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June 29: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

June 29, 2022 Brooklyn Eagle History
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ON THIS DAY IN 1863, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “The corps of General Ewell marched through Boonsboro, towards Greencastle, by way of the Cave Town road. At first it was supposed this corps intended to operate in the vicinity of Gettysburg and York; but on marching in that direction some ten or fifteen miles, it changed its course, and proceeded towards Greencastle, indicating a concentration of the whole rebel army, and Hill and Longstreet’s corps also took Greencastle in their advance towards Chambersburg.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1913, Eagle columnist Frederick Boyd Stevenson wrote, “More than forty-three thousand men — killed, wounded and missing — paid the awful toll in the bloodiest battle of the Civil War — Gettysburg. At a distance of fifty years we may look analytically and calmly at this fearful struggle in which the flower of American manhood engaged, comprising the best red blood of the brothers of the divided household of a nation, each faction seeking to destroy the other in a heated sectional passion never before known in the history of the world. And yet today all this is only a memory — only a nightmare of the forgiven past — for on that battlefield of three long, frightful days of carnage, forty thousand men from the North and the South are to meet again — this time as brothers in heart and sympathies and ties of nationhood. Here is to be again written the history of the Republic — the greatest, the most endearing, the most enduring history — and it is a story of union and peace. You may read of the preparations for caring for this great Peace Army today with tranquility and a restful assurance of security in your country, which now has no sectionalism and no hatred within its borders. As a contrast to this serenity you should turn to the files of the newspapers of half a century ago, and, in your imagination, you may again live through the bitter anguish and the alarming uncertainty and review for yourself this first meeting on the battlefield of Gettysburg.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1915, the Eagle reported, “CHICAGO — Indiscriminate raising of children is filling the world with the unfit and undermining the stamina of the nation, Dr. Elizabeth Hamilton Muncie of Brooklyn, an advocate of birth control, told members of the American Institute of Homeopathy yesterday in annual session at the Hotel Sherman. ‘Families of degenerates are almost twice as large as those of normal persons, and unless remedial legislation is soon forthcoming, Americans will wake up some day to the realization they are weaklings,’ she said. Dr. Muncie asserted physicians should have authority to instruct young people when parentage is proper and to perform operations upon the incompetent. ‘The law which makes it an offense for a physician to tell parents how to limit the family, though they may be unfit, is as illogical as to say we should not interfere with a falling object because it is acting to the common law of gravity,’ Dr. Muncie declared. ‘This law is a lie. The results of it are seen on every hand in imbecility, insanity, truancy, criminality, arrested mental development, inefficiency parasitism and chronic invalidism.’”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1954, the Eagle reported, “ALBANY — Gerrymandered or not, Brooklyn’s 22 new Assembly districts, including the four challenged in the courts, will stay put in outlines as laid down by New York’s City Council. The Court of Appeals so ruled after a special session yesterday when the state’s highest tribunal heard arguments on the case for two and one-half hours and then deliberated for two hours more. The vote was 5 to 2 to sustain the Appellate Division, which had ruled last week to reverse the decision of Supreme Court Justice George A. Arkwright. Justice Arkwright had rejected the council’s reapportionment as to the new 3rd, 4th, 5th and 17th Assembly districts. Their ‘weird contours,’ he had found, were ‘neither convenient, contiguous nor in as compact form as possible, as required by the Constitution.’ The majority of the high court, however, found the districts constitutional. The court move to throw out the four districts was taken by four Brooklyn taxpayers headed by Roy M.D. Richardson, who had served an interim term as Kings County surrogate by Republican appointment.”

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Nicole Scherzinger
Mark Von Holden/Invision/AP
Maria Conchita Alonso
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

NOTABLE PEOPLE BORN ON THIS DAY include “The Buddy Holly Story” star Gary Busey, who was born in 1944; “Anything but Love” star Richard Lewis, who was born in Brooklyn in 1947; “The Love Boat” star and former U.S. Rep. Fred Grandy, who was born in 1948; Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Ian Paice (Deep Purple), who was born in 1948; “Alone Again” singer Don Dokken, who was born in 1953; Men at Work founder Colin Hay, who was born in 1953; “Moscow on the Hudson” star Maria Conchita Alonso, who was born in 1957; “NYPD Blue” star Sharon Lawrence, who was born in 1961; “Lost” star Zuleikha Robinson, who was born in 1977; Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger, who was born in 1978; “American Horror Story” star Lily Rabe, who was born in 1982; L.A. Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard, who was born in 1991; and “Riverdale” star Camila Mendes, who was born in 1994.

Lily Rabe
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

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BY GEORGE: George Washington Goethals was born in Brooklyn on this day in 1858. The engineer and Army officer led the construction of the Panama Canal and was the first civil governor of the Canal Zone. The Goethals Bridge between Staten Island and New Jersey is named for him. He died in 1928.

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GET YOUR MOTOR RUNNIN’: The Interstate highway system was born on this day in 1956 when President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill providing $33.5 billion for construction. It was the biggest public works program in history.

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

 

Quotable:

“Knowledge of our duties is the most essential part of the philosophy of life. If you escape duty, you avoid action. The world demands results.”

— engineer George Washington Goethals, who was born on this day in 1858

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