On September 17, 1969, a world-wide hoax was born in Des Moines. That was the first date that the legend was first published on the pages of the Drake University Times-Delphic. It was a feature article by Tim Harper, a professional journalist and it was titled “Is Beatle Paul McCartney Dead?”. It’s probably one of the longest-running hoaxes involving a music group, and the hoax still has a life today.

In 1969, Tim Harper was friends with his sports editor, Dart Brown. Dart was a music student at Drake University. Dart lived off-campus in a house that was inhabited by mostly music students. Sometimes rock musicians who might be passing through Des Moines would stay at the house. One night some rockers from the west coast boasted that they knew how to read the cover of “Sgt. Pepper” to prove that Paul was dead. Dart Brown told the details to Harper, who then prepared the article for the Times-Delphic. This was the first known publication of the clues that have since become famous.

Within weeks, other student newspapers jumped on board and published their own version of the clues. One of these articles was very similar to Tim Harper’s clues. It made its way into the studio at Detroit FM radio station WKNR, where a DJ found it. The DJ thought the article was crazy and read it on the air less than a month after Harper’s article was published. A student at University of Michigan as well as a writer for the Michigan Daily was listening to WKNR-FM that night. He thought it would be fun to submit a newspaper article based on the hoax he’d just heard. The student by the name of Fred Labour had his article published on October 14, 1969. It was exaggerated to say the least. He invented clues of his own and also invented a conspiracy involving a look-alike called William Campbell who replaced the dead Paul McCartney after McCartney’s death in 1966. The article added fuel to the flames of the hoax. Then the mainstream press came on board with articles in the New York Times and L.A. Times.

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Popi, 37, the orangutan who appeared as Clint Eastwood’s pet, Clyde, in the 1980 movie “Any Which Way You Can,” moved to the Great Ape Trust of Iowa in October 2008.

Thanks to the publicity from that film and another Eastwood film, the 1978, Every Which Way But Loose, Bobby Berosini and his orangutans became a big draw at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas. Popi and Manus, another orangutan who appeared in the 1978 movie, were headlined at The Stardust and became familiar to millions.

Berosini’s popular act had a quick downfall and departure from Las Vegas. A 1989 video taken by a disgruntled dancer showed Berosini without any mercy, hitting, shaking, and punching one of the orangutans.

The video resulted in protests by Las Vegas newspaper editors and lawsuits filed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Berosini was forced to pay more than $400,000 to PETA.

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It’s 5:30 p.m., Tuesday, May 6, 1913. Mary Johnson, 21 years old, the most popular and prettiest secretary in her office in downtown Des Moines is about to leave her desk to catch the trolley home. Suddenly, two co-workers, George and Sara, have walked up to her desk and invited her to go to the movies with them this evening. Sara, the boss’s secretary, is her usual indecisive self. She says that Des Moines has too many choices. Well, her confusion this time is justified. Downtown Des Moines does have a vibrant, thriving theater district with many choices. Just some of the few choices at the many theaters …

At The Casino, 3 movies are playing. A newsreel by Pathe’s Weekly; also playing, The Crazy Prospector, and, Vitagraph’s Cinders.

At The Family Theater, The Indian’s Secret , and Billy’s First Quarrel. The Unique Theater is playing, Children of St Anne and Her Sister’s Secret.

Being the most popular in the office also makes you the leader. Mary is not in the mood for newsreels or westerns this evening. She’s a small town Iowa girl who has moved to the big city of Des Moines. She wants to experience and see things that she never could in her small town. Mary opts for the movie that is playing at The Colonial. Admission is going to cost 10 cents. It’s a hefty price for an overworked-underpaid secretary, but it’s worth it. It’s a 5 reel, European film called Satan. Only once before has Des Moines had a 5 reel movie. It was called Queen Elizabeth and it was boring.

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In January, 1937 Heloise Martin, an 18-year-old sophomore majoring in psychology at Drake University took stock of her unusual physical advantages by becoming the most famous coed in America.

In January, Heloise’s undergraduate career was suddenly interrupted when a photographer by the name of John Naegle, received an assignment from College Humor Magazine for a set of pictures on the daily life of a coed. The pictures were taken in a shower of the Delta Gamma House, around the campus, in a classroom.

In March, 1937, College Humor appeared with its four-page spread of eight pictures on “A Day in the Life of a Co-Ed.” Heloise was shown climbing out of her double-decker bed , showering behind a transparent curtain, taking notes in class, and wiggling into a dress.

Heloise Martin instantly became known as America’s First Lady of Shower and Bath. Heloise also had a great sense of humor. When she visited visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in April 1937, she was asked what she thought of the school. Heloise replied “it’s ok MIT me.”

More adventures of Heloise:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,757435-2,00.html
Photo attributed to:http://www.galbreath.net/bill/20-60swim.htm

One would not usually associate a civil war battle having been waged hardly 5 miles from downtown Des Moines. This was not a battle between union and confederate soldiers. This was a battle to save lives and give freedom to those who were imprisoned and enslaved by the confederate states.

