On Monday, December 13, 1920, Ed “Strangler” Lewis won the first of six World Heavyweight Wrestling Championships from Joe Stecher. The fact he won the title from his biggest rival and business enemy must have been particularly satisfying. A year before this match, Stecher and Lewis met in a match lasting over three hours. Lewis made a mental error in […]
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Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy star in one of my favorite holiday films, Babe in Toyland (affiliate link) or March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934). It is normally shown around Thanksgiving. This film features Stan Laurel as Stannie Dum and Oliver Hardy as Ollie Dee, who are trying to help Mother Peep, the little old women in the shoe. Barnaby, the wicked […]
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The Mosblechs have very large families as a rule. My great grandfather Eduard Mosblech was one of twelve children. Eduard had fourteen children and his brothers had twelve and thirteen children respectively. While I have not yet been able to verify the size of the other two families, both Mom and I remember it the same way. Grandma Ellis had […]
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From 1931 to 1954, Lum and Abner occupied a spot among the most popular radio shows during the Old Time Radio era. Chester Lauck and Norris Goff attended the University of Arkansas together. Lauck and Goff later developed their show Lum and Abner based on their life in Arkansas. The show struck a cord with many listeners. My wife’s grandmother […]
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“Terrible” Terry McGovern proved to be a rare fighter at the turn of the Twentieth Century. While smaller boxers packed no power in their punches, McGovern, who scaled between 110 and 126 pounds, possessed tremendous knockout power. “Terrible” Terry often finished his opponents in the first four rounds. On July 1, 1899, Brooklyn based McGovern met Chicago’s Johnny Richie at […]
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Despite the fact that William Zimmerman and his brother Parker, who was my great grandfather, were the first two Zimmermans to call what is now Scott City, MO their hometown, it has become the ancestral home land for my generation of Zimmermans. It was “the country” that we often visited from the big city of St. Louis, MO and its […]
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On October 14, 1938, 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation released the fifth of eight Mr. Moto Films starring Peter Lorre as Interpol Policeman Kentaro Moto. In Mysterious Mr. Moto (1938), Mr. Moto infiltrates a prison and helps a prisoner escape to discover the plans of his criminal organization. Mr. Moto breaks international criminal Paul Brissac, played by Leon Ames, out of […]
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For the October 5, 1861 edition of the Cincinnati Daily Press, editors pulled a story off the wire service from the Spirit of the Times. The wire story reported on a fight between former English prizefighting champion Tom Sayers and current English champion Jem Mace. Both Sayers and Mace were touring with English circuses, when they stopped in at a […]
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A couple of years before he passed away in 2008, my stepfather Ernest C. Diaz shared with me something that I never knew about him. After the Korean War, Dad mustered out of the U.S. Army. Dad returned to civilian life in St. Louis, Missouri and began looking for a job. Within weeks, Dad was working at one of the […]
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On March 22, 1881, Greco-Roman World Wrestling Champion William Muldoon met Collar-and-Elbow World Champion John McMahon at the Terrace Garden in New York City. Muldoon and McMahon met in a best-two-out-of-three-falls match. The first fall was conducted by Greco-Roman rules. The second fall would be contested using collar-and-elbow rules. The last fall would be decided via what The New York […]
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