“Pages of history” features excerpts from The News Journal archives including the Wilmington Morning News, The Morning News and the Journal-Every Evening.
Oct. 9, 1956, Wilmington Morning News
Don Larsen pitches first perfect game in World Series history
Don Larsen, tall, temperamental New York Yankee righthander, pitched the first perfect game in World Series history yesterday and beat Brooklyn’s Sal Maglie, 2-0. The triumph gave the Yanks a 3-2 edge after five games.
Retiring 27 successive Dodgers while 64,519 fans nibbled at their finger nails, the 27-year-old Larsen drew an ear-splitting ovation as he whipped a third called strike past pinch hitter Dale Mitchell for the final out….
Not since Charley Robertson of the Chicago White Sox mowed down Detroit for a perfect game April 30, 1922 in a regular season game had a major league pitcher gone nine full innings without allowing a batsman to reach first base….
Delaware baseball news:He was having a ‘nervous breakdown.’ But this Delaware native turned his life, baseball career around
Oct. 10, 1936, Journal-Every Evening
U.S. financiers talk zeppelins to compete with Nazis
High above the North Atlantic, the luxury German airliner Hindenburg sailed homeward today for the last time this season, leaving behind some of America’s wealthiest businessmen trying to figure out how to finance the building of zeppelins here to compete with the German air queen.
There was represented, so the statistical sharps decided, fully $10 billion in private capital when the Hindenburg sailed for 10 hours over six eastern states yesterday. Aboard were 80 leaders of business, finance and politics.
Paul W. Litchfield, head of the Goodyear-Zeppelin interests, expressed the general opinion as the ship nosed down lightly at her Lakehurst mooring: “The Hindenburg with 10 trans-Atlantic crossings without incident has definitely proved the worth of the lighter-than-air craft as a passenger, mail and freight carrier.”
No letup in building boom
The Wilmington and rural New Castle County building boom, which gave the state its busiest summer, fails to lose any of its proportions as the first weeks of fall pass….
Charles P. Witail, contractor, expects to have the dwelling at 515 W. 35th Street finished today and open for inspection tomorrow. The house is one of a row of 10, between Madison and Monroe streets. Each dwelling has 10 rooms, four of them bedrooms, equipped with all modern conveniences….
Frederic G. Krapf, contractor and builder, is converting the property on the northeast corner of Sixth and Orange streets into an apartment house. The property formerly was a store….
Ernest DiSabatino, contractor, has practically finished construction of a residence for Harry W. Lunger at Centreville. The same company reports progress on the residence being constructed for J.S. Cornell & Sons of Philadelphia at Hockessin….
The A.J. Paul Company is constructing 10 houses in Riverside Gardens, a development along River Road in Brandywine Hundred. The houses of brick and frame construction are detached, six-room dwellings with garages. The same company has nearly finished construction of two large residences on Barley Mill Road near Westover Hills. These range to $19,000 in price and contain all modern features….
More recent development news:Two new First Watch locations; Wilmington’s new Salvation Army opens
Oct. 11, 1973, The Morning News
Agnew resigns; gets probation for tax fraud
Spiro T. Agnew resigned as vice president “in the best interest of the nation” yesterday and pleaded no contest to a single count of income tax evasion in 1967.
The Justice Department at the same time dropped its criminal investigation of Agnew, but told the U.S. District Court in Baltimore it had evidence that Agnew was receiving cash payments from Maryland contractors as late as December 1972.
Agnew, 54, who was fined $10,000 and placed on three years’ probation, is the first vice president to resign under duress and only the second to voluntarily give up office. The first was John C. Calhoun, who resigned on Dec. 28, 1832, as Andrew Jackson’s vice president, so he could take a seat in the U.S. Senate.
The White House said President Nixon, who learned of the surprise decision during a 40-minute meeting with Agnew Tuesday night, played “no direct role” in the legal arrangement for his vice president to resign and – in effect – plead guilty to a lesser charge….
Catch up on history:‘I have a dream,’ Katrina, Princes Diana killed: This week in the News Journal archives
Oct. 15, 1964, Wilmington Morning News
Dr. King says Nobel Prize honors others, nonviolence
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said yesterday his Nobel Peace Prize honors “millions of gallant Negroes and white persons who have followed a nonviolent course” in the equal rights struggle.
The stocky, 35-year-old Georgia-born Black leader, who brought to the American scene massive, nonviolent protest as a tactic in fighting segregation, received news of the coveted award while undergoing a routine checkup at an Atlanta hospital….
Smiling happily as he received congratulations, Dr. King told newsmen he intends to spend every dollar of the prize money – $53,123 – on the civil rights movement….
Wilmington Dry to build mall
Wilmington Dry Goods Co. plans to build a large shopping mall in Brandywine Hundred.
Erdman P. Kuhn, general manager, said that Wilmington Dry – which now has outlets in the 400 block of Market Street and the Midway Shopping Center on Kirkwood Highway – will build a 100,000-square-foot department store as an anchor of the new shopping center.
The new center will be located on Naaman’s Road just east of the proposed Interstate 95 interchange. This places it between the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad tracks and the Philadelphia Pike.
The center will occupy 41 acres and will be known as the Tri-State Mall….
Reach reporter Ben Mace at rmace@gannett.com.