James Cunningham Jordan is considered the first white settler in West Des Moines and the chief conductor of the underground railroad. Jordan grew up on a farm in what is now West Virgina. It was an area where slavery was the norm for the economy and everyday life.

When he was in his teens, he joined a party hunting for escaped slaves from a nearby plantation. After the slaves were caught, no matter how much the slaves begged for mercy and deliverance, they were dragged, if need be, back to the masters homes and a life of slavery. The sickening experience changed Jordan forever.

Jordan’s 1850 Italian Gothic house in West Des Moines had six rooms. Jordan made the decisions about when it was safe for the slaves to leave his house and move along a safe route to freedom. Escaping slaves on their way to Canada usually stayed in the kitchen or hid in the basement of the six room house. At one time as many as 24 slaves were in the house at the same time.

The famous abolitionist, John Brown also stayed at Jordan’s house on December 17, 1858. Several slaves were traveling through Tabor, Iowa with their masters when Brown helped them to escape. In February 1859, Brown again stayed at the house while he planned a raid on the arsenal at Harpers’s Ferry. Ten months later he would be hanged for leading the raid.

The Jordan House serves both as a museum for West Des Moines and as the office of West Des Moines Historical Society.

He didn’t learn his lesson. Stephen Blumberg was convicted of burglary again in Des Moines in 1997, after being charged with stealing antique furnishings from a house in Des Moines. He had been out of prison barely two years after serving a 4 ½ year sentence for a previous conviction in Des Moines. What was he looking for at the house? Blumberg had an obsession for collecting antique objects. He started collecting antiques from condemned houses in his youth. One of the collections found at his house were nearly 50,000 door knobs.

Over more than twenty years, Stephen Blumberg stole more than 23,000 rare books from 268 libraries including 10,000 manuscripts from 140 or more universities in 45 states and Canada. Their value has been placed at about $20 million, making it the largest theft of rare books in the country. Blumberg is considered to be the number one thief of books in American history. He would steal the books in any way that he could. He was a James Bond and Mission Impossible rolled into one. He would crawl through anything including elevator shafts, ventilation ducts, and do whatever necessary to elude alarms and security guards. He had one thing on his mind and nothing was going to stop him. He didn’t want just any book. A certain library would have a specific rare book or manuscript for which he obsessed.

More about Stephen Blumberg can be found in the book “A Gentle Madness” by Nicholas A. Basbanes.

It started out on Merle Hay Road. One of those rare restaurants that remind you of your childhood. Mmmm, take a deeeep breath, open your mouth, enjoy!, and be zapped back to the aromas and tastes emanating from your mother and grandmother’s kitchen. Are you hungry yet?

It was 1970 and someone else got a whiff all the way up to Minneapolis that something was selling hotter than pancakes in Des Moines. Mrs. C’s sold sandwiches, home made soup, and its Pièce de résistance … fresh baked pie, double-crusted fruit pies, crème pies. Mind you, we’re not talking ordinary home made pies. We’re talkin’ pies that were so goooood, they quickly earned a reputation as being as good as grandma’s. It didn’t take long for Pillsbury to purchase Mrs. C’s and name it Poppin’ Fresh Pies. In 1983, Vicorp bought the 60 Poppin’ Fresh restaurants from Pillsbury for a cool 38 million and renamed them Baker’s Square.

A 1989 Baker’s Square Commercial for more than 20 different pies:

When mobs and riots involve thousands of people such as have occurred in Paris, Berlin, or London, it’s not shocking news. It has happened in European capitals and other cities before. But, one would never envision such a riot in an American city in the midwest of 86,000 people. The rest of the country also never envisioned such an event happening in peaceful, quiet, Des Moines, Iowa.

J. R. Harrigan was the Vice President and Manager of the Des Moines City Railway Company. Harrigan set events in motion on August 4, 1911, when he fired an employee by the name of B. J. Hiatt. The union, the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees of America, insisted that Hiatt was entitled to a hearing before being discharged. Harrigan refused to back down. The union immediately ordered a strike. Motormen and conductors abandoned their cars and Des Moines was instantly paralyzed. Abandoned cars obstructed travel and blocked streets everywhere. Des Moines business section in 1911:

Strikebreakers had been imported from Chicago and Omaha. They would break the union and save the city, or so they thought. The next day on Saturday, August 5, the first attempt by a strikebreaker to get a car into operation was immediately stopped by union sympathizers. Des Moines Mayor, James R. Hanna, sensed that worse trouble was coming. He ordered every saloon in the city closed.

As Hanna feared, the situation grew rapidly worse. The mobs went to boarding houses to find the imported men. The entire Des Moines Police Department and it’s reserves were powerless to stop the riots. One of the worse mobs surrounded the Iowa Hotel in the afternoon. They demanded that strikebreakers being protected by the police be turned over to them. Police were injured by flying bricks. The Des Moines Fire Department came to the rescue of the police and the strikebreakers by dispersing the crowd with a cannon of water. Strikebreakers at the Second Street Car Barn were surrounded by jeering, menacing, union sympathizers. The strike breakers were without food and no chance of escape. Police decided it was best to get the strikebreakers to the county jail for safe keeping.

