October 16, 1954
Elvis Presley made his first appearance on the Louisiana Hayride program broadcast from Shreveport tonight in 1954. First broadcast of the Hayride had been on April 3, 1948 from the Municipal Auditorium in downtown Shreveport. Horace “Hoss” Logan was the original producer and emcee. Presley’s performance of his newly released song That’s All Right Mama brought a tepid response, according to former Hayride emcee Frank Page, but he still signed to a one-year contract for future appearances. On March 3, 1955, Presley made his first television appearance on the television version of The Louisiana Hayride, carried by KSLA-TV, the CBS affiliate in Shreveport.
October 16, 1972
What really happened to Hale Boggs? Today in 1972, Boggs, Alaska
Congressman Nick Begich of Alaska (both in photo), Begich’s aide Russell Brown, and pilot Don Jonz took off in a private plane from Anchorage, Alaska, bound for Juneau. After approximately one hour in the air, they were never heard from again. Boggs, Representative from House of Representatives District 2 in the New Orleans area, had one notoriety as a member of the Warren Commission, charged with investigating the death of President John F. Kennedy. Extensive search efforts were conducted, but no wreckage was found for several weeks. Theories about the disappearance include mechanical failure, bad weather, and possible foul play. To this day, the case is regarded as one of the great unsolved mysteries of American aviation.
October 17, 1948
Rayne businessman Jacques Weil passed away today in 1948. Jacques and his brother, Edmond and Gontral, who had been born in Paris and settled in Rayne in 1901, opened the business (depicted in mural in downtown Rayne) which bears his name. At its height, more than 10,000 pounds of frogs to restaurants and universities were shipped across the country and around the world. The company’s success inspired the world-famous Rayne Frog Festival, which was first held in 1973, and featured a number of activities, including frog racing. In 2025, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) suggested that the event focus more on compassionate, educational, and frog-friendly activities, such as frog-themed costume contests, obstacle courses, frog call competitions, art exhibits, and educational activities centered on frog biology and environmental conservation.
October 17, 2013
Today in 2013, the Fiske Theatre in Oak Grove received notification that it was being considered for inclusion on the National Register of Historical Places. The classic theater first opened by Donald Fiske in April 1928, and at the time was one of the premier state of the art movie cinemas in northeast Louisiana. It was a two-level cinema with a first floor that seated five hundred people and balcony seats for 250. The Fiske was rebuilt in 1950 in the Moderne style. After a two-month renovation in 2008, the Fiske returned as a first-run theatre on December 15, 2008.
October 18, 1995
The Bayou Bartholomew Alliance was founded to help restore and preserve the beauty of the world’s longest bayou this week in 1995. Bayou Bartholomew rises northwest of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and empties into the Ouachita River just north of Monroe, 360 miles later. Which begs the question: “What’s the difference between a river and a bayou?” After an extensive one-second search, AI reported that: 1) rivers possess a swift or noticeable current, while bayous are “sluggish”; 2) rivers typically carry freshwater from a source to a larger body of water, while bayous often contain a mix of fresh and salt water, known as brackish water; 3) rivers are generally surrounded by banks of dirt, rock, or vegetation, while bayous are heavily wooded with swampy, boggy, or marshy surroundings; and 4) rivers exist worldwide, while the term “bayou” is almost exclusively used in the southeastern United States, particularly in Louisiana.
October 18, 1943
While work was going still going strong in the effort to build the landing craft that would make the Normandy invasion and other World War II operations successful, New Orleans businessman Andrew Jackson Higgins announced today in 1944 that his company would use 25,000 workers and its enormous assembly facility at Michoud (pictured) to build C-46 aircraft for the war effort. It didn’t happen. The contract would be cancelled soon thereafter, but Michoud would not go to waste. The plant would be involved in projects pertaining to the Manhattan Project that are still classified; build tanks during the Korean War; and manufacture Saturn rockets and fuel tanks for the space shuttle.
