August 20: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
ON THIS DAY IN 1918, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “That the so-called Spanish influenza, which has reached almost plague proportions in European countries, has manifested itself here in a mild form was the assertion made yesterday by Health Commissioner Royal S. Copeland. Experts of the Bureau of Preventable Diseases began an investigation last week following the arrival of a ship whose surgeon reported twenty-one cases of influenza on the voyage. As the disease had run its course and the patients were all in the convalescent stage, the ship was passed through Quarantine. ‘Researches made by experts in the Department’s laboratories indicate that in a few cases symptoms of Spanish influenza are found, and these in a very mild form,’ said Commissioner Copeland. ‘Of eleven cases of the disease arriving on one steamship a week ago, we have found that the patients were stricken with pneumonia and bronchial trouble, and that no indication of the germs attributed to Spanish influenza had been located.’ These are the eleven cases which were taken from the steamship Bergensfjord to the Norwegian Hospital. Three of them died of pneumonia and the eight remaining were improving today, it was said at the hospital.”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1937, the Eagle reported, “MANILA, P.I. (A.P.) — A sharp earthquake swayed Manila buildings late tonight shortly after American refugees from Shanghai landed in the city from the President Jefferson. It was one of the heaviest felt in Manila in many years. Terrified residents fled from their homes into the darkened streets. Light poles were toppled by the shocks and the wires snarled in a seemingly hopeless mass. All of the lights in the city were extinguished. The United Press reported there were three quakes, the second minor, but the third almost as strong as the first. First reports carried no word of casualties. The first quake struck at 8 p.m., as a terrifying welcome to 375 men, women and children who had fled from the booming guns of Shanghai. Among the refugees who had fled from China, only to be greeted by the terrors of a quake, said the United Press, were Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., wife of the former governor-general of the Philippines. People throughout the city were panic stricken. Residents rushed into the streets as loose objects inside their homes and hotel rooms crashed to the floor … An Associated Press correspondent, writing about the arrival of the Shanghai refugees, was forced to stop when his typewriter was almost toppled to the floor.”
Brooklyn Boro
View MoreNew York City’s most populous borough, Brooklyn, is home to nearly 2.6 million residents. If Brooklyn were an independent city it would be the fourth largest city in the United States. While Brooklyn has become the epitome of ‘cool and hip’ in recent years, for those that were born here, raised families here and improved communities over the years, Brooklyn has never been ‘uncool’.