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On this day in 1944, at precisely 9:39 a.m., future Duluth television news anchor Dennis “Denny” Anderson was born in Eveleth, Minnesota. While in high school he joined the radio broadcast club and after graduating went on the air for Virginia’s WHLB radio, beginning a lifetime as a radio and television broadcaster. Denny was just…
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On this day in 1893, Representative J. A. Boggs introduced a bill to create a state normal school in Duluth. Normal schools trained high school graduates to become teachers; the term “normal” comes from the ideal that the education focused on “the norms of pedagogy and curriculum.” Most normals schools were later renamed “teachers colleges.”…
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On this day in Duluth in 1900, educator, author, and orator Booker T. Washington spoke at Duluth’s First Methodist Church. His speech was entitled “The Negro Problem of the South.” The Duluth News Tribune called Washington “The most useful man in the South today, from the South’s own side of the question” because he “seeks…
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On this day in Duluth in 1908, 28-year-old firefighter Arthur Rose was killed on his way to fight a fire at 20th Avenue West. The alarm sounded at 1 a.m., and Rose, climbed in the back of a horse-drawn hose wagon that took off toward the blaze, closely followed by a horse-drawn steam pump fire…
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On this day in Duluth in 1913, William McGonagle, president of the Duluth, Missabe & Northern Railroad, announced that his company would soon hire a contractor to build the world’s largest ore dock next to existing ore docks standing west of Thirty-Third Avenue West. The first West Duluth ore dock, made of wood, was completed 1893…
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On this day in Duluth in 1953, Frank Wade, longtime owner of the Duluth Dukes professional baseball team, died of a heart attack at his home at 5704 Cody Street. He was just a few weeks shy of his 81st birthday. Wade was born in Griggsville, Illinois, and came to Duluth in 1895 when he…
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On this day in Duluth in 1914, newspapers announced that a St. Louis County Grand Jury was investigating the Duluth Police Department on a variety of charges and would soon subpoena forty witnesses. County Attorney Warren Greene conducted the interviews, including those of Chief Chauncy Troyer and Duluth News Tribune reporter Jackson Darrimore. The DPD had been operating…
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On this day in Duluth in 1921, the Duluth News Tribune reported the arrest of Frank Insco, who the paper called the “Dope King of Superior.” The arrest was the result of a raid on Insco’s property at 1219 Fourth Street in Superior, described as an “opium den.” Insco, the report said, belonged to a…
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On this day in 1882, future Duluthian Robert B. Whiteside took a job as a log and river foreman in a lumber camp along the Black River in Northwestern Wisconsin. Whiteside was born in Ontario, Canada, in 1855. He labored in the lumber camps of the South Branch of the Muskoka River when he was…
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On this day in 1889, Duluth’s Charles Hinman Graves was named as the speaker of Minnesota’s House of Representatives. Graves was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1839, and rose to the rank of Colonel fighting with the 40th New York Volunteers During the Civil War. He participated in many battles, including Bull Run, Williamsburg, Fredericksburg, and…
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