WTF Fun Fact 13222 – Buffalo Tool Library

The Buffalo Tool Library is a magnificent idea that we wish could happen in every city. It would sure save us a lot of cash during our DIY home improvement adventures!

What is the Buffalo Tool Library?

The Buffalo Tool Library is a non-profit community organization that provides a lending library of tools to its members in Buffalo, New York. Members can borrow tools for home improvement, gardening, and repair projects, much like they would borrow books from a traditional library. The goal of the organization is to promote sustainability, community building, and self-sufficiency by making tools accessible to everyone.

The Buffalo Tool Library operates as a membership-based service. Members pay a fee to join and are then able to borrow tools from the library’s collection for a set period of time.

To borrow tools, members must check out the tools in person. They can do this either at the library’s physical location or through its online platform. The borrowed tools must then be returned in good condition within the agreed-upon loan period. Late fees may apply if the tools are returned past the due date.

The library also offers classes, workshops, and events to help members learn how to use the tools and develop new skills.

The library is run by volunteers. It relies on community support to continue its mission of promoting sustainability and self-sufficiency.

Building community

According to the University at Buffalo’s website:

“The Tool Library—which celebrated its eleventh anniversary this summer—lends over 4,000 tools, large and small, to over 1,000 individual and group members for both personal and collective projects. In addition to aiding personal do-it-yourself efforts, it organizes extensive community work: planting and maintaining trees, flowers, and neighborhood gardens; spearheading organized cleanups and streetscape and store-front maintenance; staging do-it-yourself and repair clinics; equipping and training in safety and lead abatement efforts.”

 WTF fun facts

Source: “The Tool Library: How to Build and Maintain a Social and Environmental Justice Not-for-Profit Organization” — SUNY Buffalo

WTF Fun Fact 13135 – The Blizzard of 77

Have you heard the lore of the Blizzard of 77? Maybe you even lived through it. If so (and you’re like my family), no other storm could ever be like it again. (Meanwhile, we played a board game called The Blizzard of ’77 with glee as kids.) So what happened, exactly, during that storm?

There’s no need to make light of this storm – it was deadly and heartbreaking to many families. At least 23 people died as a direct result of the blizzard. That’s part of the reason it holds such a solid place in the memories of those who felt it.

The Blizzard of ’77 hit Western New York and Southern Ontario at the end of January. The snowfall during the storm was minimal, but the winds blowing off the frozen Lake Erie blew around the 60 inches of snow already on the ground to create snowdrifts.

Where did the blizzard happen and how bad was it, really?

The Blizzard of 77 happened around the Great Lakes in the U.S., and more specifically the western side of Lake Erie. Western New York and Southern Ontario felt the brunt of its wrath. But most people associate the city of Buffalo, NY with the notorious blizzard.

If you dislike snow (or even if you do like it, just not when it’s in your driveway/on your car), you know even 4 or 5 inches can be enough to wreck your day. But the blizzard brought 100 inches to some places in Western New York. Just not from the sky. More on that in a minute.

Some stories that came out of the event are endearing, others tragic.

Kids gleefully climbed snowbanks to stand on the roof of their houses (back in a time when parents would still kick you outside during the day). Many parents regretted the roof damage that was wrought, especially since if you were going to climb the roof, chances we you were taking the top of the trash can to use as a sled.

Two reindeer at the Buffalo Zoo decided to prance out onto the huge snowdrifts. They waltzed out of their pens and the zoo itself. Maybe they thought they had finally made it home.

On the other hand, nine people were found buried in their cars. Others had heart attacks while trying to shovel the snow. Car accidents took even more lives (there was a travel ban, but not all workers got a day off). The storm cost the area economic losses in the neighborhood of $221 million. That includes $36 million in lost wages for city residents.

Buffalo became known as the city of snow mostly because of the images people saw on the nightly news.

Buffalo’s notorious blizzard of 77

Buffalo made the news around the world because of the photos that resulted from the storm. Of course, most people had to wait to see the photos because you still had to take your film to be developed at the store. And there were no cell phones to check on your family.

