August 21: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

August 21, 2022 Brooklyn Eagle History

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ON THIS DAY IN 1940, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “MEXICO CITY (U.P.) — Negotiations have been started in hope of bringing an eminent brain specialist either from New York or Los Angeles by airplane to save the life of Leon Trotsky, 60, exiled Bolshevik warlord, it was learned today. Trotsky lay in a hospital here with a one in ten chance of surviving an assassination attempt by a trusted associate whom his entourage now suspect of being an operative of the Russian Secret Police. Trotsky’s mystery man assailant lay in a room nearby, and around the corner at the central police station police were questioning a glamorous blonde in connection with the case. She gave her name as Sylvia Ageloff, 30, and her address as 50 Livingston St., Brooklyn. She was said to have wept when police questioned her and sobbed, ‘If Trotsky dies I am going to kill myself, because I am a great admirer of him.’”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1944, the Eagle reported, “SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, A.E.F. (U.P.) — American troops poured into a rapidly expanding bridgehead on the north bank of the Seine above Paris today and drew an armored arc around the north, west and south gates of the French capital, while battered survivors of the German 7th Army fled for the lower Seine in a disorderly rout under relentless attack by Allied land and air forces. With the Americans at the gates of Paris, tens of thousands of French patriots were in revolt inside the city and the Nazi high command, admitting that street fighting had broken out, clamped virtual martial law on the turbulent capital. In a lightning thrust that threatened to seal the Seine River crossings to tens of thousands of Nazis fleeing eastward from Normandy, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton’s 3rd Army troopers burst across the stream in the Mantes-Gassicourt area and established a solid bridgehead for the torrent of American tanks and artillery pounding up in their rear. The German Transocean Agency said Yank paratroops and airborne infantry won the Seine crossing after an unsuccessful attempt to force the river by boat and pontoon bridge.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1949, the Eagle reported, “WASHINGTON (U.P.) — Representative Walter H. Judd (R., Minn.), today accused the State Department of ignoring a 1945 ‘top secret report’ disclosing Russian guidance of the Chinese Communist movement. The report showed that the present Chinese crisis could have been prevented, Judd said. ‘It is inexcusable that it was allowed to develop,’ he added. Judd said he has had the report for four years, but never felt free to release it until the State Department came out ‘with all the secret documents which it could find to bolster its own feeble case.’ In view of the 1945 report, originally prepared for military intelligence by top military and civilian analysts, Judd said: ‘I can only say that Secretary of State Dean Acheson seems determined to make impossible a continuance of the fine bipartisan foreign policy which has been responsible for such foreign policy victories as we have won.’ He charged that Acheson has opposed a consistent policy in Asia ‘where Communism is not just a threat, as in Western Europe, but a cruel actuality.’”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1953, the Eagle reported, “TEHRAN (U.P.) — Jubilant Royalists festooned Tehran with flags and flowers today in preparation for the triumphant return of their shah in streets stained by bloody rioting only two days ago. (The Royal Dutch Air Lines announced in Amsterdam that their chartered plane taking the Shah home from Rome arrived in Bagdad, Iraq at 7:05 a.m. Brooklyn time.) Tanks and troops of new Premier Gen. Fazollah Zahedi stood guard at street corners of the capital and across the nation. But Zahedi’s authority virtually was unchallenged following the arrest late yesterday of deposed Premier Mohammed Mossadegh, who was held and guarded from mobs for trial as a traitor. Cheering mobs erected triumphal arches across the city’s wide streets, where Nationalist mobs angrily smashed statues of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi and demolished pictures of him less than a week ago. Mossadegh languished in a room at the Tehran Officers Club where Zahedi was living. Zahedi told the 78-year-old former premier he would be protected until he is brought to trial for plotting against the legal government.”

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Hayden Panettiere
Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

NOTABLE PEOPLE BORN ON THIS DAY include Rock and Roll Hall of Famer James Burton, who was born in 1939; “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” singer Jackie DeShannon, who was born in 1941; “Witness” director Peter Weir, who was born in 1944; “The Bad Seed” star Patty McCormack, who was born in Brooklyn in 1945; “Boston Public” star Loretta Devine, who was born in 1949; Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Steve Smith (Journey), who was born in 1954; “Sex and the City” star Kim Cattrall, who was born in 1956; former N.Y. Giants running back Reuben Droughns, who was born in 1978; sprinter and eight-time Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt, who was born in 1986; and “Heroes” star Hayden Panettiere, who was born in 1989.

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ROBIN’S NEST: Christopher Robin Milne was born on this day in 1920. He was the inspiration for the character of Christopher Robin in the Winnie-the-Pooh books authored by his father A.A. Milne. Christopher was enamored of Winnipeg the black bear at the London Zoo, and this “Winnie,” along with Milne’s stuffed toy animals (included Eeyore, Piglet and Roo), came to life in a series of beloved books. He died in 1996.

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HAWAII 5-0: President Dwight Eisenhower signed a proclamation admitting Hawaii to the Union on this day in 1959. The statehood bill had passed the previous March with a stipulation that statehood should be approved by a vote of Hawaiian residents. The referendum passed by a huge margin in June and Hawaii became the 50th state two months later.

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

Quotable:

“Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.”

— musician Count Basie, who was born on this day in 1904