Later that night, mobs numbering in the thousands stormed the offices of the General Manager, J. R. Harrigan, at the City Railway Station. Attempts to enter the building were blocked by the police until the arrival of reserve squads. The reserve squads only angered the mobs even more. The mobs smashed every window in the building. The screams of the thousands could be heard everywhere in the city. Children cried from fear. People stayed in their homes for safety.

Three days later the street cars of Des Moines were running again. A city in shock wanted to quickly forget the the weekend of August 5th, 1911.

If you told someone that Walt Disney was alive and well in downtown Des Moines, they might look at you in a goofy way (no pun intended). But everyday at the downtown school, young lives are being shaped by Walt Disney.

The process was the creation of Walt Disney himself even before he opened Disneyland in 1955. Walt had the idea that he didn’t want his employees to know only about their specific job and the skills needed to go with it. Disney wanted them to know the Disney culture and traditions regardless if it was a part time employee hired for the summer or an executive being hired for upper management. He didn’t consider it an expense. Walt Disney considered it an investment.

Teachers at the Downtown School in Des Moines are trained to break the mold of traditional education methods. Teachers encourage students to be self motivated. Students learn and grow in a nuturing atmosphere of mutual respect and trust. Drake University is also a partner offering a Master’s Degree in Elementary Education.

One of the best examples of Disney’s process was an experience by Disney himself. Walt Disney hired a 12 year old boy who was the spittin’ image of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer. The boy read Mark Twain’s novel and knew all the quirks about how to act like Tom Sawyer. The boy took his role too seriously that he was getting into fights. Walt Disney didn’t get angry with the boy or fire him. Instead, Walt Disney felt that the Disney company had failed the boy by not teaching the boy what was expected of him.

More can be learned about the downtown school and the Disney way at this book, The Disney Way: Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company.

Editor’s Note: A Blast from the Past is part of a re-occuring series, check out previous Blasts from the Past.

In 1974, Des Moines was 3 decades away from being thought of as being cool. Downtown was a huge eyesore. The Civic Center was a dream that perhaps would never come true in the foreseeable future. Public sculpture like Crusoe’s Umbrella in Nollen Plaza was for cities like New York and Chicago.

Beyond the unattractive parts of the city, Des Moines could be cool. A sculpture by Mark Jacobsen made it’s home at Merle Hay Mall. It was life-size, bronze, a naked angel on a tricycle, and some would say anatomically correct. Jacobsen entitled it “Up Down”. In 2003, the painting of a nude woman on the side of a downtown Des Moines building raised objections. When Alan Lequire’s “Musica” was unveiled in 2003 in Nashville, many were not pleased. Can you believe newspapers and television couldn’t even show frontal photographs of Musica? Mark Jacobsen’s sculpture at Merle Hay Mall didn’t cause a stir or a whimper.

As I walked by the sculpture over the years, I remember the comments and conversation I would hear. A child cried because he thought it was a demon. A lady from Dallas, Texas thought it was disgusting. A lady from New York City thought that Des Moines was the surprising place.

The sculpture captured the eyes of Merle Hay Mall shoppers for 24 years. It was removed in 1997. It’s not known if the sculpture is still in Des Moines. It’s believed to be in a private residence.

Photo courtesy of Merle Hay Mall and special thanks to Frank Paynter for emailing me the picture.

Editor’s Note: A Blast from the Past is part of a re-occuring series, check out previous Blasts from the Past.

Image Courtesy of Scripophily.com - The Gift of History

In the late 1800s, something needed to be done to improve efficiency. A writer with a pen was limited to about 30 words per minute. In Des Moines of the 1880’s a lot of time and money was put into experimentation to perfect a typewriter. Finally, in 1892 that typewriter was ready for the market.

George Jewett founded the Jewett Typewriter Company. It’s offices and factory were at 608 Locust in downtown Des Moines. A few months later the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago. The Manufacturer’s Building at the Fair was a showcase for American products. If a company won a Columbian medal in product competitions, it was a blessing for product recognition and a huge present for a company’s advertising department. In the months following the Fair, advertisements always boasted about awards and proudly pointed out, for example that this product was, “1st place.” The Jewett typewriter received the highest award at the Fair. Suddenly, the typewriter was in high demand. Seven years later at The Paris Exhibition it would receive the Gold Medallion Award. The Jewett typewriter sold for $100, comparable to today’s computer. The company rose to over 200 employees with a weekly payroll of $2,500. Today the Jewett Typewriter, once called “Best in the World,” fetches over $900 on E-bay.

Germany became one of the favorite customers of the Jewett typewriter. In one week in January 1899, The Jewett Company received orders for 87 typewriters for the German Government and 30 typewriters for the U.S. government. The Germania typewriter was manufactured in Germany with parts imported from Des Moines. On one of his last trips to Europe, Jewett sold his last typewriter to Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. In 1903 the Kaiser Wilhelm Ocean Liner was the first to have typewriting accommodations at sea. A decade letter the typewriters in Washington D.C. and Berlin would become an instrument of war against each other.

The Jewett typewriter can be seen at the Typewriter Museum in Helsinki, the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., and the State Historical Building in Des Moines.