People were stuck on roads for hours (which is terribly dangerous if snow covers your tailpipe because you may end up dying from carbon monoxide poisoning, as some do during these types of storms). Babies were delivered at home because emergency vehicles could not get down the streets. The power went out in homes across the area. Families huddled together for warmth (no matter how mad you were at your siblings).

Buffalo and their “southtowns” (like Hamburg and Orchard Park) often get loads of lake-effect snow early in the year. This can be annoying and plentiful, and this snow is the result of the lake not yet being frozen and adding more moisture to the air.

However, during Buffalo’s Blizzard of ’77, the lake had frozen. And that was even worse because it helped the snowdrifts blow across areas where shoveling and plowing could be undone in a matter of minutes with the right (or wrong) gust of wind.

Prior to the first day of the blizzard, it had snowed just about every day since Christmas, so Mother Nature had a lot of ammo to work with. Buffalo had 33-59 inches of snow (depending on where you were) already on the ground before the blizzard even began. That made the snow even harder to move because it was densely packed. Construction equipment wasn’t enough to move some of it. There was no place to put the snow after a few hours.

The Blizzard was a regional event and not the worst blizzard

The Blizzard of 77 in Buffalo was one of the first to be broadcast around the world. This made it memorable to people well outside the region. And other regions got walloped as well.

The Blizzard of 78 was actually worse in some ways. 100 fatalities were recorded, and that nor’easter spread out farther. It affected New England, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. Plenty of people felt it in the Midwest as well!).

Part of what made the Blizzard of 77 so memorable is the help that came from around the country in its aftermath. The National Guard set up a post in the city of Buffalo. Equipment came from as far as Colorado to help with the clean-up.

Only around 12 inches of new snow fell during the blizzard itself. But the winds of nearly 70 mph were enough to maim and kill. So were the Arctic temperatures (the wind chill made it feel like −60 °F).

Extreme weather is a fact of life, but some events stand out in people’s memories more than others. The Blizzard of 77 is one of them.  WTF fun facts

Source: “On this day 45 years ago, the Blizzard of ’77 struck – stories from the storm” — WIVB

WTF Fun Fact 12929 – Dr. Roswell Park and President William McKinley

Roswell Park is a well-known, world-class cancer research and care center in Buffalo, New York. It’s named after Dr. Roswell Park, whose backstory involves his duty to his patients and the death of a U.S. president. Despite the way it may have changed history, the story of Dr. Roswell Park and President William McKinley isn’t well-known.

President William McKinley shot in Buffalo

In 1901, the Pan-American Exposition took place in Buffalo. The months-long event is known mostly for its dark moment in presidential history though.

On Friday, September 6, 1901, President William McKinley visited the Expo and was shot in the Exposition’s Temple of Music by 28-year-old anarchist Leon Czolgosz. As the young man walked up to the president who was shaking hands with guests, he pulled out a .32-caliber handgun and shot McKinley twice – once in the chest and once in the abdomen.

The bullet aimed at his chest bounced off a bullet and merely grazed the president. But the bullet in his abdomen was the one that would end up killing him.

Before Czolgosz could do more damage or get away, he “was tackled by James B. Parker, an African-American man who had been standing behind him in line, and members of the security staff quickly subdued the gunman,” according to Roswell Park Cancer Center (cited below).

Dr. Roswell Park and President William McKinley

The president was still alive when he was transported to the Pan Am Emergency Hospital on the fairgrounds.

There was one doctor in town who was highly qualified to treat the president’s injury, which was complicated by President William McKinley’s weight. Dr. Roswell Park was a trauma surgeon who had experience treating abdominal wounds. However, he wasn’t at the hospital that day. He was (not far away) in Niagara Falls operating on a lymphoma patient.

A messenger was sent to fetch Dr. Park and ran into the operating room to alert him that he was needed in Buffalo. As one of Park’s assistants later recalled, Park replied “Don’t you see that I can’t leave this case, even if it were for the president of the United States?”

The messenger then informed him: “Doctor, it is for the president of the United States.”

