October 9: ON THIS DAY in 1945, city hails Admiral Nimitz

October 9, 2019 Brooklyn Eagle History

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ON THIS DAY IN 1871, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Chicago In Ashes. Last night at ten o’clock a terrible fire started in a row of two story tenements in DeKoven street, between Jefferson and Clinton, and as was the case last night spread with terrible rapidity. Before a single engine could get on the road, half the block was in flames and burning furiously. The entire department were soon on the ground and at work. For a time it seemed probable they would succeed in confining it to two or three blocks. The wind was blowing freshly when the fire started, but afterward increased to a gale, and suddenly the flames seemed to spread in every direction beyond the control of the fire department. The flames, like hell let loose upon the earth, with a roaring, hungry noise swept along both banks of the river, devouring the timber in the lumberyards in an instant. The sparks flew upward all night like a rain of volcanic lava, and set fire to buildings vainly supposed to be out of the reach of danger.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1919, the Eagle reported, “Eddie Cicotte lost his second game in this [World] Series on two mechanical errors in his own fielding. He did not lose on his pitching, and the talk hereabouts was that if he got another chance he would pitch the Reds off their feet. He got the chance and he pitched exactly the way the Chicago wisenheimers predicted … He said before the series [that] he was the youngest and huskiest old man in the big league, and, by golly, he was yesterday, which is the reason we are all back in Chicago today.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1927, the Eagle reported, “The New York Yankees are baseball champions of the world today by virtue of the fact that they won four games from the Pittsburg Pirates in a row — and because in yesterday’s battle, the last of the series, John Miljus inserted a wild pitch into the ninth inning with the bases loaded with Yankee ball players. The score of the fourth game was 4 to 3. And it was just about as hectic and wild a bit of athletic drama as one could want to see. They made baseball, it seems, for this … ‘I can’t blame Miljus a mite for the wild pitch that lost the game,’ [Pirates] Manager Donie Bush said. ‘It was just the final break. Johnnie Gooch has caught worse balls in his career, although that was a very bad pitch, but the series is over and I must give credit to the Yankees as one of the finest clubs in the history of baseball.’”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1939, the Eagle reported, “Moscow, Oct. 9 (AP) — Soviet Russia threw her weight behind Adolf Hitler’s peace gestures today in an editorial in the government newspaper Izvestia, accusing Great Britain and France of ‘returning to the Middle Ages’ for waging war to ‘exterminate Hitlerism.’ At the same time, it was announced Premier-Foreign Minister Commissar Vyacheslaff Molotov had reached a quick decision last night with leaders of a German trade delegation. The delegation arrived only yesterday to expedite stimulated trade between Russia and Germany under the recent formal trade and credit agreements between the Nazi-Communist partners. It was not specified what goods were involved.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1945, the Eagle reported, “Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the white-haired grinning Texan who steered the Pacific fleet from the ruins of Pearl Harbor to the triumph of Tokyo Bay, took New York today in the most impressive reception awarded heroes of this war to date. Given a tumultuous ‘well done’ with him were 13 veterans who earned the Congressional Medal of Honor under his command during the three years it took to send the Japanese fleet to the bottom of the sea. Climax of the reception, at which even the skies cleared for the man who was not afraid to ride typhoons to victory, was the stop at City Hall. There, before massed thousands, after a triumphal parade led by 4,000 sailors, marines and coast guardsmen and seven proudly blaring bands through the traditional ‘heroes’ canyon’ of downtown Manhattan, Admiral Nimitz received the city’s honorary citizenship and a specially struck gold medal.”