The story explained how on Sept. 18, three 14-year-old girls — Margaret Keville, Mary Hagerty and Roseann Pinto — while walking along Parkside Avenue at the edge of Fairmount Park on their way home from St. Gregory Parochial School at 52nd Street and Lancaster Avenue in West Philadelphia had stopped and sat on a bench near 51st Street to chat.
According to the girls, the Virgin Mary had suddenly appeared to them standing in a nearby privet bush — she was wearing a blue veil and white gown — and then simply vanished.
Returning home, the girls told their parents and other relatives what they believed they had seen.
The following day, according to the Life article, the three girls returned to the site with two friends, Mary and Carol Burns. All five girls claimed they could see a face in the bushes and all reported they had detected the scent of roses coming from the bush.
It was October 1953, just a little more than two months after the war had ended in Korea.
During the next couple of weeks, an estimated 20,000 people would visit the site, seeking cures for illnesses and miraculous solutions to their personal problems.
Some insisted they felt a breeze and they, too, noticed the scent of roses coming from the bush. Others maintained the bush had the power to heal.
These individuals would leave behind huge quantities of religious souvenirs that eventually covered the entire bush and the area surrounding it — flowers, candles, statues, sacred medals, written messages, discarded canes and crutches, and even monetary donations. On its branches, they hung rosary beads, crucifixes, bandanas, scarves, multicolored ribbons and holy cards.
Throughout this time, Philadelphia’s diocesan officials, including Archbishop John F. O’Hara, refused to comment on the authenticity of the children’s stories, yet a few religious leaders stated the whole thing was a “mass hallucination.”
Others thought the girls had been unduly influenced by seeing a Warner Bros. movie released earlier that year.
The film, “The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima,” related the story of three Portuguese children who insisted they had experienced visions of the Blessed Virgin during the first World War.
Despite the church’s official indifference to the Fairmount Park episode, rumors spread quickly that on Oct. 25, between 7 and 10 p.m. the Virgin would reappear.
On that evening, an estimated crowd of 50,000 people showed up hoping to witness a miracle, and at least six Philadelphia Park police officers stood around the bush to protect it and keep a semblance of order.
According to reports in the Evening Bulletin, a man calling himself “The King of the Gypsies” collapsed and died, and another man who said he hadn’t walked in four years without crutches rose from his wheelchair and walked 100 feet unaided, while a crowd gathered around him and prayed.
Yet there is no real evidence anything miraculous actually occurred
Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom, was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung and Schutzstaffel paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938
