MILESTONES: October 18, birthdays for Zac Efron, Lindsey Vonn, Ne-Yo

Brooklyn Today

October 18, 2017 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Zac Efron. Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP

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Greetings, Brooklyn. Today is the 293rd day of the year.

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On this day in 1952, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle front page shouted that President Harry S. Truman was visiting Brooklyn to stump for Democratic Presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson. Truman was scheduled to give a 9 p.m. speech at the Eastern Parkway Roller Rink (where Crown Heights and Brownsville meet). Truman lambasted the Republican nominee, four-star General Dwight D. Eisenhower, for proposing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea, considering the intelligence data that the president was supplying to Eisenhower. Meanwhile, “Ike,” the general’s nickname, censured Truman for refusing to lift the 1942 poll tax. Truman could have run for a third term in 1952, thanks to being grandfathered in after Congress ratified the 22nd Amendment the year before. That amendment limited a president to two elected terms in office while exempting the current incumbent.

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On this day in 1935, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle front page reported that the League of Nations in Geneva was seriously considering a naval blockade of Italy as a sanction for its aggressions against Ethiopia. Italy responded that a naval blockade would be tantamount to a declaration of war. Meanwhile, France said it would support this edict only with clarification from Great Britain that the British would not use “individual” action such as a boycott or arms. Britain’s response was that risk would have to be collective among all participants in the League of Nations, and that British fleets — not the government — had never suggested any kind of blockade.

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On this day in 1945, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle front page reported that the “Big Four” Allied nations indicted 24 Nazi leaders. The joint international war crimes prosecutors representing the United States, Great Britain, France and Russia issued a four-point set of formal charges for the conspiracy for world domination, mass murder of 10 million and looting and damage amounting to more than $160 billion. Among the chief Nazi leaders being charged were Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess (former second-in-command to Adolf Hitler); Franz von Papen, former ambassador to Austria at the time of the Anschluss (annexation); Joachin von Ribbentrop (former foreign minister and member of security council); Hjalmar Schacht, Alfred Rosenthal and Walther Funk.

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NOTABLE PEOPLE born on this day include actress PAM DAWBER, who was born in 1951; sportscaster, Hall of Fame football player and former football coach MIKE DITKA, who was born in 1939; actor ZAC EFRON, who was born in 1987; jazz musician WYNTON MARSALIS, who was born in 1961; author TERRY McMILLAN, who was born in 1951; actor JOE MORTON, who was born in Harlem in 1947; Hall of Fame tennis player MARTINA NAVRATILOVA, who was born in 1956; singer, songwriter, actor and producer NE-YO, who was born in 1979; actress FREIDA PINTO, who was born in 1984; dramatist and poet NTOZAKE SHANGE, who was born in 1948; actor VINCENT SPANO, who was born in Brooklyn in 1962; actor JEAN-CLAUDE VAN DAMME, who was born in 1960; and Olympic gold medal-winning skier LINDSEY VONN, who was born in 1984.

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THOMAS EDISON DIED ON THIS DAY IN 1931. The great American inventor died at his home in Glenmount, N.J. On the evening of his funeral, many corporations dimmed their electric lights in respect.

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“ROSEANNE” PREMIERED ON THIS DAY IN 1988. The comedy showed the blue-collar Conner family trying to make ends meet. Rosanne Barr played wisecracking Roseanne Conner, John Goodman player her husband Dan, and Laurie Metcalf played her sister Jackie. The Conner children were played by Sara Gilbert (Darlene), Alicia Goranson and Sarah Chalke (Becky) and Michael Fishman (D.J.). The last episode aired Nov. 14, 1997.

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THE FIRST NEWSPAPER COMIC STRIP RAN ON THIS DAY IN 1896. Although cartoons had appeared in newspapers for many years, the comic strip — a narrative told in cartoons over several panels — took its main form with the appearance of “The Yellow Kid Takes a Hand at Golf” in the New York Journal’s weekly supplement, American Humorist. The creator was Richard Fenton Outcault. In March 1897, the Yellow Kid Magazine gathered the strips and became the first published collection of a comic strip — setting the stage for the first comic books in the late 1920s.

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MELINA MERCOURI WAS BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1920. The Greek actress and politician Melina Mercouri was born Maria Amalia Mercouri in Athens, Greece. Of her more than 70 films and plays, she is best known for her role in “Never on Sunday.” In 1977, she was elected to Greece’s Parliament and she became the first woman in Greece’s senior cabinet when appointed by Premier Andreas Papandreou to the position of minister of culture in 1981. She died in New York in 1994.

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Special thanks to “Chase’s Calendar of Events” and Brooklyn Public Library.

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“Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” — Thomas Edison