October 19, 1930
The Ascension Parish community of Donaldsonville experienced the biggest earthquake in Louisiana in recorded history occurred today in 1930. It measured 4.2 on the Richter scale. The earthquake was powerful enough to register on a seismograph in Washington , D.C. Donaldsonville, Napoleonville and Gonzales all had reports of significant infrastructure damage to brick chimneys and windows, according to the report. Baton Rouge and New Orleans also felt the quake. While no tectonic plates intersect in Louisiana, we do experience the occasional non-football-related quake.
October 19, 1911
The first Washington Parish Free Fair was held this week in 1911 in Franklinton. Since its birth in 1911 in a local livery stable, this county/parish fair has steadily grown each year. The fair moved to its current site in 1913, and the Mile Branch Settlement was moved to the site in 1976. Held in the third week of October every year, it is believed to be the largest county/parish free fair in the United States, and it is the second oldest Parish Fair in Louisiana. Highlights include dozens of exhibits of cut flowers, homemaking, livestock and agricultural products, Old McDonald’s Farm, stage performances, a midway and the PRO Rodeo.
October 20, 1976
Louisiana witnessed the worst ferry disaster in the history of the United State today in 1976. The MV George Prince, operating between Luling and Destrehan, was struck by the Norwegian tanker SS Frosta, which was traveling upriver. The collision occurred less than a mile from the construction site of the Luling Bridge which would replace the ferry seven years later. Ninety-six passengers and crew were aboard the ferry when it was struck, and seventy-eight perished. This was the also the deadliest peacetime nautical disaster involving a non-submersible vessel in U.S. waters since the explosion of the SS Grandcamp in 1947, which killed 581 people.
October 20, 1894
Born in New York City on either October 20th or 27th in 1894, Conrad Alfred Albrizio was the child of Italian immigrants. In 1920, an architectural job brought him to New Orleans, where he worked on the Hibernia Bank Building on Canal Street. In 1931, he received his first major commission–a fresco panels in the New State Capitol building under construction in Baton Rouge. Only one of Albrizio’s six panels in the building, an interpretation of biblical passages about justice in the Governor’s Press Room, remains to this day. By 1936, Albrizio had been hired as an instructor of art at LSU, where he taught until his resignation in 1954. His first mural, Rural Free Delivery, was created for the DeRidder Post Office, and in 1938, he painted four fresco panels in the portico of the Louisiana State Exhibit Building in Shreveport, and four fresco panels in the Capitol Annex in Baton Rouge. In 1940, he painted a fresco, The Struggle of Man, at the New Iberia Courthouse.
October 21, 1804
This week in 1804, William Dunbar, exploring America’s newly-purchased Ouachita River valley under the sponsorship of President Thomas Jefferson, arrived at the site of the ancient Native American earthworks in near Troyville in Catahoula Parish and found a Frenchman by the name of Hebrard living in a cabin on the largest mound and operating a nearby ferry. The Troyville earthworks are a Baytown period Native American archaeological site that dates from 400 to 700 AD. The site once included the tallest mound in Louisiana, at eighty-two feet in height; however, throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the unprotected historical complex was haphazardly destroyed. This devastation culminated in a road project in the 1930s, when earth was stripped from the main mound and used as infill for a bridge approach. The destruction of Troyville is considered to be one of the most irreplaceable losses in all of North American archaeology. (Thanks to Charles McClure and the Catahoula-LaSalle History and Genealogy Group for this information.)
October 21, 1932
Today in 1932, the ‘Personals’ column of the Morning Advocate featured a notice that Miss Helen Wurzlow had motored to Houma recently to visit her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Calvin Wurzlow. At the time, Calvin Wurzlow was the mayor of Houma, and his daughter Helen had recently moved to Baton Rouge to take a position as “official hostess” of the newly-completed State Capitol. Her responsibilities included giving tours to visiting dignitaries and ordinary citizens who flocked to Baton Rouge by the thousands to tour the magnificent building which had been dedicated five months earlier. Helen would eventually take a staff writer position for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and author a six-volume history, I Dug Up Terrebonne Parish.
