From the Brooklyn Aerie: February 22, 2012

February 22, 2012 A Weekly Column of Trivia and Observations By David Ansel Weiss Brooklyn Daily Eagle
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Neither of the two most famous Roosevelts — Presidents Theodore and Franklin — are buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, but 60 other people with the name of Roosevelt are.

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If anyone asks you how many episodes there were of Jackie Gleason’s TV series “The Honeymooners,” you can tell them the official count is 39, though this number does not include the “lost” episodes that were uncovered in the 1980s or the many “Honeymooners” sketches that were produced on various variety shows.

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The statue of Abraham Lincoln in Prospect Park was paid for by thousands of Brooklynites, each of whom paid the subscription price of one dollar.

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When Peter Luger’s steak house started out in the late 19th century, it offered not only food, but also bowling and pool.

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Did you know that Long Island College Hospital was the first hospital in the United States to use anesthesia and stethoscopes?

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Although the East River ferries that used the docks at the end of what is now Old Fulton Street shut down in the 1920s, the ferries that went from Williamsburg to Manhattan lasted 10 more years.

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Brooklyn’s Drake’s Bakery was the first commercial bakery in the United States to package cake for sale in grocery stores.

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Bridge Street ended up almost like a road that goes nowhere. When planned, it was to go from Fulton Street to the East River at a spot where everyone assumed the Brooklyn end of the Brooklyn Bridge would be, but it ended up with the Brooklyn Bridge to its left and the Manhattan Bridge to its right.

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The total trackage of the Long Island Rail Road is 700 miles.

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I wonder how many of those who went to the Walker Theater in Bensonhurst knew the movie house was named for the Honorable James J. Walker, one of New York’s mayors in the 1920s?

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The Brooklyn Historical Society has in its archives a glass bottle containing gunpowder that was to be put at the top of one of the towers on the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge and ignited on special occasions. Actually it was used just once, in the late 19th century to commemorate the completion of the laying of a cable under the East River.

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