MILESTONES: January 10, birthdays for Keyshia Ka’oir, Hrithik Roshan, Rod Stewart

Brooklyn Today

January 10, 2018 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Keyshia Ka'oir. Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP

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Greetings, Brooklyn. Today is the 10th day of the year.

On this day in 1941, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle front page reported that President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced the federal Lend-Lease Act to Congress. This program, which was introduced in the full throttle of the Battle of Britain was intended to help Great Britain block Hitler’s invasion. This program had the added advantage of keeping the United States only indirectly involved in World War II. The Lend-Lease Act opened up naval yards around the country, including the Brooklyn Navy Yard, to re-fit the British fleet, where ships were at a safe distance from battle. The far-reaching plan gave the president much power, particularly to lend arms to Great Britain, with the understanding that America would be repaid in kind. Congress overwhelmingly supported the measure.

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On this day in 1920, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle front page reported that the German representative to the League of Nations signed the League Peace Treaty, a preliminary measure that would lead up to the organization’s first meeting six days later. Conspicuously absent was one-fifth of the “Big Five” nations — the U.S. Although the League of Nations had been U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s brainchild, a Senate vote rejected the Treaty of Versailles and the League on Nov. 19, 1919. However, 15 other nations did ratify the treaty between Germany and themselves: Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Thailand, Japan, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Uruguay and Guatemala.

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On this day in 1946, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle front page reported on arguably one of the strictest acts of censorship in the U.S. military. The U.S. Army gagged the Hawaiian-based edition of the army newspaper Stars & Stripes from publishing any item that criticized army leadership, particularly President Harry S. Truman, Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson or Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. The only such criticism permitted was from press association dispatches that the Stars & Stripes picked up in syndication. The rank-and-file troops complained that they were being muzzled from speaking out against the slow pace of demobilization efforts.

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On this day in 1953, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle front page reported that United Nations forces launched a three-pronged attack on a vital supply line between North Vietnam and Manchuria. The latter is a region in northeast Asia that could be claimed by both China and eastern Russia. But it was another headline that probably caught readers’ attention: Pope Pius XII eased the fasting restrictions that Roman Catholics were compelled to follow before receiving Communion. The pope now allowed Catholics to drink natural water without fear of violating the fast. He also allowed for pregnant women, people who had to more than a mile to church, and schoolchildren under certain circumstances to drink specific non-alcoholic drinks. And he granted diocesan bishops permission to authorize afternoon Masses to Catholics whose jobs required them to work on Sunday mornings.

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NOTABLE PEOPLE born on this day include singer PAT BENATAR, who was born in Brooklyn in 1953; U.S. Sen. ROY BLUNT, who was born in 1950; former boxer and entrepreneur GEORGE FOREMAN, who was born in 1949; actor EVAN HANDLER, who was born in 1961; model KEYSHIA KA’OIR, who was born in 1985; Bollywood star HRITHIK ROSHAN, who was born in 1974; singer ROD STEWART, who was born in 1945; and Olympic decathlete BILL TOOMEY, who was born in 1939.

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THE WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT WAS INTRODUCED IN CONGRESS ON THIS DAY IN 1878. Sen. A.A. Sargent of California, a close friend of Susan B. Anthony, introduced into the U.S. Senate a women’s suffrage amendment known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. It wasn’t until Aug. 26, 1920, 42 years later, that the amendment was signed into law.

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TODAY IS POETRY AT WORK DAY. It is a day to celebrate the power of poetry in the workplace. It also remembers the many poets who led an ordinary life working and writing in tandem. People are encouraged to embrace their work lives and the potential for poetry to flourish alongside — even inside — work itself. It is recognized annually on the second Tuesday in January.

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“COMMON SENSE” WAS PUBLISHED ON THIS DAY IN 1776. More than any other publication, “Common Sense” influenced the authors of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Paine’s 50-page pamphlet sold 150,000 copies within a few months of its first printing.

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THE FIRST UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY WAS HELD ON THIS DAY IN 1946. On the 26th anniversary of the establishment of the unsuccessful League of Nations, delegates from 51 nations met in London for the first meeting of the U.N. General Assembly.

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PHILIP LEVINE WAS BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1928. Poet Levine is renowned for his focus on working-class life. Starting at age 14, Levine worked in Detroit’s auto factories. The poet later said, “The irony is, going to work every day became the subject of probably my best work.” The recipient of many accolades, including the National Book Award for poetry (1980), the Pulitzer Prize (1994) and the American Academy of Poets’ Wallace Stevens Award (2013), Levine was named U.S. Poet Laureate in 2011. He died in California in 2015.

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PAUL HENREID WAS BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1908. The actor once estimated that he had played in or directed more than 300 films. Though he was a staunch anti-Nazi, his early film parts included a number of German roles, including those in “Goodbye,” “Mr. Chips” and “Night Train to Munich.” He eventually moved away from the German stereotype in such films as “Of Human Bondage” and “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” and as Victor Laslo in “Casablanca.” His film career cut short by the anti-Communist blacklist in Hollywood during the 1940s, Henreid found a second calling as a director, with more than 80 episodes of TV’s “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” to his credit. He died in 1992 in California.

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

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“Long live freedom and damn the ideologies.” — poet Robinson Jeffers, who was born on this day in 1887