February 26: ON THIS DAY in 1948, U.S. blasts red Czech grab; Prague launches wide purge

February 26, 2021 Brooklyn Eagle History

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ON THIS DAY IN 1924, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Baby Peggy’s next big production for Principal Pictures will be titled ‘Captain January.’ Final scenes were shot last week and the film is now in the hands of the cutters. Directed by Edward F. Cline, the cast includes Hobart Bosworth, Irene Rich, Harry Morey, Lincoln Stedman and Emmett King.” Born Peggy-Jean Montgomery in San Diego in 1918, Baby Peggy starred in more than 150 short films during the 1920s and became a sensation. Unfortunately, none of the money she made as a child was put aside for her future. After her acting career ended, she became an author, silent film historian and advocate for the rights of child actors. Known in her later years as Diana Serra Cary, she died on Feb. 24, 2020 at age 101, the last living link to the era of silent film.

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ON THIS DAY IN 1926, the Eagle reported, “The B.M.T. and the Brooklyn City Railroad Company, operators of practically all the surface-car lines in the boro, today, in a communication to the Board of Estimate, requested an opportunity to discuss terms with a view of the two companies putting a boro-wide bus system into operation. The letter suggests that the two concerns, if their proposal is favored, will form a third company on a 50-50 basis to manage and operate the bus system. Beyond a tentative proposal that the new corporation will have a city representative on the board of directors and be under supervision, the communication offers no definite plan for the operation of the bus system … Except in isolated cases, however, it is not believed that the operation of the bus system proposed by the two companies will cause the abandonment or scrapping of trolley lines in Brooklyn to any great extent.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1945, the Eagle reported, “Members of the U.S. Signal Corps, Army Special Forces, will have no formal ceremony to commemorate the eighty-second anniversary of the corps Saturday. Work ‘as usual’ is slated. Among the many functions the Signal Corps has acquired since its inception in 1863 are the training and directing of the army’s photographic and motion picture service, now the principal function of the Army Pictorial Service. The organization has grown from early Civil War days from less than 100 officers and men to the size of the peacetime regular army.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1948, the Eagle reported, “WASHINGTON (U.P.) — The United States, Great Britain and France today denounced the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia as establishment of ‘a disguised dictatorship.’ … The communique was issued here, in London and in Paris. The communique said the consequences of the Communist seizure of power could only be ‘disastrous’ for the Czechoslovak people … The text of the communique: ‘The governments of the United States, France and Great Britain have attentively followed the course of the events which have just taken place in Czechoslovakia and which place in jeopardy the very existence of the principles of liberty to which all democratic nations are attached. They note that by means of a crisis artificially and deliberately instigated, the use of certain methods already tested in other places has permitted the suspension of the free exercise of parliamentary institutions and the establishment of a disguised dictatorship of a single party under the cloak of a government of national union.’”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1963, the Eagle reported, “WASHINGTON (UPI) — Rep. K.W. (Bill) Stinson, R-Wash., said yesterday a Russian transport that landed in Cuba last week discharged ‘several hundred’ passengers and picked up less than 200. Stinson, one of eight House members returning from a weekend inspection trip to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, said he was told this by ‘various Cuban leaders’ he and other lawmakers were able to interview among the Cuban workers on the base. The freshman House member also reported that one Cuban said his contacts had seen a Russian tanker dock ‘with 21 Russians getting on and 125 getting off.’ ‘According to the Cubans contacted, at least 70 percent of the population would fight against Castro right now if the Russians were removed from Cuba,’ Stinson said.”