October 22, 1774
Today in 1774, the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia was about to wrap up its business, but they did resolve to convene the Second Continental Congress on May 10, 1775. In addition to the Atlantic colonies that had been represented in the first congress, delegates voted to invite Quebec, Nova Scotia, St. John’s Island (Prince Edward Island), Georgia (which had not participated in the first congress), East Florida and West Florida to join them in 1775. West Florida, composed of Louisiana’s Florida parishes, the southern parts of Mississippi and Alabama, and the Florida panhandle, had been dealt to England from Spain in 1763 treaty. But English rule was still relatively new to the Southerners, and loyalty to the British crown was still more intense than it was in the Atlantic colonies. The colony’s economy and security relied heavily on the British Army and British rule. The invitation was declined.
October 22, 1968
Today in 1968, the Southern Regional Council announced on the eve of the 1968 Presidential election, the number of African Americans registered to vote in Louisiana had doubled since the 1964 election. The Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 had given the U. S. Department of Justice the power to sue counties and states that denied voting rights to eligible black citizens, and starting in 1961, the Kennedy Administration decided to test these new rules in the South. Throughout the early and mid-1960’s, a concerted effort was made to raise voter registration totals in places like East Carroll Parish, which hadn’t registered a single black voter since 1922.
October 23, 1926
Tulane Stadium was dedicated today in 1926. In 1925, the university announced today that it had secured funding for a new football stadium and that construction had begun on the facility that would seat 20,000 spectators. Lionel F. Favret, the contractor for the project said that the new stadium would be one of the most modern, comfortable and attractive in the country, if not the largest. The idea from the inception of the movement has been one of quality, not of size. Frank G. Churchill, the
architect, visited some of the most efficient college plants in the country and studied the handling and comfort of the crowds before drawing his plans.
October 23, 1947
The weather forecast for the Avoyelles Parish town of Marksville today in 1947 could have been “Cloudy with a chance of perch.” For nearly ten minutes, fresh fish fell from the sky over an area about 80 feet wide and a quarter-mile long. There had been no rain that day, and the Weather Service reported no downspouts or other phenomena that would explain the event. Still, hickory shad, largemouth bass, black bass, sunfish, perch, and minnows bounced off rooftop, pelting pedestrians, and even knocking a delivery boy off his bicycle. Once the rain of fish ended, townspeople ventured outdoors to get a closer look. Some of the fish were frozen, others were very cold, and all of it was edible.
October 24, 1940
Elsie the Cow made her debut as spokes-bovine for the Borden Company at the New York World’s Fair which closed this week in 1940. Also during that time, the company had opened an ice cream parlor in Lafayette that still stands to this day. Borden’s Ice Cream Shoppe on Johnston Street in Lafayette was built in 1940. In 1981, the then owner, lifelong Lafayette resident Flora Levy, died. Her will stipulated a large bequest to the University of Louisiana Lafayette’s Foundation and included a provision that the ice cream parlor. Borden’s in Lafayette is the last Borden’s retail ice cream shop in the United States.
October 24, 1973
Madewood Plantation House near was added to the National Register of Historic Places this week in 1973. Madewood Plantation House, also known as Madewood, is a former sugarcane plantation house on Bayou Lafourche, two miles east of Napoleonville on Louisiana Highway 308. The 1846 house is architecturally significant as the first major work of Henry Howard and is one of the finest Greek Revival plantation houses in the South. In recent years, the house has served as the setting for a number of film projects, including Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled in 2017 (photo of house as it appeared in the film) with Nicole Kidman and Kirsten Dunst, and as one of the settings for Beyonce’s video album Lemonade.
October 25, 1972
City of New Orleans by Arlo Guthro peaked at Number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart this week in 1972. According to the legend, songwriter Steve Goodman met Arlo Guthrie at the Quiet Knight bar in Chicago and asked to be allowed to play a song. Guthrie grudgingly agreed on the condition that if Goodman would buy him a beer, Guthrie would listen to him play for as long as it took to drink the beer. Goodman played City of New Orleans, which Guthrie liked enough that he asked to record it. The song was a hit for Guthrie and would prove to be his only Top 40 hit.
