May 17: ON THIS DAY in 1939, Quebec hails king and queen

May 17, 2019 Brooklyn Eagle

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ON THIS DAY IN 1918, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “The fine display made by the women in the police parade on Saturday last favorably impressed most of the police officials. Now Commissioner Enright is preparing to enroll an army of 10,000 as a women’s police reserve. An order was sent out last night to inspectors and captains instructing them how to proceed in gathering the new force. Special Deputy Commissioner Rodman Wanamaker will have charge. The duties of the women will be ‘to carry on the auxiliary Red Cross work, to discover unlawful conditions, to teach Americanization and civic duty, and aid in the Americanization of the alien element of the population; to detect and report cases of disloyalty and sedition and set an example of usefulness and patriotic devotion.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1920, the Eagle reported, “Rome, May 16 (AP) — Joan of Arc, the shepherd lass who in 1420 was called from the peaceful fields of Domremy to lead the armies of France to victory against the English and Burgundians, today was exalted to sainthood. Thirty thousand persons witnessed the rite. Impressive ceremony and ancient ritual marked the addition of her name to the roll of the saints. In accordance with the traditions of the church, the formal demand for canonization was thrice made on the Pope, who then announced to the Catholic world the solemn fact of the addition to the body of the saints of Joan of Arc, ordered in the name of the Holy Trinity that her memory be held in pious devotion by the church and called upon surrounding ecclesiastics to witness the fact. He then left the throne, intoning a ‘Te Deum.’ The bells of St. Peter’s announced the happy event, and the bells of all the churches of Rome answered.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1939, the Eagle reported, “Quebec, May 17 (U.P.) — A British sovereign trod Canadian soil today for the first time since the dominion of the Maple Leaf came under the sway of the Union Jack almost two centuries ago. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, bound on a long and arduous trip through Canada and to the United States, disembarked from the Empress of Australia at 10:35 a.m., Brooklyn time. Cheers of ‘Long Live the King!’ rang out from thousands of throats, and their Majesties, rulers of people who speak 250 tongues, also were saluted in the alien language of French-speaking Canadians, ‘Vivent leurs Majesties!’”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1963, the Eagle reported, “Aboard USS Kearsarge, May 16 (UPI) — Astronaut L. Gordon Cooper made a bulls-eye landing in the Pacific today at the end of his 34-hour, 22.9-orbit space flight that became tense during the last hours because of an equipment failure. Cooper was forced to fire the retro-rockets controlling his re-entry manually but came down ‘right on the bazoo,’ only 7,000 yards off the port bow of the big aircraft carrier. He came down near Midway Island a day and a half after being launched from Cape Canaveral. He guided his Faith 7 capsule into the atmosphere manually after his automatic attitude control system failed during his 20th orbit. The failure, marring an otherwise perfect flight, forced the 36-year-old astronaut to resort to hand-operated controls. He fired his retro-rockets shortly after 7 p.m. EDT, while above Shanghai in Communist China. His spacecraft then angled downwards until he was through the atmosphere and into the Pacific landing area. Cooper, in a message from the capsule to the pilots of the helicopters, said he was ‘feeling fine.’”

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ON MAY 18, 1952, the Eagle reported, “Baseball pitching of a better variety will be on view shortly when Doris Day, Ronald Reagan and Frank Lovejoy are seen in ‘The Winning Team,’ the story of Grover Cleveland Alexander. Alexander, who is portrayed by Reagan in the movie, was one of the great pitchers of all time; one of the great moments of sports was when he struck out Tony Lazzeri with the bases loaded in the deciding game of the 1926 World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees.”