MILESTONES: June 12, birthdays for Adriana Lima, Philippe Coutinho, Kendra Wilkinson

June 12, 2018 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Adriana Lima. Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

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Greetings, Brooklyn. Today is the 162nd day of the year.

On this day in 1937, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Brooklyn College, long fought for as a necessary addition to the borough’s educational facilities, may prove a boomerang to residents of the East Midwood section. With the college buildings rapidly nearing completion, and the opening of the college scheduled for the fall, homeowners fear an influx of apartment houses which they say will destroy both property values and the beauty of the neighborhood. The East Midwood Civic Association is circulating petitions asking that the present E zone be changed to an F zone.”

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On this day in 1898, the Eagle reported, “The invasion of Cuba by the American forces began today. Six hundred marines have pitched their tents about the smoking ruins of the outer fortifications of Guantanamo, and the Stars and Stripes for the first time float from a Spanish flagstaff in Cuba … The whole operation of silencing the guns and landing the forces was as easy as placing a Sunday school picnic.”

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On this day in 1901, the Eagle reported from Boston that the “reception to the delegates to the jubilee convention of the Young Men’s Christian Association and their friends, arranged to take place in the Museum of Fine Arts this evening, will take place, notwithstanding the protest against holding the function in a building where a large number of nude statues are on exhibition … Many of the Brooklyn delegates ridicule the protest. The Rev. Thornton B. Penfield says it will not be taken seriously by anybody.”

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On this day in 1910, the Eagle reported, “Homebound commuters from Staten Island looked up from their ferryboat early last evening and saw something that looked like a great bat wheeling and dipping above them in the thickening dusk. It was Charles K. Hamilton, aloft for a trial spin in his aeroplane, preliminary to his flight to Philadelphia and back.”

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“Sir Barton is unquestionably the best 3-year-old colt since the days of Colin,” the Eagle declared on this day in 1919. “By his victory in the Belmont stakes at the closing day at Belmont Park yesterday he won $11,950, which brought his total winnings of the season up to $64,950. He has now four straight triumphs to his credit, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, the Withers and the Belmont stakes.”

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On this day in 1937, the Eagle published the obituary of Jacques Van Brunt, “last of his branch of a historic Brooklyn family that dates back to the days of the original Dutch settlers … The house at 8001 Shore Road, overlooking the Narrows, was until recent years the center of an extensive farm, which Mr. Van Brunt tilled regularly. He was 74.”

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On this day in 1946, the Eagle reported, “All decked out in flags and bunting and modern as they come, Brooklyn, greatest borough in the biggest city in the world, today celebrates her 300th birthday as an organized community. It will be a day dedicated, at the behest of Borough President Cashmore, to the preservation of ‘American freedom, tolerance, civic virtue and mutual good will,’ the factors which sparked Brooklyn’s rise from a tiny frontier hamlet to a community of more than 3,000,000 … All of Brooklyn’s schools will hold special ceremonies … mindful that nearly 300 years ago the first free school in America was opened in the little church standing on the present site of Abraham & Straus on Fulton Street.”

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On this day in 1947, the Eagle reported, “Mrs. Babe Didrikson Zaharias, finding her game after she changed from a skirt to her ‘lucky slacks,’ defeated Jacqueline Gordon of England today, 5 to 4, to bring the British women’s amateur golf championship to the United States for the first time in history … ‘I’m going to wear my pants this afternoon,’ she said as she walked off the 18th green.”

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NOTABLE PEOPLE born on this day include sportscaster MARV ALBERT, who was born in 1943; actor TIMOTHY BUSFIELD, who was born in 1957; former President George H.W. Bush, who was born in 1924; musician CHICK COREA, who was born in 1941; soccer player PHILIPPE COUTINHO, who was born in 1992; actor RICK HOFFMAN, who was born in 1970; model ADRIANA LIMA, who was born in 1981; former baseball player HIDEKI MATSUI, who was born in 1974; actress FRANCES O’CONNOR, who was born in 1939; and reality TV star KENDRA WILKINSON, who was born in 1985.

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TODAY IS THE ANNIVERSARY OF REAGAN’S “TEAR DOWN THIS WALL” SPEECH. Standing at the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Wall, President Ronald Reagan gave one of the most powerful speeches of his career when he challenged Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to give liberalization in the Eastern Bloc more than lip service. The speech was audible to East Berliners, but East German police made a gathering crowd at the wall disperse. The State Department had sought to make the speech more conciliatory, but Reagan and his speechwriter Peter Robinson refused. The wall was finally opened in 1989.

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ANNE FRANK WAS BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1929. Her family moved to Amsterdam to escape the Nazis, but after Holland was invaded by Germany, they had to go into hiding. In 1942 Anne began to keep a diary. She died at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. After the war, her father published her diary, on which a stage play and movie were later based.

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TODAY IS THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE ORLANDO NIGHTCLUB MASSACRE. In the worst mass shooting by a single perpetrator in U.S. history — and the deadliest instance of anti-LGBT violence — a gunman shot and killed 49 patrons of Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida in 2016. Another 53 people were injured. Police killed the self-proclaimed terrorist during the rampage.

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TODAY IS WORLD AGAINST CHILD LABOR DAY. The International Labour Organization launched this day in 2002 to focus attention on the global extent of child labor and the action and efforts needed to eliminate it.

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

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“I don’t think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains.” — Anne Frank, who was born on this day in 1929