Brooklyn Boro

July 30: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

July 30, 2021 Brooklyn Eagle History
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ON THIS DAY IN 1915, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “WASHINGTON — Secretary [Robert] Lansing announced today that a committee of public safety, organized in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, has taken charge of the capital and is conducting the de facto government. After a conference with American naval officers and the American charge d’affaires, the committee decided upon disarmament of the city, which began yesterday. The gunboat Nashville today was ordered from San Domingo to Cape Haitien to reinforce the gunboat Eagle. A brief report from Admiral [William Banks] Caperton said he had about 400 men on shore patrolling the town, in command of Captain E.L. Beach, who was having no difficulty maintaining order.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1932, the Eagle reported, “WASHINGTON (A.P.) — Bonus seekers by the score carried on a strange exodus from Washington today, scattered by a never-relenting fire and tear gas attack that made their once well-organized camps things of the past. The tattered groups, some marching, some hitch-hiking, others getting rides in vehicles offered by adjoining states, were ushered out of the capital with a statement by President [Herbert] Hoover deploring an attempt to coerce the government by mob rule and expressing gratification the challenge had been met ‘swiftly and firmly.’ To see that the veterans really did stay out, three companies of steel-helmeted infantry camped on the scarred site of the bonus demanders’ once most active center — acres of low ground in Anacostia, a suburb.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1936, the Eagle reported, “BERLIN (A.P.) — The American Olympic team will need an ambulance section unless developments on all training fronts take a quick turn for the better. Most of the athletes’ ailments are of a minor character, featuring an epidemic of colds and sore throats and muscles, but there is a watering eye for every salute in the Olympic village as the result of the wet, chilly weather. More than a hundred of the American girls and boys — nearly one-third of the team — have been given medical treatment since arriving. The track and field athletes had the biggest aches and pains, including 300-pound Jack Torrance’s sore shoulder.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1953, the Eagle reported, “Alarmed by a mushrooming crime wave in a 20-block area of downtown Brooklyn, some 700 residents and businessmen of the neighborhood demanded that they be protected by the assignment of more foot patrolmen. In a plea to Mayor [Vincent] Impellitteri and Police Commissioner [George P.] Monaghan, the petitioners demanded ‘adequate police protection in the form of several patrolmen to walk the beat throughout the area and constantly keep it under surveillance.’ The petitioners charged that a lack of foot patrolmen has made the area ‘extremely unsafe for a woman or child to be out alone after dark.’ Several of the citizens emphatically underlined statistics on the soaring crime rate in the area — bounded by Flatbush and 4th Aves. and Dean, Smith and State Sts. — with notations such as ‘was robbed’ and ‘held up at State and Hoyt Sts., Feb. 11, 1953,’ next to their names.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1953, the Eagle reported, “Tens of thousands of East German workers who sparked the June 17 revolt today started organizing for mass marches in West Berlin in defiance of Communist threats and intimidation to pick up their ‘Eisenhower food packages.’ According to Soviet zone residents arriving in Western sectors, workers voted at many factory meetings to march together this weekend to prevent Red police from employing the terror tactics they have started against individuals. The workers will go on their day off to pick up the food which is unavailable to them at home. Some planned to come from as far as 120 miles away. Workers of the Henigsdorf steel mill outside Berlin sent an advance delegation to warn the Communist police at the east-west city border they were coming. The police were told to ‘stand aside or be prepared to fight.’ An estimated 200,000 East Germans poured across the border into West Berlin for the free five-pound food parcels, matching yesterday’s figure. Altogether, in the first four days of the program, some 650,000 have joined ‘the longest breadline in the world.’”

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Buddy Guy
Amy Harris/Invision/AP
Lisa Kudrow
Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

NOTABLE PEOPLE BORN ON THIS DAY include puppeteer and TV producer Sid Krofft, who was born in 1929; former Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, who was born in 1934; Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Buddy Guy, who was born in 1936; “Diana” singer Paul Anka, who was born in 1941; former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was born in 1947; “Thirtysomething” star Ken Olin, who was born in 1954; “Designing Women” star Delta Burke, who was born in 1956; “Running Up That Hill” singer Kate Bush, who was born in 1958; “Boyz n the Hood” star Laurence Fishburne, who was born in 1961; “Friends” star Lisa Kudrow, who was born in 1963; Basketball Hall of Famer Chris Mullin, who was born in Brooklyn in 1963; “Soul Food” star Vivica A. Fox, who was born in 1964; “The Brady Bunch Movie” star Christine Taylor, who was born in 1971; Oscar-winner Hilary Swank, who was born in 1974; Volleyball Hall of Famer Misty May-Treanor, who was born in 1977; and “Chuck” star Yvonne Strahovski, who was born in 1982.

Arnold Schwarzenegger
Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP

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SHELF LIFE: Paperback books were introduced on this day in 1935. Although books bound in soft covers were first introduced in 1841 at Leipzig, Germany, by Christian Bernhard Tauchnitz, the modern paperback revolution dates to the publication of the first Penguin paperback by Sir Allen Lane in London in 1935. Penguin Number 1 was “Ariel: the life of Shelley,” by Andre Maurois.

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ELVIS IS IN THE BUILDING: Elvis Presley appeared in concert for the first time on this day in 1954. The show took place at Overton Park Orchestra Shell in Memphis. Presley was billed third and country crooner Slim Whitman was the headliner. Only 19, Elvis nervously began gyrating his leg and a legend was born.

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

Quotable:

“There are three things you can do in a baseball game. You can win, or you can lose, or it can rain.”

— Baseball Hall of Famer Casey Stengel, who was born on this day in 1890

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