Brooklyn Boro

MILESTONES: January 26 birthdays for Anita Baker, Vince Carter, Wayne Gretzky

January 26, 2021 Brooklyn Eagle History
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NOTABLE PEOPLE BORN ON THIS DAY include Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer, who was born in 1929; R&B musician Huey “Piano” Smith, who was born in 1934; baseball broadcaster Bob Uecker, who was born in 1934; comics artist Sal Buscema, who was born in Brooklyn in 1936; “Eight Men Out” star David Strathairn, who was born in 1949; singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, who was born in 1953; “Sweet Love” singer Anita Baker, who was born in 1958; talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, who was born in 1958; Hockey Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky, who was born in 1961; Cinderella singer Tom Keifer, who was born in 1961; and former N.Y. Nets shooting guard Vince Carter, who was born in 1977.

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WORDS ABOUT BIRDS: On this day in 1784, founding father Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to his daughter expressing his unhappiness over the choice of the eagle as the symbol of America. Franklin preferred the turkey.

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PHANTASTIC: “The Phantom of the Opera” premiered on Broadway on this day in 1988. The multiple-award-winning musical, based on the classic Gaston Leroux novel about a tortured soul haunting the Paris Opera House, premiered in London on Oct. 9, 1986. Its music and lyrics are by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Charles Hart, with book by Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe. In January 2006 it became the longest-running show in Broadway history.

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Special thanks to “Chase’s Calendar of Events” and Brooklyn Public Library.

 

Quotable:

“You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.”

— Hockey Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky, who was born on this day in 1961

 

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