season opener against Michigan State. Sophomore halfback Paul Kromer (83) scored the first touchdown wearing the winged helmet and accounted for 13 of Michigan’s 14 points to gain the Wolverines’ first win over MSU (14-0) in four years.
Fritz Crisler’s first team went on to compile a 6-1-1 record and tie for second in the conference. Whether attributable to the new helmet or not, the passing game improved significantly over 1937′s final statistics; total yardage nearly doubled, interceptions were cut nearly in half and completion percentage was up by nine percent.
Crisler won a national championship in 1947, he changed the game forever with the platoon system in the late 1940s, and he shaped college football by serving on the NCAA rules committee for more than two decades before he retired in 1968. Yet former Michigan football coach and athletic director Fritz Crisler might be best remembered for designing the Wolverines’ distinctive “winged helmet,” the most recognizable headgear in college football.
But here’s a dirty little secret: Crisler first designed the winged helmet at Princeton, not Michigan, and brought it with him.
Crisler’s winged helmet design took advantage of features of a helmet advertised in the 1937 A.G. Spalding & Bros. Company edition of the Official Intercollegiate Football Guide.
Back then the headgear looked like the leather biking helmets favored by today’s Tour de France riders. They typically consisted of a leather bowl with an extra pad to protect the forehead, from which three strips of padding ran to the back—all of it painted black. To help his Princeton quarterback identify his receivers downfield and give his team a little style in the process, Crisler simply painted the extra padding Princeton orange and— voila! — the winged helmet was born.
More trivia : The Michigan-Michigan State game of 1938 had the most fans show up of any game in the 1938 season!
Sources :
John U. Bacon, “Winged victory”, Michigan Today, September 17, 2013.
1938 Michigan Wolverines Football wikipedia entry
University of Michigan Football Michigan’s Winged Helmet courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library
They said it couldn’t be done. Doubters chided Henry Ford for declaring that his Willow Run Bomber Plant could turn out a B-24 Liberator heavy bomber every hour. However, by early 1944 he was delivering as promised.
In December 1940, the federal government asked the Ford Motor Company to build 1,200 B-24 bombers. Ford’s chief engineer, Charles Sorensen, quickly devised a then-untried scheme of mass-producing planes. The government agreed to the plan, and in April 1941, construction began on what would become the world’s largest assembly plant. On October 1, 1942, the first B-24 bomber rolled off the assembly line at the Willow Run Bomber Plant near Ypsilanti. The plant would eventually produced 8,600 planes.
By mid-1944, bombers came off Willow Run’s mile-long assembly line at the rate of one an hour.
Michigan’s other auto companies also produced war materiel. By the end of World War II, Chrysler’s Warren Tank Plant made 25,000 tanks, while in Kingsford, the Ford Motor Company manufactured more than 4,000 gliders. Known as the “Arsenal of Democracy,” Michigan—with only 4 percent of the nation’s population—led all other states in the production of war materiel.
Source : October 1, 1942 by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
For another article including a picture of the first B24 Liberator bomber rolled off the assembly line on Oct. 1, 1942, see Jenny Nolan, “Willow Run and the Arsenal of Democracy”, Detroit News, January 28, 1997. The first plane completed was christened “The Spirit of Ypsilanti.” Its $300,000 cost was paid for with a fund-raising drive by the townspeople of Ypsilanti, who bought war bonds and stamps. Contributors were issued buttons bearing the bomber’s Winged V insignia, designed by Jean Ohlinger, a 17-year-old junior at Ypsilanti High School.
Samantha L. Quigley, Ford’s Willow Run Factory, Welfare History Notebook.
Tim Trainor, “How Ford’s Willow Run Assembly Plant Helped Win World War II“, Assembly Magazine, January 3, 2019.
On Oct. 1, 1970, The Detroit Free Press reported that state Sen. Charles Youngblood Jr. used a nonprofit foundation he created to help impoverished Native Americans to pay off debts, work out a profitable land deal and cover fundraising fees.
Youngblood was convicted of conspiracy to bribe a public official over a liquor license and resigned from the Senate in 1974.
Source : MIRS Capitol Capsule, October 1, 2020.
On October 1, 1999, Zollner was inducted to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor.
Fort Wayne Pistons Team Logo
Fred Zollner (January 22, 1901 – June 21, 1982) was called “Mr. Pro Basketball” as the founder and longtime owner along with his sister Janet of the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons (now the Detroit Pistons) and a key figure in the merger of National Basketball League and Basketball Association of America into the National Basketball Association in 1949.
The Zollner Pistons began playing in 1941 in an industrial league. In 1974, he recalled that, “Instead of making friends, we made enemies, because no one could beat us.” He personally recruited his players, including later Hall of Famers Andy Phillip, Bob McDermott, Bob Houbregs, Buddy Jeannette and George Yardley. The Zollner Pistons were a very popular franchise, winning the world championship in 1944 and 1945, and reaching the NBA Finals in 1954 and 1955, losing both times. He was the first pro basketball team owner to hire a bench coach.
