Bizarre Tales: Forgotten stories from Southern California’s past.
TURTLE RACING MEN ACQUITTED Jury Disagrees on Guilt of Hollywood Promoter Sixteen Others, Including Tod Sloan, Freed Civic Federation Strikes at New “Option” Scheme LOS ANGELES TIMES – September 8, 1932 –Disagreeing as to the guilt of Douglas Hertz, turtle-race promoter, a jury in Municipal Judge Clarke’s court yesterday found sixteen other defendants, arrested at […]
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LOVES CHAPLIN; SEEKS TO DIE Romantic Girl Asserts She Took Poison Found Lying in Street at Home of Star Gives Comedian and Pola Three Hard Days Los Angeles Times, May 2, 1923 A husky young Castilian senorita with cinema ambitions and a hundred-proof Charlie Chaplin complex is Marina Vega, 15-year-old belle from the calles of […]
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Actor on Death Bed Hopes for Role in Beyond The Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1925 — “I haven’t created any sensations on the world’s stage, but maybe the great Director will give me better parts to play ‘Over There.’” That is the hope whispered to friends by Dan J. Reagan, an actor of the old […]
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Woman Made Flight History as a Passenger by Pete Bennett LOS ANGELES TIMES (August 11, 1982) –When Maude Campbell became, in 1926, the first woman to fly commercially, the trip represented more an act of heroism than an expedient way to travel. She had heard through friends that Western Air Express had decided to carry […]
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RUSS COLUMBO DIES FROM ACCIDENTAL GUN WOUND Radio and Screen Singer Succumbs as Condition Balks Operation; Witness Tells of Tragedy Los Angeles Times, September 3, 1934 Russ Columbo, 26 years of age, radio and motion picture singer, died at the Good Samaritan Hospital last night from a bullet wound in his brain which he received […]
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Handing ‘Em Cash: ALL NIGHT AND DAY THE RUN AND BANK. Crowd of Men, Women and Boys in Line a Block Long Moving on the Paying Teller’s Window to Get Money Out – Some Depositing. Los Angeles Times, May 3, 1910 — Between 11 and 12 o’clock yesterday morning, a run was started on the […]
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Bizarre Tales: Tragic Explosion on Pico Blvd. 1947 Deadly Blast a Proving Ground for Live TV By Cecilia Rasmussen August 17, 1997 (The following article is actually a recap of a historical event that happened in 1947, revisited by the Los Angeles Times in 1997.)Since the film industry moved west shortly after the turn of the […]
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“Whistling” Davis and his corpse child… UNBURIED FOR YEARS California Man Keeps the Remains of His Child at Home LOS ANGELES, CA, June 2, 1895 — For five years past “Whistling” Davis, of Long Beach, has kept the corpse of his dead child in a little coffin in his house at a locality known as […]
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‘Wonder Woman’ Routs 2 Intruders’ by Mark Gerrard LOS ANGELES TIMES June 3, 1981 — The two strange men looked plenty suspicious to Wanda Capek, 70-year-old teacher at a parochial school in Hollywood, when she returned home Tuesday and found them in her backyard. “There was a big guy carrying a big TV and a […]
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WEALTHY CAT’S ESTATE DISPOSED OF BY COURT (Los Angeles Times, June 9, 1931) Mitzi, often referred to as the wealthiest cat in the world, is dead, and because of the riches inherited from her mistress, Dr. Maude F. Ide, the probate court was unusually meticulous in administering the estate, which now becomes the property of Mrs. […]
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