Opinion: History says the Supper Club fire was no accident
Peter Bronson
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Ivory-clean Cincinnati has a dirty secret buried in the dim, forgotten past. Long ago, a Faustian bargain was made that was good for the convention business: The northern banks of the Ohio would stay clean – but south of the river, anything goes.
Newport, Kentucky became an underworld kingdom, the outlaw grandfather of Las Vegas. It was “Sin City,” “Little Mexico” and “America’s most wicked city,” according to Esquire magazine in 1957.
Two decades later it was on the national map again when 165 people were killed in the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire – 44 years ago this weekend.
Tragic tale of the whales displayed at a Cincinnati resort in 1877
Come, listen to a tale about a whale on a hill.
When a salesman brought a living white whale, a beluga, to Cincinnati to be exhibited at the Lookout House, a hilltop resort in Mount Auburn.
As one might suspect, this absurd tale does not have a happy ending.
On June 7, 1877, The Enquirer announced A.A. Stewart, a salesman for the Aetna Life Insurance Co. in Cincinnati, had purchased a white whale from the New York Aquarium for $10,000 plus the expenses for capture and transportation.
The New York Aquarium was nothing like the scientific aquatic museums of today, but rather a P.T. Barnum-style menagerie operated by showman W.C. Coup.