Archive for February, 2011

25th February
2011
written by Richard

As crowds gathered at the offices of one of Southern California’s leading financial institutions, the bank president, J. W. Collins emerged to reassure nervous depositors, explaining: “Owing to continued shrinkage in deposits and our inability to promptly realize on our notes and account, the bank is temporarily closed.” Merely a precaution, Collins soothed, “it is beyond question that depositors will be paid in full.”

Continue reading about the notorious 1891 San Diego Banking Scandal.

20th February
2011
written by Richard

For over a century, San Diego County has provided locations for hundreds of major motion picture films. Since the early 1940s a popular site has been the beaches and hills of Camp Pendleton, one hundred miles south of Hollywood. The sprawling, 125-thousand acre Marine Corps base would host the filming of several patriotic epics during World War II before scoring a huge hit at the decades end with “The Sands of Iwo Jima.”

Read the story of the filming of The Sands of Iwo Jima.

19th February
2011
written by Richard

When E. W. Dickenson, clerk of the superior court, went into his yard last Friday morning he was surprised and somewhat frightened when he discovered a stick of dynamite beneath one of his windows. About three yards of fuse was attached to the dynamite and the end was partially burned . . . —San Diego Union, April 7, 1909

It was a close call. Someone had tried to blow up the house of Edgar Dickenson at 3674 A Street. The popular deputy county clerk and attache at the county courthouse could not recall anyone with cause to hurt him or his family. But he did remember a strange business transaction regarding a cow.

Continued in A Man of Peculiar Temperament.

17th February
2011
written by Richard

Art gallery in the Carnegie Library.

As a target for art thieves, the Public Library would seem an unlikely place. Nevertheless, janitor Robert Butler had an unwelcome surprise when he opened the doors of the library on Friday morning, February 5, 1909. As Butler climbed the stairs to the art gallery on the second floor, he was shocked by the sight of empty picture frames strewn along the baseboards. Fifteen oil paintings on loan from prominent local artists had disappeared. . .

The story of the Carnegie Library Art Heist.

17th February
2011
written by Richard

James Russell with his “Lobe” chute. Courtesy San Diego Air & Space Museum

In the “Air Capital of the West,” a young parachute designer named James Russell leaped from airplanes to test his own experimental designs. Russell parachutes were standard equipment for both military and civilian flyers. The story of “The Pioneer of Parachutes.”

2nd February
2011
written by Richard

The scene at Fifth Avenue and F Street was like an episode of violence from a western movie or four hours of street fighting from a war.  Only the uniforms were wrong and the “enemy” was a single gunman. —–San Diego Union, April 9, 1965

The site of a popular downtown Starbuck’s was the scene of a violent robbery in April 1965. The Hub Pawnshop Shootout.