1918 – World War I
Daylight Saving time takes effect for the first time at 2 a.m. “Before closing the store [tonight],” said Max Goodman of the Hertzberg Jewelry Company yesterday, “we will set forward our street clock, the clock in the window and six or seven large time pieces in the store. The other watches and clocks will be allowed to run down. Monday morning we will wind them all up again and set them to the new time.”
1980
A three-alarm fire rages through the walls and roof of the Texas Transportation Museum in Hemisfair Plaza, ruining the collection of Fiesta gowns, damaging stored European and Texas paintings and furniture, but leaving most of the museum’s priceless automobile collection miraculously unscathed. Three of the 55 cars in the collection, said to be the tenth largest in the country, were destroyed: a 1962 Mercedes-Benz 300SL roadster, a 1940 American Bantam mini-car, and a 1957 Lotus racer, valued at a total of about $35,000 (about $108,000 in 2017 dollars).
1986
The Sears building on Romana Plaza closes. It will be razed, rebuilt and opened in 1995 as the San Antonio Central Library.