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September 17: ON THIS DAY in 1951, Truman flays Soviet tyranny

September 17, 2019 Brooklyn Eagle History
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ON THIS DAY IN 1862, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “We have received from the publisher, Carlton, 413 Broadway, New York, four volumes of Victor Hugo’s great work ‘Les Miserables.’ No book published in our day has excited greater interest. Its author intends to rest his claim to immortality upon it. It not unfrequently happens that an author is disposed to judge of his productions by the labor he has bestowed upon them. Milton was alone in the opinion that his ‘Paradise Regained’ was the greater of his two epics, and it is not improbable that the ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’ will secure the favor of lovers of fictions when the more elaborate ‘Les Miserables’ will only be praised and neglected.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1867, the Eagle reported, “It has turned out that the cable dispatch, to the effect that five hundred one thousand dollars bogus American notes had been discovered in Holland, in the possession of a man named Gardersier, has only this foundation: Gardersier had in his possession notes of the amount and denomination named, issued by the Jeff Davis government. They are worth, of course, just the value of so much waste paper, whether bogus or genuine.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1920, the Eagle reported, “The most extensive investigation ever launched in this country, put into motion a few minutes after the terrific explosion at Wall and Nassau Sts. had killed 35 persons and injured more than 200 others at noon yesterday, found at noon today that the cause is as much of a mystery as it was one second after it happened, though authorities are now practically unanimous in the belief that the tragedy was the result of an anarchist bomb … The horse-drawn wagon, blown to fragments, is the focal point of the investigators’ attention. The wagon was standing at a point almost opposite the entrance to the United States Assay Office and across the street from the J.P. Morgan building … That the catastrophe was the work of a purposeful anarchist was accepted by the Board of Estimate and Apportionment and an offer of $10,000 reward was made for the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible. Attorney General [A. Mitchell] Palmer and Francis P. Garvan, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Government’s anti-radical campaign, left Washington today for New York to direct the investigation into the explosion.” 

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ON THIS DAY IN 1951, the Eagle reported, “Washington (U.P.) — President [Harry] Truman described Soviet Russia today as the most dreadful tyranny the world has ever known. He said modern weapons, communications and propaganda methods make the power of the Kremlin ‘more effective, more violent and more far-reaching’ than any of the tyrants of the past. ‘The evils which Communism brought back into the world — the evils of political persecution and unrestrained state power — have grown and flourished and become much more terrible than they ever were before,’ he said. Mr. Truman spoke at the Library of Congress at ceremonies in which the originals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were sealed in new cases which will protect the precious documents against further ravages of time.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1953, the Eagle reported, “New Orleans (U.P.) — The tiny Mouton twins, joined at the lower spine, underwent surgery to separate them today in a pioneer operation climaxing six weeks’ preparation by a team of specialists. ‘It will be the first operation of its kind in medical history,’ a spokesman at Ochsner Foundation Hospital said. ‘We hope for the best, but the attempt will be extremely hazardous.’ The operation was expected to last two or three hours. ‘It’s very difficult to predict the outcome,’ the spokesman said. ‘We have no case records to follow. If the operation succeeds, the twins should have a good chance to live normally.’ The girls, Carolyn Anne and Catherine Anne Mouton, are the pretty brunette daughters of Mayor and Mrs. Ashton Mouton of Lafayette, La.”

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