April 15: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
ON THIS DAY IN 1912, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Wireless dispatches up to noon today showed that the passengers of the monster White Star liner Titanic, which struck an iceberg off the Newfoundland coast last night, were being transferred aboard the steamer Carpathia, a Cunarder, which left New York April 13 for Naples. Already twenty boatloads of the Titanic’s passengers have been transferred aboard the Carpathia, and allowing forty to sixty people as the capacity of each lifeboat, some 800 or 1,200 people already have been transferred from the damaged liner … The latest reports indicate that the transfer of passengers is being carried on successfully and deftly. The sea is smooth and the weather calm. It is probable that all of the passengers of the Titanic are safe.”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1915, the Eagle reported, “The fiftieth anniversary of the death of President [Abraham] Lincoln, who was assassinated at Ford’s Theater in Washington, on the evening of April 14, 1865, by John Wilkes Booth, the actor, is being observed in half-masted flags and the partial cessation of work in government offices throughout the state and nation today. By order of President [Woodrow] Wilson, all executive offices at Washington are closed for the day, while government offices in other parts of the country are closing at noon. In Brooklyn, flags were at half-staff over schools, clubs, public buildings and on private flagstaffs. Lincoln was shot between 8 and 9 o’clock in the evening. Of the nineteen actors and actresses who took part in the production of ‘Our American Cousin,’ which attracted him to the theater, only one survives, William J. Ferguson, of Brooklyn, who has reached the age of three score and ten years. He was playing the part of Lieutenant Vernon, R.N., on the night of the tragedy.”
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’.