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The year 1921 was not only an eventful year in lighthouse history, it was also an eventful year in world history. In 1921 the United States government officially declared that World War I was officially over. But interestingly, it was also the year that Adolf Hitler was declared Fuhrer of the Nazi Party, an act that would eventually cause the loss of millions of lives and devastation throughout the world and eventually plunge everyone into yet another World War. 1921 was also the year that Warren G. Harding was sworn in as the 29th President of the United States, and the year of the first radio broadcast of a professional baseball game.
Early into the start of 1921, on January 10th, just nine days after the California Golden Bears of the University of California-Berkley defeated the Ohio State Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl, a fire in the basement of a Department of Commerce Building destroyed or severely damaged many records and documents of the U.S. Bureau of Lighthouses that dated back to the 1850s, as well as other government documents such as the files of the 1890 census. Some or all of the fire-damaged documents were put back into storage and eventually found their way to the National Archives in Bethesda, Maryland. But it wasn’t until 1947, an amazing twenty-six years after the fire at the Department of Commerce, that Wilbur R. Poole, an employee of the National Archives, who is shown in this photograph taken on April 4th of that year, started the first step to salvage the documents and records. This news wire photo was not widely distributed, but it is a vital slice of America’s lighthouse history and the original is now in the archives of Lighthouse Digest. We’d like to know more about Mr. Poole and his work. Perhaps one of our readers knows more about him.
This story appeared in the
Mar/Apr 2014 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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