On this day in Duluth in 1887, a fire destroyed two brothels in Duluth’s notorious St. Croix District, part of today’s Canal Park Business District. Fire broke out at 8 a.m. in the house May Addison operated at 233 St. Croix Avenue, known today as Canal Park Drive. By the time firefighters arrived, the building…

On this day in Duluth in 1928 Percy Shelley Anneke, who with August Fitger established the Fitger & Co. Lake Superior Brewery in 1885, died in Alhambra, California. He was seventy-eight years old. Named by his mother for the British poet, Anneke was born in Milwaukee in 1850 after his  parents fled the German revolution…

On this day in Duluth in 1924, fifty-two-year-old Captain Guy Eaton died after being sick the previous eleven days. Eaton, called “the father of the Minnesota Naval Militia,” was born in Red Oak, Iowa, in 1872. He attended Clavereck College, then a military school in New York on the Hudson River. He came to Duluth…

On this day in Duluth in 1930, the freight carrier Frank E. Taplin became the first large Great Lakes vessel to pass beneath the newly converted Aerial Lift Bridge. The 420-foot Taplin had been launched in 1907 as the Charles W. Kocher and rechristened in 1920 and retired from service in 1968. Several days after…

On this day in Duluth in 1951, the Duluth Boat Club was destroyed by fire. Walter Larson, the Duluth Fire Department’s fire investigator, said that the blaze, which caused $130,000 in damages, was caused by spontaneous combustion. The first alarms came in at 5:36 a.m., and within ninety minutes the entire building, along with sixteen…

On this day in Duluth in 1959, the 1891 Longfellow Elementary School at 6015 Elinor Street was destroyed by fire. The school had closed in 1956 and was left vacant, used as a storage facility for obsolete school furniture. It soon became a favorite target of vandals. In fact, just weeks before the fire school…

On this day in Duluth in 1906, Captain Harry Gunderson explained to reporters his steamer Henry Steinbrenner was “shaken by [an] earthquake on Lake Superior off Eagle Harbor on Keweenaw Point on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.” The announcement came two days after papers reported an earthquake on the U.P. centered on the mining town of Hancock—and…

On this day in Duluth in 1959, Duluth’s Julius Barnes, once the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was buried in Forest Hill Cemetery following a simple service at the Crawford Mortuary chapel. Reverend Robert W. Dickson of Lakeside Presbyterian Church lead the service. He said in part “Julius Barnes was a man who…

On this day in 1871, George P. Tweed was born in Warsaw, Minnesota, the oldest son of eleven children born to Norwegian immigrants Evan and Anna Tweed. According to one biographer, Tweed “came to Duluth when about sixteen years of age…. At the age of eighteen, after leaving school, he entered the real estate and…

On this day in Duluth in 1872, the Duluth Minnesotian made the first historic record of a bridge over the Duluth Ship Canal with the simple statement, “The bridge over the ship canal on Minnesota Point remains undisturbed.” At the time this simply meant that shipping traffic on Lake Superior had yet to open, so…