Baseball has been in London since 1850s; first played on the garrison cricket grounds (now Victoria Park). |
Fred Goldsmith invented the curve ball while playing on London's championship baseball team "The Tecumsehs". |
The Tecumseh's championship game played into the 13th inning in Tecumseh Park against the Chicago Buckeyes in 1877. |
Another early baseball team in London was an amateur team called the Morning Stars as they practiced at 4 a.m. before members went to work. |
Tecumseh Park was a swampy river flat in West London when WJ Reid, a merchant from China, bought it, drained it and laid out a diamond. He gave it it's name. |
Niagara Falls, Ontario's 'Maid-of-the-Mist' had her maiden voyage. |
In the 1890s a small Cdn Professional league in London, the 'London Alers' played at Tecumseh Park. A brick-dust bike path was built at the park and became the site for professional and amateur bike races and yearly "diamond meets" were held in which the top riders received diamond rings. |
London's first moving picture was shown in Tecumseh Park in 1895. Facing financial hardships in the mid 1930s the park was bought by the Labatt family in 1936 and donated to the city along with money for improvements. The flood of April 1937 washed away the grandstand but new bleachers and grandstand were built. In the early 1940s floodlights were added. After the war the London Majors formed and they won the Sandlot Baseball World Championship on Sept 29, 1948. |
In 1929 there were 14 playgrounds operating in London. |
On July 10, 1946 Canada's first drive-in theatre, "The Skyway", opened in Stoney Creek. |
CBC-TV began broadcasting on September 8, 1952. |
Stratford Festival (Stratford, Ontario) opened on July 13, 1953. |
On September 26, 1969 the Ontario Science Centre opened it doors to the public for the first time |
August 15, 1974 marks the opening of one of North America's largest zoos .. the 710-acre Metro Toronto Zoo. |
Toronto's CN Tower, Toronto, the tallest free-standing structure in the world, opened on April 2, 1975. |
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