History

May 5, ‘He is a Swindler’

May 5, 2014 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

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Good morning. Today is the 123th day of the year.

Today the Brooklyn Historical Society is hosting Spinning Wheels! Pedal-Powered Trivia with the Trivia Masters in honor of Celebrate Bike Month NYC. The pop-culture questions, songs and film clips will all be bike themed. There will be prizes, plus plentiful beer courtesy of Brooklyn Brewery. … PowerHouse Arena in DUMBO is hosting a book launch for “The True American” by New York Times writer Anand Giridharadas. The author will be in conversation with Brooklyn writer and comedian Baratunde Thurston, author of the bestselling book “How to Be Black.” The event will take place at 7 p.m.

Notable people born on this day include journalist Nelly Bly, Karl Marx, philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, singer Adele and actor Henry Cavill.

It is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Wilderness of 1864. It was the first major encounter between opposing troops under Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, and was named for the area of dense forest and underbrush of northern Virginia where it occurred. The engagement was especially fierce, with opposing armies often fighting at point-blank range as the battle lines became obscured in the smoke-filled forest. Both sides suffered heavy casualties totaling more than 28,000, and after the fighting had ceased on the second day, more than 200 wounded Federal troops were trapped and killed by the flames of fires started by the battle.

James Beard was born on this day in 1903. The “father of American cooking” was born in Portland, Ore. Throughout a long and busy culinary career, he penned more than 20 classic cookbooks, appeared on television’s first cooking show in 1946 and was an enthusiastic ambassador for American regional cooking. He died in 1985. His Greenwich Village brownstone is America’s only culinary historic landmark and serves as the headquarters of the James Beard Foundation.

The Battle of Puebla occurred on this day in 1862. Mexican troops under General Ignacio Zaragoza, outnumbered three to one, defeated invading French forces of Napoleon III at the city of Puebla.

It is the Mexican national holiday Cinco de Mayo, which recognizes the anniversary of the Battle of Puebla in 1962. The day is observed by Mexicans everywhere with parades, festivals, dances and speeches.

It is the anniversary of the stock market crash of 1893, when Wall Street stock prices took a sudden drop. By the end of the year, 600 banks had closed. The Philadelphia and Reading, the Erie, the Northern Pacific, the Union Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroads went into receivership and 15,000 other businesses went into bankruptcy. Fifteen to 20 percent of the workforce became unemployed.

On this day in 1887, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published a notice titled “He is a Swindler” on the first page of the paper. Apparently, “a young man who represented himself as a canvasser for advertisements in the Eagle”—who was not affiliated with the paper—had been going around selling advertising space and taking money for his fake service. “Mr. George Thayer, of Fulton [S]treet, reported at the Eagle office yesterday that he been visited” by the swindler and had given him payment for the promised advertising. “A lady who keeps a fine art school on Lafayette [A]venue has made a similar complaint.” The paper warned its readers and potential advertisers not to fall for the act and asked them to look out for the man, who was described as “[wearing] side whiskers.”