Too late

While finishing up on his patient, Dr. Park sent a fellow surgeon to the railroad station to “make the necessary arrangements for a special engine or train” to get him to Buffalo as quickly as possible, but it didn’t work out that way. The train station was a mess when he got there and he had to wait 15 – 20 minutes for a regularly scheduled train to arrive.

In the meantime, the physicians who were present at the hospital started without him since the only source of light in the operating room was the sun, which was setting fast.

McKinley had been shot at 4:07 pm and Dr. Park arrived at 6:50 pm. By then, the surgery was nearly finished.

According to the cancer center now named after Dr. Park: “Matthew D. Mann, M.D., a gynecologist with no surgical experience involving the upper abdomen, had performed the operation. His work was complicated by the fact that the president was a heavy man with a very large abdomen, and consequently Dr. Mann was unable to locate the bullet. When Park walked into the operating room, he noticed that neither Mann nor any of the other surgeons wore surgical gloves, caps, or gowns, nor had they taken steps to disinfect the surgical area. Perspiration from one of the attending surgeons dropped into the president’s open wound. The wound was closed without a drain in place. With the surgery complete at 7:32 p.m., the president was transferred by electric ambulance to the home of John Milburn, chair of the Pan Am Board of Directors, to recover. Dr. Park and another physician rode in the ambulance with the president.”

It took over a week for McKinley to succumb to his injuries, and he died on September 14th. His autopsy showed that the cause of death was gangrene, almost certainly a result of the sloppy surgery. Dr. Park suffered from the disappointment of not getting there in time throughout the rest of his life.

But aside from a delay that he couldn’t prevent at the train station, Park was also delayed by his commitment to care for the patient he was operating on at the time.  WTF fun facts

Source: “One day in September” — Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center

WTF Fun Fact 12723 – Air Conditioning Was Invented In Buffalo, New York

Willis Carrier is the man to thank if you’re cooling off in an air-conditioned space today. He was born in Angola, New York, and attended high school in Buffalo, where he would later work, he submitted the first drawings for a cooling unit in 1902.

Children and some laborers were already some time off in the summer when productivity was low because of heat and humidity. But, of course, many companies needed to keep on producing their goods.

Carrier, who got an engineering degree at Cornell and then returned to work as a research engineer at Buffalo Forge Company, was set upon the task.

But the primary goal wasn’t to give us all comfort during sweltering summers. In fact, according to the Willis Carrier website, the “young research engineer initialed a set of mechanical drawings designed to solve a production problem at the Sackett & Wilhelms Lithography and Printing Company in Brooklyn, New York.” Ironically, it was a problem with paper.

Also interesting is that Buffalo Forge was a supplier of forges, fans, and hot blast heaters. Creating cold air is the first challenge that needed addressing!

So why begin with paper? Why does paper need to be cool?

Well, it turns out it expands and contracts when heat and humidity are a problem – and that’s just not good when you need to print something.

Again, according to the website that now carries his life story:

“In the spring of 1902, consulting engineer Walter Timmis visited the Manhattan office of J. Irvine Lyle, the head of Buffalo Forge’s sales activities in New York. Timmis’ client, Sackett & Wilhelms, found that humidity at its Brooklyn plant wreaked havoc with the color register of its fine, multicolor printing. Ink, applied one color at a time, would misalign with the expansion and contraction of the paper stock. This caused poor quality, scrap waste and lost production days, Timmis said. Judge magazine happened to be one of the important clients whose production schedule was at risk. Timmis had some ideas about how to approach the problem but would need help. Was Buffalo Forge interested?”

Carrier was tasked with the problem because he already had a sterling reputation as a researcher and data collector, and this problem would need a lot of work.

But he did it. He was able to not only produce cool air but humidity as well by “replacing steam with cold water flowing through heating coils, balancing the temperature of the coil surface with the rate of air flow to pull the air temperature down to the desired dew point temperature.”

It wasn’t perfect, but it did the job. Carrier later started a company, and sold his updated creations to factories, and then to department stores and movie theaters in the 1920s.

The source down below is a comprehensive website on his invention and the impact it had on the world (just click through the dates on the left side of the page to follow the timeline to today).  WTF fun facts

Source: “The Invention That Changed the World” — WillisCarrier.com