October 25-27, 2024
OK, smart aleck, are you SURE that people won’t be talking about Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and hundred years from now? The massively successful three-night stand at Caesar’s Superdome in New Orleans brought together nearly 250,000 fans from across the country and beyond to pump an estimated $200 million into the local economy from ticket sales alone. Factoring additional expenses spent in the New Orleans area by concert goers, the estimated overall revenue for the weekend is said to be around $500 million, compared to Mardi Gras festivities in New Orleans, which bring in about $900 million over the span of two weeks, and the $1.25 billion impact of Super Bowl LIX in 2025. Still not convinced? You Need to Calm Down.
October 26, 1850
When philanthropist John McDonough died today in 1850, his will provided that his Allard Plantation should be bequeathed to to the City of New Orleans to establish what we now know as City Park. Seen here after the completion of the Peristyle in 1907, it is over one mile wide and three miles long, comprising a total of 1,300 acres. It is 87th largest urban park in the country and home to the largest collection of mature live oaks in the world, with some trees over 800 years old. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Roosevelt Administration invested $12 million in developing the Park as part of the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.), which employed 20,000 men and women to build roadways, fountains and even Tad Gormley Stadium. Much of the art found throughout the Park originated in the W.P.A. era.
October 26, 1911
Gospel legend Mahalia Jackson was born today in 1912. She began singing as a child at her father’s church services and committed herself to the Lord at an early age that she would not sing any form of music other than religious. She would never be persuaded to sing blues or jazz. She appeared often with other artists such as Dinah Shore, Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, and Harry Belafonte, but always as a gospel singer. She sang for presidents, royalty, and packed concert halls around the world. She also wrote gospel songs herself and co-wrote others with her good friend Doris Akers.
October 27, 1810
Today was the first day of Fulwar Skipwith’s 43-day term as the first and only governor of the Territory of West Florida. On December 10, 1810, the former Spanish province of West Florida would become a territory of the United States, and in April 1812, part of the territory would become part of the new State of Louisiana. Skipwith was a distant cousin of U.S. President Thomas Jefferson and left college at the age of sixteen to enlist in the army during the American Revolution. In 1809, he moved to Spanish West Florida and served as a member of the West Florida judiciary. He would later be elected to the Louisiana State Senate, where in December, 1814, he sponsored legislation to absolve Jean Lafitte’s privateers of several of their crimes. This led to their joining Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans in January, 1815.
October 27, 1967
This week in 1967, Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton was celebrating release from his probationary period from a previous stabbing conviction when he and a friend were pulled over by Oakland, California, Police Department officer John Frey. Frey was shot four times and died within the hour. Huey Newton had been born in Monroe, the youngest of seven children and named for Huey Long. In 1945, the family migrated from Monroe to Oakland. Newton graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1959 without being able to read and attended Merritt College, where he would be one of the co-founders of the Black Panther Party in 1966.
October 28, 1866
It seems that every story about Grand Isle begins or ends with a hurricane, but the island has always attracted big dreamers, so so today, we’re going back this day in 1866 when the Picayune reported that “…several parties, among whom is that old, enterprising, and energetic citizen of Jefferson Parish, Joseph Hale Harvey, Esq., proposed to build on Grand Isle a hotel that cost one hundred thousand dollars. Their
aim is not only to excell in architecture and comfort all the public houses thus far built at the southern watering places, but also to equal, if not surpass, those of Newport, Saratoga, Niagara Falls, etc…” The Grand Isle Hotel (see ad) that arose from Harvey’s plan was everything he’d promised–for a short while. The financial panic of 1873 drove it into bankruptcy.
October 28, 2026
Somewhere nearby (10/28), you’ll see the story of Joseph Hale Harvey and his dreams of a luxury hotel at Grand Isle. Despite Harvey’s achievements, he may have been only the second most interesting person in his own house. Mrs. Harvey, nee Louise Marie Destrehan, was educated at Sacred Heart Academy in St. Louis, Missouri, and returned homein 1843 to assist her father, Nicholas Noel Destrehan, in managing his business enterprises,including the Destrehan (now Harvey) Canal. In 1870, using her father’s conceptual plan, Louise and her husband had a canal lock system designed and constructed which initially ended in failure because of a deep bed of quicksand. After Harvey’s death in 1888, Louise carried on, climbing down the ladders to closely observe and inspect all aspects of the engineering project until her own death in 1903. Her son, Horace, persevered until the canal was formally dedicated on March 29, 1907.
