Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Hey FF stirs the pot around here but the cheating M* skunkweasels did 19-0

That was the dedication game but Ohio State won the first game played at Ohio Stadium, defeating Ohio Wesleyan University with a final score of 5–0 on October 7, 1922.

Almost like Ole Miss giving Joey Freshwater the what for, but hey I hear you can get Bryce Underwood in the portal for cheap - that'll staighten things out for the Bengals

Hey, don't feel bad.  Without looking it up, I couldn't tell you when our stadium was christened, or who we played, or if we won.  But I do know LSU lost the first football game of record it ever played in 1893 (I think).  Against....Tulane.  So....yeah.  No need to bring us down, we started out as losers. 


We tried already, we couldn't afford him, had to make room for all those pro basketball players. 

Might hold off and see if you can get a Manning kid for his last chance audition to the pros.

Or maybe Jayce Brown can convince his old QB/roomie in Manhattan to join him.

The History: Sitka's 1974 Mount Edgecumbe Volcano Hoax
Residents of Sitka, Alaska were alarmed when the long-dormant volcano neighboring them, Mount Edgecumbe, suddenly began to belch out billows of black smoke. People spilled out of their homes onto the streets to gaze up at the volcano, terrified that it was active again and might soon erupt. (Today, you can safely explore the crater's edge via local Sitka outdoor adventures). Luckily it turned out that man, not nature, was responsible for the smoke. A local practical joker named Porky Bickar had flown hundreds of old tires into the volcano's crater and then lit them on fire, all in a (successful) attempt to fool the city dwellers into believing that the volcano was stirring to life. According to local legend, when Mount St. Helens erupted six years later, a Sitka resident wrote to Bickar to tell him, "This time you've gone too far!" Read the rest of the story below...

The Logistics: 70 Tires, a Helicopter, and 50-Foot Letters
On Kruzof Island, about 13 miles west of Sitka, Alaska, sits Mt Edgecumbe. The extinct volcano is 3,200 feet in height and covered with snow about eight months of the year.

On April 1, 1974, a clear, beautiful morning, Porky Oliver Bickar of Sitka woke up early to see Mt. Edgecumbe through the window in all its glory. Porky whispered to his wife, Patty: "This is it. We've gotta do it today." Patty smiled sweetly, kissed Porky on the forehead, and said, "Don't make an ass of yourself."

Porky rushed to his shop (you can see the name of his shop on Old Blue) and started calling helicopter charters—a service still popular today for Sitka flightseeing and mountain tours. He called three charters, but when they heard his plan they respectfully declined. Finally, with the help of Harry Sulser, the owner of Sitka's Pioneer Bar (still a staple of Sitka dining and entertainment), Porky struck pay dirt with Temsco's Earl Walker in Petersburg. Although his chopper was fog-bound, Earl loved the idea and said he would be on the way to Sitka as soon as he could see one more telephone pole.

In the meantime, Porky made up two manila rope slings about 150 feet long...each holding about 50 old car tires. He also gathered up a batch of oily rags, a gallon of sterno, a lot of diesel oil, and a dozen smoke bombs.

When Earl and his chopper arrived at the old PBY and Goose turnaround (Sitka didn't have an airport then), Porky, Earl, Larry Nelson, and Ken Stedman first loaded up the incendiaries. When Earl and Porky got off the ground and hovered the chopper, Larry and Ken hooked one sling of tires to the chopper and off they went toward Mt. Edgecumbe (with FAA "legal" clearance, of course).

Within just a few minutes, Porky and Earl were flying over Mt. Edgecumbe. They could see for miles--just water and islands--with Baranof Island to the east and the open North Pacific to the west. Porky and Earl dropped the tires into the up-til-now extinct volcano, then swung around and set the chopper down. Porky got out and unloaded all the fuel...just the right stuff to make a lot of black, smoky fire.

When Earl lifted off headed back to Sitka for the next load of tires, Porky stacked the first load in a big circle, poured on the fuel, and started to spray-paint a huge message in the snow with 50-foot letters: APRIL FOOL. When Earl returned and dumped 50 more tires into Mt. Edgecumbe, the two boys finished the arrangement...set the whole mess ablaze...and happily headed back to Sitka.

The Reaction: The Coast Guard and the Mt. St. Helens Letter
On the way back, Earl asked the FAA tower for clearance, and Homer Sutter (the controller) said "I'll bring you in as low and inconspicuously as possible...and, by the way, the son of a gun looks fantastic!" Earl set the chopper down. Mission accomplished...