In 1957, Zollner moved the team to Detroit, a much larger city that had previously had an NBA franchise, the Detroit Falcons, which failed after the 1946–47 season, the NBA’s (BAA’s) first. Since Detroit was the nation’s largest automotive assembly center, the team name, based on its previous locality, still fit: The Detroit Pistons.
In 1974, he sold the Pistons to William Davidson for $7 million (equal to $33 million in 2012). Zollner and Davidson remained the only two majority owners in the history of the longest-running franchise in the history of professional basketball until the death of Davidson in March, 2009. On June 1, 2011, Platinum Equity billionaire Tom Gores bought the Detroit Pistons, along with Palace Sports and Entertainment, from Davidson’s widow.
At the 1975 Silver Anniversary NBA All-Star Game, Zollner was named “Mr. Pro Basketball” for his status as a founder and longtime supporter of the NBA. He died in North Miami, Florida.
On October 1, 1999, Zollner was inducted to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor. Today, the NBA Western Conference Championship trophy is named in his honor.
Sources :
The Zolner Piston Story, Rodger R. Nelson, Published 1995 by Allen County Public Library Foundation in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 267pp.
On October 1, 2015, Susan A. Petrisin of Lansing, associate directory of the Michigan State University Alumni Association, will become the first woman to serve as president for any of the world’s leading service organizations. She also is the first person to serve as a district governor of all three Kiwanis-family organizations: Kiwanis International, Circle K International, and Key Club International.
Sue holds a master’s degree in human resources and labor relations and bachelor’s degrees in food science and dietetics from Michigan State University, East Lansing.
Sources:
Sam Stall, “Kiwanis International : It All Began in Detroit”, Michigan History, March/April 2015, pp.25-29.
Susan A. Petrisin, New President of Kiwanis International, Kiwanis News Release.
A farmer near Chelsea made a startling discovery Monday night: bones of a woolly mammoth possibly butchered by early human hunters thousands of years ago.
University of Michigan Professor Dan Fisher was interviewed by The News around 4:30 p.m. Thursday while he was knee-deep in mud down in the bottom of a hole, digging out the skull and an enormous tusk.
Plastic bags filled with other remains of the animal that had been collected from the dig sat nearby.
Fisher said the woolly mammoth was probably 40 years old, lived between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago and was hunted by humans who probably killed it, butchered it and stashed it in a pond.
“They did that to store meat and come back to it later,” he said.
Fisher added that there have only been 10 similar sites with such a significant portion of a woolly mammoth skeleton found in Michigan in recorded history. There have been more mastodons found, around 300, over the years.
For the full article see John Counts, “Farmer uncovers woolly mammoth bones near Chelsea, Michigan”, MLive, October 1, 2015.
Also see Archit Tripathi, Farmer Uncovers A Woolly Mammoth Buried In His Field, WIMP, October 5, 2015.
Jessica Leigh Hester, “What Do You Do When You Find a Mammoth on Your Farm?“, Atlas Obscura, December 20, 2017.
A cougar has been spotted for the first time in years by a Michigan Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) camera.
The animal was recorded wandering through a wooded area in Gogebic County in the Upper Peninsula on the evening of Oct. 1.
Although there have been 38 confirmed reports of cougars since 2008 — 37 in the Upper Peninsula — this is the first time since 2009 that the DNR has snagged a shot of the animal in action among its 3 million game camera images, said Kevin Swanson, wildlife management specialist with the DNR’s Bear & Wolf Program.
“They’re so rare in the Upper Peninsula,” Swanson said. “These are dispersers, transients coming from the Dakotas, from northwest Nebraska. We just get a few moving through the Peninsula.”
It’s impossible to say whether the cougar was male or female, the DNR said.
Sources :
Brandon Champion, “Cougar wanders by DNR trail camera in Upper Peninsula”, MLive, October 25, 2018.
Fiona Killiher, “Cougar spotted on DNR camera in the Upper Peninsula“, Detroit Free Press, October 25, 2018.
The Michigan Department of Treasury announced in a press release issued today (Monday, August 13th), “a change to the state’s sales tax administration that will require many mail order and online retailers located outside of Michigan to pay the 6 percent sales tax on taxable sales into this state.” And it goes into effect October 1st.
This comes on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a more than 30-year precedent in South Dakota v. Wayfair, allowing the Michigan Department of Treasury to collect sales tax from retailers physically located outside the state if the retailer exceeds $100,000 in sales or 200 or more transactions in Michigan within the previous calendar year.
Under the state Treasury Department’s new administrative requirement, all applicable mail order and online retailers physically located outside of Michigan must pay state sales tax and file tax returns for taxable sales made after Sept. 30, 2018.
(Source: Michigan.gov)
The state Treasury Department estimates more than $200 million in additional state revenues will be collected annually under the new sales tax rule.