Halloween Weekend, October 29, 2012
Houma’s Rougarou Fest, a fundraising event for the Wetlands Discovery Center in the city, debuted the week before Halloween in 2012. Sure, rougaroux are scary, but they’re not the sharpest knives in the drawer of monsters. For instance, in order to count past ten, they have to use their fingers and toes. Therefore, if you want to keep the rougarou away, leave eleven pennies by the front door. He’ll have have to take off his shoes to count, giving you time to get away. Likewise, he’s said to be deathly afraid of frogs–a perilous weakness for a creature who lives in the Terrebonne Parish swamp.
October 29, 1943
Writing in “The Governor’s View,” Governor Sam Houston Jones’s weekly newspaper column today in 1943, the governor pointed out that there are “good politics” and “bad politics.” In a nutshell, “good” politicians agreed with him, and “bad” ones did not. Jones had been elected in 1940 to end twelve years of Long influence in Louisiana, and near the end of his term, he was pointing that agriculture and industry had prospered in the preceding three years. He condemned “deducts, deadheads and
kickbacks,” and boasted that, “this old state of ours has had a smelly reputation for a long time, but we have seen many abuses corrected.”
October 30, 1923
This week in 1923, the queen of New Orleans hotels was renamed to honor President Teddy Roosevelt–the first time. When the spectacular Grunewald Hotel opened in December 1893, the six-story building faced Baronne Street and carried the name of proprietor Louis Grunewald, who’d owned the Grunewald Music Hall at the same location. In 1923, new owners began planning a major addition which would face University Place and renamed the hotel to honor Roosevelt, whose efforts in building the Panama Canal had been a tremendous financial boon for New Orleans. Several additions and renovations later, the hotel would be sold in 1965 and bear the name of the Fairmont chain until 2007. After the most recent sale and a two-year renovation, the hotel reopened in 2009 with its new-old name, The Roosevelt New Orleans, A Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
October 30, 1889
More than sixty years before Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco, a New Orleans girl, Alice Heine, pulled off the feat, wedding Prince Albert I of Monaco, Sovereign Prince of Monaco on October 30, 1889. The prince, whose first wife had been a daughter of a Scottish duke, was an oceanographer. During his long journeys at sea, Alice took a great interest in the Monegasque opera season. She brought a strong business acumen, showing an understanding far beyond her years. She helped to put the principality on a sound financial footing and supported opera and ballet. Her former home in New Orleans is now the Café Amelie on Royal Street.
October 31, 1837
311 men, women, and children died tonight in Louisiana’s worst maritime disaster when the steamboat Monmouth collided with the steamboat Warren, which was towing a boat called the Trenton. The U.S. Army had hired three steamboats at New Orleans, the Yazoo, the John Newton, and the Monmouth, to move the Upper Creek band of Muscogees to the Oklahoma Territory. the Great Plains. Some 700 passengers were put aboard the Monmouth. Near Prophet Island (now Profit Island) at Port Hudson under drizzly dark conditions, the Monmouth was apparently violating traditional navigation rules when it veered into the path of the Warren. The bodies of the Muscogee dead were buried in mass graves near Port Allen.
October 31, 1959
On Halloween in 1959, trick-or-treating had been moved from Saturday to Friday night so that parents could go watch the most famous game in Tiger Stadium history–until this week, anyway. LSU and Ole Miss were ranked No. 1 and No. 3 in the country, and they would play an epic game in Death Valley. The Rebels were leading 3-0, when Billy Cannon took a punt on his own 37-yard line and ran it into the history books, giving theTigers a thrilling 7-3 victory. The Sugar Bowl Committee thought the game was so good that they scheduled a re-match for New Year’s Day in New Orleans. It was a mistake. The Rebels won, 21-0.