September 11: ON THIS DAY in 1941, President to put ‘cold facts’ of war crisis up to people

September 11, 2020 Brooklyn Eagle History

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ON THIS DAY IN 1901, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “BUFFALO — President McKinley continues to show the most unmistakable evidences of improvement and recovery. The uneasiness caused by last night’s dressing of the abdominal wound has given way to more pronounced confidence than has existed at any time since the shooting. The incident of last night never had any significance to the doctors, and such as it had given rise to in the lay mind was quickly dispelled when the physicians arrived this morning. Their 9 o’clock bulletin pronounced the president in excellent condition and made known the fact that he had slept well. … No definite plan for the prosecution of Leon Czolgosz and Emma Goldman has been decided upon by the police authorities. They have not made up their minds to ask the State of Illinois for the custody of the woman and there is a chance that they may never do so.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1905, the Eagle reported, “A switchman’s mistake and a motorman’s carelessness sent a crowded car of a Manhattan elevated train hurtling off the structure into the street at 7 o’clock this morning, smashing the coach into splinters and piling the passengers into a tangled mass of crushed and mangled bodies. Eleven persons were killed and forty injured. Several of the injured are expected to die. It was the worst disaster in the history of the Manhattan elevated railroad. The smashup occurred at Ninth avenue and Fifty-third street, where the Sixth avenue elevated structure curves into and becomes a part of the Ninth. A Ninth avenue local, southbound and running at high speed, struck a misplaced switch at the Fifty-third street curve and the forward car whirled around the bend into the Sixth avenue line. The heavy motor caused the front car to hold the tracks. The second car, crowded to the doors, left the track, its forward trucks bumped over a few ties, hit the heavy guard timbers and clung to the structure. The train’s momentum caused the second and third cars to double up like a closing jackknife. The rear end of the second car was hurled from the tracks and sent like a catapult to the street.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1941, the Eagle reported, “WASHINGTON (U.P.) — President Roosevelt in a momentous radio address tonight will give the American people the cold, hard facts of the international crisis in simple English which will leave no questions unanswered, Secretary Stephen T. Early said today. Working on the final draft of the message he will deliver at 10 p.m. (E.D.T.), Mr. Roosevelt conferred this morning with Congressional leaders of both parties. He arranged to talk later with Secretary of State Hull and Soviet Ambassador Constantine A. Oumansky. That conversation also was expected to include a preview of the address. Usually trustworthy sources said President Roosevelt’s radio address will declare that the United States will take whatever action is necessary to protect shipments to Iceland. The President also is expected to express American resentment over the German submarine attack on the U.S. destroyer Greer, which was en route to Iceland, and over the sinking of the U.S. freighter Steel Seafarer in the Red Sea.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1948, the Eagle reported, “A huge flight of migratory birds, flying over Manhattan, was felled mysteriously today and for hours the bodies of the dead and injured dropped down into the streets surrounding the Empire State Building. Police theorized they apparently crashed into the tower of the building, the world’s tallest skyscraper, in the darkness. Hundreds of bodies were picked up, most of them on 5th Ave., by the Department of Sanitation workers and officials of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Hundreds more rained down onto the parapets of the building. But police said most of them were only stunned and revived a few minutes later. Police said the birds began falling about midnight and the ‘shower’ continued for more than four hours. Police said the flight apparently contained thousands of birds, and office workers in skyscrapers near the Empire State Building could hear them chirping plainly above the hubbub of downtown Manhattan.”