Although Porky had remembered to notify both the FAA and the Sitka Police (he was a member of the police commission), he somehow forgot to notify the Coast Guard. While Mt. Edgecumbe was busy spewing out its black smoke, the Coast Guard Commander called for a chopper to investigate and sent a whale boat over to check things out. The chopper pilot radioed back to the commander that all he saw was a bunch of smoldering tires and a big April Fool sign in the snow.

Jimmy Johnson, Vice President of Alaska Airlines, had also heard about Mt. Edgecumbe's activity, and called Sitka to instruct their departing plane to fly over the mountain to give all the passengers a bird’s eye view of it all. And, in the meantime, the Sitka radio station and police station phones were ringing off the hook.

We later found out that Porky's April Fools' Day caper had made AP news...worldwide.

Original Photos: Smoke Rising from Mount Edgecumbe

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: 

The Metropolitan Opera House Opens with a Performance of Faust (1883)
New York City's Metropolitan Opera House is the leading US opera company. It opened in 1883 after having been founded by a group of millionaires who had failed to get boxes at the prestigious and exclusive Academy of Music. The "Met" soon outshined its rival and is now considered one of the world's premier opera stages. Originally located at Broadway and 39th Street, it moved into the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in 1966.

On this day in 1944, two American submarines lying in wait in a dark strait ambushed the most powerful fleet Japan had left, sank two heavy cruisers in minutes, dumped an enemy admiral into the sea, and fired the opening shots of the greatest naval battle in history. This is the Battle of the Palawan Passage.

Days earlier, American forces had landed at Leyte in the Philippines, and Japan had responded by throwing nearly its entire remaining navy into a desperate plan to smash the invasion. The most powerful piece of that plan was the Center Force under Admiral Takeo Kurita, a fearsome fleet built around the two largest battleships ever constructed, the Yamato and Musashi, along with other battleships and a screen of heavy cruisers and destroyers. This armada was steaming toward Leyte to annihilate the American landing, and it had to pass through a narrow stretch of water off the island of Palawan.

Waiting there in the dark were two American submarines, the Darter and the Dace, patrolling together. In the small hours after midnight, the Darter's radar suddenly lit up with a huge mass of contacts, Kurita's entire fleet steaming straight toward them. The submariners could hardly believe the size of the target. They flashed off a contact report that gave the American command its first vital warning that this great Japanese force was on the move, and then they set out to attack it.

Through the rest of the night the two submarines raced ahead on the surface, pushing their engines to get into position in front of the oncoming fleet. As dawn approached, they slipped beneath the waves and lay in wait directly in the path of the Japanese columns. Then they struck. The Darter fired a full spread of torpedoes at the leading heavy cruiser, which happened to be the Atago, Admiral Kurita's own flagship. Torpedo after torpedo slammed into her, and the Atago was torn apart and sank within minutes, so fast that Kurita himself was thrown into the sea and had to be fished out of the water, his flagship gone from under him. The Darter then swung her tubes onto another heavy cruiser, the Takao, and hit her too, wrecking her so badly that she had to turn back, finished for the rest of the war.

Moments later the Dace joined in, firing into the column and smashing her torpedoes into the heavy cruiser Maya. The Maya blew up in a tremendous explosion and went down almost instantly. In the space of a few minutes, two of Japan's heavy cruisers had been sunk and a third crippled, before Kurita's fleet had even reached the battle it was sailing to fight.

It was a stunning opening blow. The ambush not only cost the Japanese three valuable warships and forced their admiral into the embarrassment of being sunk and rescued before the real fighting began, it also gave the Americans crucial advance warning that the Center Force was coming. Over the next three days that warning helped the US Navy meet and shatter the Japanese fleet across a sprawling series of clashes that became the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle ever fought, which effectively destroyed the Imperial Japanese Navy as a fighting force.

There was a price. The submarine Darter, in the hunt that followed, ran hard aground on a shoal and could not be freed. Her crew was rescued by the Dace, and the stranded submarine had to be destroyed to keep her out of enemy hands. But the two little boats had already done something extraordinary. Lying in the dark of the Palawan Passage, they had drawn first blood against the might of the Japanese fleet and lit the fuse on the greatest sea battle in history, on this day in 1944.


''RED FRIDAY,  U.S.A., October 23, 2026,  13:15-LEST WE  FORGET-WE REMEMBER-THEY Are NOT FORGOTTEN; U.S.N.,  SUBMARINERS of W.W.II/1941-1945:One of The ROUGHEST-TOUGHEST Naval Duty in/of  W.W.II:

I think I read that book or one very similar back in college for a WWII history course