Brooklyn Today for Feb. 19
Good morning. Today is the 50th day of the year. A famous comedy song of the 1940s by early R&B singer Louis Jordan was titled “Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens.” It may surprise some that chicken thefts were once a problem in Brooklyn, but in the 19th century, many local residents kept chicken coops. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of Feb. 19, 1884, contained an article about a night watchman shooting a would-be chicken thief who tried to invade a chicken coop at 660 St. Marks Ave. in what is now Bedford-Stuyvesant.
“Only two nights ago,” the Eagle continued, “twenty-eight geese were driven out of the yard of Delwin Marsters, of Herkimer Street near Stone Avenue.”
Well-known people who were born today include singer Lou Christie (“Lighting Strikes”), singer-songwriter Smokey Robinson of the Miracles (“Ooh Baby Baby,” “You Really Got a Hold on Me,” “Tracks of My Tears”), singer-songwriter Seal, author Amy Tan (“The Joy Luck Club”), Prince Andrew of Great Britain, and Brooklyn-born author Jonathan Lethem (“Motherless Brooklyn,” ‘Fortress of Solitude”).