This Month in St. Louis History

"Hollow Earth" theory; first "Titanic" interviews

The month of April is loaded with unusual as well as significant anniversaries in the past history in St. Louis and the surrounding Midwest area.

A new book has listed a St. Louisan as being the first to predict the Earth was hollow and there were civilizations alive at the center of the planet. The guy was John Cleves Symmes, a trader in St. Louis when he expounded his theory in an 1818 pamphlet.

Almost by accident, St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Carlos Hurd got the first interviews with the survivors of the ocean liner "Titanic." Hurd was aboard the liner "Carpathia," that was the first to reach the accident site in April, 1912.

These are a couple of the historic events that have April anniversaries. This article also will recount other anniversaries.

Each month, the Missouri History Museum cooperates with Young Saint Louis.com to provide historical items from the rich past of St. Louis and this Midwest area. The items are varied; the link is that each has an anniversary date in the current month.

Here is more information about the historic anniversaries:

The "Hollow Earth" Movement

Author David Standish has written a new book, "Hollow Earth." In it, he recounts the various theories surrounding the idea that our Earth is hollow and other civilizations live beneath us.

Standish said the furor over the "hollow earth" started in 1818 when St. Louisan John Cleves Symmes self-published a pamphlet giving his theory. The treatise, published April 10, 1818, starts:

John Cleves Symmes

"I declare the earth is hollow and habitable within; containing a number of solid concentrick (sic) spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles 12 or 16 degrees; I pledge my life in support of this truth and am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will support and aid me in the undertaking."

Concerning the heavy ice at the Earth's poles, Symmes said that was merely a frozen ring surrounding a warm, open sea leading to the interior of the Earth.

Symmes envisioned the Earth's outer shell was 800 miles thick with openings at both poles. The interior was then 1,400 miles across with four inner shells, also open at the poles.

Symmes actually proposed an exploration expedition to the North Pole but newly elected President Andrew Jackson killed the idea. Symmes died in 1829 before he could make another attempt.

Lots of fantasy stories followed Symmes" efforts at real research.

One of the most famous was Jules Verne's book, "Journey to the Center of the Earth." That was fiction but included discussions of various geological suppositions.

One 20th century myth even proposed that Adolph Hitler and some of his followers escaping to the Earth's interior after Germany lost World War II.

For more information, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_earth.

First interviews with "Titanic" survivors

Carlos Hurd was a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1912 when he made newspaper history. With his family, he was aboard the ocean liner "Carpathia" in the Atlantic Ocean.

They awoke on the morning of April 15 to find the liner stopped in the middle of the Atlantic. A liner employee told them of the "Titanic" sinking and that the "Carpathia" was taking on survivors.

Painting of The Carpathia being approached by Titanic survivors

New York World publisher Ralph Pulitzer wired Hurd to get interviews with the survivors. Hurd soon found that getting the interviews was the easy part. The "Carpathia's" captain refused him wireless radio time to send the news story.

Also, the "Carpathia's" crew confiscated all paper and writing materials so no one could take notes or write stories.

But Carlos and his wife, Katherine, plotted to get the story out. They used any sort of paper they could find, including, at times, toilet paper. Then put all of their writings into a waterproofed cigar box.

Before the "Carpathia" docked in New York harbor, it was met by a host of smaller boats with lots of newspaper reporters onboard. Hurd was able to toss his cigar box to a fellow journalist on one of the boats.

By the time the "Carpathia" docked, Hurd's 5,000-word story was being telegraphed to the Post-Dispatch.

The story of the newspaper "scoop" was included in two boxes of records donated to the Missouri History Society Archives by Mrs. Frances Hurd Sandler in 1998. For more information, contact archives@mohistory.org or call (314) 746-4510.

The Post-Dispatch published an article about the episode on Jan. 1, 2004. Written by Mary Delach Leonard, it was headlined, "The Titanic Disaster."

A Trolley Car idea resurfaces

The St. Louis Car Company was founded in April, 1887, and the city of St. Louis became one of the biggest makers of streetcars in the country.

By 1892, the company said was producing 100 cars a month.

In the heyday of the streetcar business, St. Louis Car Company was advertising it was making streetcars that could be powered by horse, cable or electricity.

Of course, the automobile has taken over as the primarily mode of transportation in cities and St. Louis Car's business declined.

But, there is a new move afoot in St. Louis to bring the trolley car back. There's a proposal to put a historic trolley car line in the Delmar Loop in University City. The line would link the Loop District with the Delmar Metrolink station.

For more information about the St. Louis Car Company, you can visit: www.ironhorse129.com/rollingstock/builders/st_louis_car1.htm.

For more about the Delmar trolley, visit www.heritagetrolley.org/planStLouis.htm.

A unique school integration decision

The NAACP suffered a setback on April 29, 1957 in its drive to integrate a Little Rock, Ark., school. That's when the federal 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis upheld the dismissal of the NAACP case.

The civil rights organization had filed the suit to try to force the Little Rock School District to admit 33 black children. The original judge in the case had denied the suit and the circuit court of appeals upheld that decision.

The key issue was whether the Little Rock schools were making progress toward integration with "all deliberate speed." That was the wording in the precedent-setting Brown vs. Board of Education case.

Both the original judge and the court of appeals said progress was being made, even though it wasn't at the speed the NAACP wanted.

For more, visit: Black History Month Diversity Calendar.

Chicago's O'Hare Field namesake

O'Hare Field in Chicago is billed as the busiest airport in the world. But, it was named after a St. Louisan, Edward H. "Butch" O'Hare, who never lived in Chicago.

But, his father Edgar Joseph "EJ" O'Hare did live there. He made a name for himself in a much different way. He was a financial advisor to famed gangster Al Capone, who pretty much ran Chicago at that time.

Butch O'Hare

But, in 1930, EJ agreed to turn over Capone's financial records to the federal government. That helped FBI agent Eliot Ness to put Capone out of business.

EJ paid for turning against Capone. He was killed by two gunmen on Nov. 8, 1939, as he was returning home.

On the day of EJ's death, Ensign Butch O'Hare was finishing up two training flights. He had graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md.

Butch O'Hare's notoriety certainly was different than that of his father. He won the Congressional Medal of Honor by almost single-handedly stopping a Japanese aerial attack on his aircraft carrier, USS Lexington.

O'Hare downed five Japanese bombers in four minutes.

He received his Medal of Honor from President Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 21, 1942.

He was later shot down and died in another WWII battle. His body was never recovered.

O'Hare Field was dedicated in his name on Sept. 17, 1949. He was described as "a World War II fighter pilot from Chicago," although he never lived in Chicago. It was his father, EJ, who lived and died there.

For more visit: www.stlmag.com/media/St-Louis-Magazine/July-2005/The-Butch-O'Hare-Story/

The huge Vulcan statue

One of the most unusual exhibits at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis began arriving in April of 1904. The first parts of the gigantic statue of Vulcan were the feet. The rest of the sculpture also arrived in pieces and were assembled here.

In mythology, Vulcan was the Roman god of fire and the forge.

Vulcan statue at the St. Louis World's Fair

When all the parts were assembled, the Vulcan sculpture rose 56 feet in the air. He was a showpiece of the Mineral Department at the fair.

After the fair, it was returned in pieces to Birmingham, Ala., where it had been cast with No.2 pig iron. The statue served as a city landmark, commemorating Birmingham's metalworking history as the "Pittsburgh of the South."

Vulcan is the focus a renovated Vulcan Park atop Red Mountain in Birmingham. The statue and the park underwent extensive repairs in 2004.

Also see: www.vulcanpark.org/timeline.html and www.vulcanpark.org/history.html.