“Pages of history” features excerpts from The News Journal archives including the Wilmington Morning News, The Morning News, the Evening Journal and the Journal – Every Evening.
Jan. 30, 1936, Wilmington Morning News
Ice halts traffic in rivers, canal
Ice, 12 inches thick at some points, brought water traffic virtually to a standstill in the waterways in this area yesterday.
Near Elkton, four boats and a barge are held fast. The freighter Albany, with 400 tons of sugar aboard and towing a barge with 500 tons of sugar, has been stuck in the Elk River, seven miles from Chesapeake City, since last Thursday.
The crushing ice has opened seams in the vessel. Yesterday, as the ship’s supply of fuel oil ran low in the continuous pumping to keep water from reaching the cargo, fear was felt that the sugar might be lost.
Hurried arrangements were made with a Wilmington concern to rush fuel to Town Point from where it will be taken on sleds across the ice to the beleaguered freighter. Nine men aboard the boat have been buying supplies and coal from farmers along the shore for the past several days….
Ice which had already extended many yards from each bank of the Delaware River finally started choking the main ship channel yesterday. All trips of the Wilson Line steamers were cancelled after 3 o’clock when the last boats sailed from Philadelphia and Wilmington, arriving at their destinations far behind schedule. All freight is being carried by trucks….
Radio station that fits coat pocket invented
A radio station small enough to fit snugly into a coat pocket, with the power supply batteries in another, came out of the laboratory today to take its place in the practicable world. The total weight is less than 5 pounds.
Developed in two years of research by engineers of the National Broadcasting Company, it operates in the microwave band of one meter or 300 megacycles. With a power of only two-tenths of a watt, it has a range up to four miles for voice.
Although stressing the mobility of the unit when compared with ordinary microphone apparatus, engineers would not say that development of the tiny station might tend to forecast the possibility of the coming of the day of the individual wireless phone.
Jan. 30, 1948, Journal – Every Evening
Gandhi assassinated by Hindu on his way to prayer meeting
A Hindu tonight shot to death Mohandas K. Gandhi, apostle of non-violence and father of Indian independence.
Police said the frail spiritual leader of India’s hundreds of millions of Hindus was killed for “political reasons – because some person did not agree with his appeals against violence.”
Gandhi, 78, was walking to his prayer meeting grounds, on the lawn of the Birla mansion, to appeal again for an end of communal violence. Three shots rang out at close range. One found his heart. Death came quickly to his emaciated body, wasted in a recent fast in the cause of peace amid the rival religious sects of India and Pakistan.
The assassin was held incommunicado. Police said he was a civilian from Poona, although he was wearing army clothes.
Earlier this month, a bomb had exploded near the spot where Gandhi was holding his prayer meeting….
In Bombay, widespread looting, arson and stabbings started tonight two hours after news spread of Gandhi’s assassination. Police fired many times into Hindu and Moslem rioters in the Nill Bazaar in central Bombay….
Tens of thousands of Indians streamed to Gandhi’s bier in his quarters in the palatial residence of G.D. Birla, an industrialist who long had supported Gandhi. They passed sadly in single file….
MORE ABOUT HINDU TEMPLE IN DELAWARE:Hockessin Hindu Temple welcomes country’s tallest Hanuman statue
Feb. 2, 2003, Sunday News Journal
Space shuttle Columbia, 7 astronauts lost in fiery landing entry
High over Texas and just short of home, space shuttle Columbia fell to pieces Saturday, raining debris over hundreds of miles of countryside. Seven astronauts perished – a gut-wrenching loss for a country and world already staggered by tragedy.
The catastrophe occurred 39 miles above Earth, in the last 16 minutes of the 16-day mission as the spaceship re-entered the atmosphere and glided in for a landing in Florida….
The day echoed one almost exactly 17 years before, when the Challenger space shuttle exploded….
The search for the cause began immediately. One focus: possible damage to Columbia’s protective thermal tiles on the left wing from a flying piece of debris during liftoff Jan. 16….
CATCH UP ON HISTORY:News Journal archives, week of Dec. 5
Feb. 4, 1959, Wilmington Morning News
Famed rock trio killed in crash
Three rock ‘n’ roll singing idols, whose records and appearances stirred millions of teenagers, were killed early Feb. 3 in a snow-swept Iowa field when the four-seat plane carrying the trio and their pilot crashed minutes after taking off from the Mason City airport.
Killed were Buddy Holly, 22, of Lubbock, Texas; Ritchie Valens, 17, of Los Angeles; J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson, 24, of Beaumont, Texas, and Roger Peterman, the pilot, 21, of Clear Lake, Iowa….
Authorities tentatively blamed weather conditions. Besides the snow, the temperature was 18 degrees and a southerly wind was gusting at 35 miles an hour….
Reach reporter Ben Mace at rmace@gannett.com.
