August 20: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
ON THIS DAY IN 1946, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Mayor [William] O’Dwyer and Borough President [John] Cashmore wielded pick and shovel today in ground-breaking ceremonies for the first postwar construction on the $25,000,000 Brooklyn-Queens Connecting Highway. The ceremonies took place shortly after noon at Amity and Hicks Sts., launching construction on Contract 1 for the first section of the long-proposed cross-Brooklyn traffic artery. No homes are to be affected by construction of the first section, Mr. Cashmore pointed out. All structures were removed in 1941 when Hicks St. was widened to 160 feet from Hamilton Ave. to Atlantic Ave. A luncheon for the officials who took part in the ceremonies followed at the Hotel Bossert. Eventually the highway will run from the end of Gowanus Parkway at Hamilton Ave. along Hicks St. to Atlantic Ave., then swing toward the waterfront and run along a three-level structure overhanging Furman St. After skirting the Brooklyn Heights area, it will connect with Park Ave., curve through Williamsburg to Meeker Ave., and then, by viaduct, to the Kosciusko Bridge over Newtown Creek to Queens.”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1949, the Eagle reported, “WASHINGTON (U.P.) — Air Force investigators who turned up two tattered disk-type airplanes in an abandoned Maryland tobacco shed hinted today the discovery may ‘break’ the flying saucer mystery. They were searching for a missing inventor who built the two craft and reportedly got one of them into the air before disappearing with his wife and child about 10 years ago. ‘It is apparent that both ships would give the appearance of flying disks,’ said a spokesman for Air Force investigators who have worked on the flying saucer mystery for two years with little or no tangible result. ‘They could well be the prototype of what have been reported as flying saucers,’ he said. The investigators hoped to find Jonathan E. Caldwell, whose attempt to sell stock to finance production of the disk planes he invented reportedly was blocked at the time by Maryland authorities.”