August 21: ON THIS DAY in 1944, Paris is cut off on 3 sides as Yanks pour over Seine
ON THIS DAY IN 1923, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “HEMPSTEAD — With one mail plane winging its way from San Francisco to New York, another took off from Hazelhurst Field on Long Island for the Pacific Coast today, in the first of five days of tests inaugurated by the government to demonstrate the feasibility of permanent transcontinental air mail service … Pilot C. Eugene Johnson carried only 84 pounds of mail consisting of 3,444 letters from New York and a few papers and official communications. More than 26,000 special delivery letters had been received at the New York Post Office for this trip, but it was found impracticable to carry all of them. Other batches of letters will be picked up at various points along the route.”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1940, the Eagle reported, “MEXICO CITY (U.P.) — Negotiations have been started in hope of bringing an eminent brain specialist either from New York or Los Angeles by airplane to save the life of Leon Trotsky, 60, exiled Bolshevik warlord, it was learned today. Trotsky lay in a hospital here with a one in ten chance of surviving an assassination attempt by a trusted associate whom his entourage now suspect of being an operative of the Russian Secret Police. Trotsky’s mystery man assailant lay in a room nearby, and around the corner at the central police station police were questioning a glamorous blonde in connection with the case. She gave her name as Sylvia Ageloff, 30, and her address as 50 Livingston St., Brooklyn. She was said to have wept when police questioned her and sobbed, ‘If Trotsky dies I am going to kill myself, because I am a great admirer of him.’”