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MILESTONES: March 14, birthdays for Stephen Curry, Simone Biles, Michael Caine

March 14, 2018 Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Stephen Curry. AP Photo/Jeff Chiu
Stephen Curry. AP Photo/Jeff Chiu
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Greetings, Brooklyn.  Today is the 73rd day of the year.

 

On this day in 1916, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle front page reported that the state Assembly in Albany passed the women’s suffrage bill 109-30. The entire Republican delegation from Brooklyn — with the exception of an assemblymember from Flatbush — voted for the bill. More than 500 suffragists crowded the Assembly floor. The Brereton Bill that passed the Assembly provided for another vote to be taken the following year in 1917.

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On this day in 1901, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle featured an extensive obituary and tribute to the late former President Benjamin Harrison, who served as president for one term before losing to former President Grover Cleveland, but then won again. In fact, Harrison had the distinction of being the only U.S. president whose predecessor and successor was the same man.

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On this day in 1933, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle front page reported that Congress would imminently legalize beer. Congress provided that beer would become legal to sell within 15 days of the bill’s passage. The reasons seemed to be primarily economic to “aid in balancing the budget and supplying jobs to the jobless.” A tertiary reason given was “alleviating the thirst of the nation.” Prohibition would end some nine months later on Dec. 3. Its demise probably helped the nation recover from the Depression.

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On this day in 1939, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle front page reported on the splitting of Czechoslovakia, which had been created after the end of World War I. Slovakia, pressured with the threat of invasion, declared its “independence” from the Czech province, essentially doing the contrary, stating its complete dependence on Germany. The Sudetenland refers to the northern, southern, and western regions of former Czechoslovakia whose inhabitants were mostly Sudeten Germans. This is the area previously called Bohemia and Moravia. Germany’s annexation the next day of the land was a violation of the 1938 Munich Pact.

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On this day in 1954, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle front page reported that as Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) prepared to attack the Army under oath for alleged favoritism, Vice President Richard Nixon denounced the “commie hunters” and an earlier statement by Adlai E. Stevenson, who had lost the previous year’s presidential election to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Stevenson had accused the Eisenhower administration of being communist hunters. Nixon asserted that the communist hunters, by “reckless” talk and “questionable” actions, have detracted from Eisenhower’s true “forward-looking legislative platform.”

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NOTABLE PEOPLE born on this day include Olympic gold-medal-winning gymnast SIMONE BILES, who was born in 1997; former astronaut FRANK BORMAN, who was born in 1928; Oscar Award-winning actor MICHAEL CAINE, who was born in 1933; actor BILLY CRYSTAL, who was born in 1947; basketball player STEPHEN CURRY, who was born in 1988; DJ and comedian RICK DEES, who was born in 1951; baseball player BOBBY JENKS, who was born in 1981; Grammy Award-winning producer and composer QUINCY JONES, who was born in 1933; actress GRACE PARK, who was born in 1974; actress TAMARA TUNIE, who was born in 1959; and actress RITA TUSHINGHAM, who was born in 1942.

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ALBERT EINSTEIN WAS BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1879. The German theoretical physicist is best known for his theory of relativity. He won the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. Einstein died in New Jersey in 1955.

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LUCY HOBBS TAYLOR WAS BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1833. She was the first woman in America to receive a degree in dentistry (Ohio College of Dental Surgery, 1866) and to be admitted to membership in a state dental association. In 1867, she married James M. Taylor, who also became a dentist (after she instructed him in the essentials). Taylor was also an active women’s rights advocate. She died in Kansas in 1910.

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HORTON FOOTE WAS BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1916. The National Medal of Arts-winning American writer wrote more than 60 films and plays. Foote’s screenplays for “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Tender Mercies” both won Academy Awards. His play “The Young Man from Atlanta” also earned him the Pulitzer Prize. He died in 2009 in Connecticut.

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TODAY IS PI DAY. It is a day to celebrate pi — the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Since that mathematical constant is about 3.14, March 14 became the official day to observe it.

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BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY (BPL) will install 17 symbolically empty school desks in the grand lobby of its Central Branch on today  in support of the national “March for our Lives,” a student-led national walkout in protest of gun violence in schools. Seventeen people were murdered at Stoneman Douglass High School in Parkland, Florida exactly one month ago on Feb. 14. At 10 a.m., actor Delissa Reynolds will recite “Praise Song for the Day,” a poem written for President Barack Obama’s inauguration. For more information, visit brooklynhistory.org.

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

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“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” — scientist Albert Einstein, who was born on this day in 1879

 


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