March 1909 - March 18, 1909 (Thursday)

March 18, 1909 (Thursday)

• Willie Whitla, the 8-year-old son of a leading attorney in Sharon, Pennsylvania, was kidnapped by two men who appeared at the East Ward School, and hours later a ransom note was received by his parents, demanding $10,000 and closing with the note, "Dead boys are not desirable". After the father delivered $10,000 to a woman at a drugstore, Willie was released unharmed and put on a streetcar in Cleveland, where he was reunited with his father at the city's Hollenden Hotel. James and Helen Boyle were arrested in Cleveland the next day, with $9,790 of the money. James Boyle was given a life sentence and died in prison. William Whitla died of pneumonia in 1932, at the age of 31.
• Einar Dessau of Denmark spoke over a wireless radio transmitter to a government post six miles (10 km) distant, becoming, in effect, the first person to ever talk on the radio.
• Born: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., who died 7 months later on November 8, 1909. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's fifth child, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., was born five years later.