November 2: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

November 2, 2022 Brooklyn Eagle History

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ON THIS DAY IN 1898, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “LONG ISLAND CITY, L.I. — The tour of Long Island being made today by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Republican candidate for governor, is a novelty in campaigning on the island, no such direct appeal having been made to citizens of Long Island by a candidate for such a high office since the days when John A. King of Jamaica, a candidate for gubernatorial honors, addressed his fellow citizens of Queens County a short time before he was elected to the office over half a century ago. The trip is made by Colonel Roosevelt because Long Island is his home and in response to the requests of his friends and neighbors and it covers all the principal towns and villages in the southside division and the main line of the Long Island Railroad, and involves eighteen stops along the route and the addressing of twenty-three meetings in all … The rear of the train is liberally decorated with flags, it being arranged that the colonel should speak amid a bower of bunting.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1901, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Announcement was made today by General Superintendent Wheatley of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company that on election night the cars of that company, instead of running through Washington street, would be sent down Adams street, so as to permit the crowds of people to line up in the street and watch the bulletins showing the election returns in front of the Eagle office. The cars of the Coney Island and Brooklyn Railroad Company will be sent to the bridge via Jay street, and the trolleys of both the Coney Island and Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Companies will come up from the bridge via Fulton street.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1919, Eagle columnist Frederick Boyd Stevenson wrote, “Whose fault is it? Who started the high cost of living, anyhow? Will it ever end? And who is going to end it? Just now we are blaming the profiteer, labor, the striker, capital, the producer, the manufacturer, the wholesaler, the retailer, the jobber and the robber and several others, identified and unidentified. Perhaps some of them, perhaps all of them, should be blamed — that’s not to the point. Of course, the big profiteers should be blamed. We are all united on that point. But if every big profiteer were caught with the goods or the long green sticking to his fingers and were put in jail, and if every excessive profit beyond a legitimate profit were cut off tomorrow, the percentage of the reduction in the high cost of living would be comparatively small. That is the little end of a very big problem. What is the big end of it? Here it is: The cost of running the government of the United States of America and the method of getting the revenue for running it by federal taxation, the amount of which, since 1914, has increased 540 percent over its former magnitude, and which, in the opinion of one very good authority, is likely, before the end of 1920, to increase 1,500 percent.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1962, the Eagle reported, “TOKYO (UPI) – Communist China yesterday pledged its support of Cuban Premier Fidel Castro for the second consecutive day and said any U.S. provocation against Cuba is a provocation against Peiping. Communist Chinese officials and the official publications were playing down Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev’s role in the Cuban crisis and did not follow the Russian and Eastern European lead in portraying him as a ‘peacemaker.’ Yesterday’s pledge of support was made in a note from Foreign Minister Chen Yi to Cuban Charge D’Affaires Regino Pedroso Aldama. Chen said, ‘The struggle of Cuba is by no means isolated. The U.S. imperialist provocation against you is also a provocation against us.’”

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Marisol Nichols
Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP

NOTABLE PEOPLE BORN ON THIS DAY include political commentator Pat Buchanan, who was born in 1938; golfer Dave Stockton, who was born in 1941; “Hart to Hart” star Stefanie Powers, who was born in 1942; Pro Football Hall of Famer Larry Little, who was born in 1945; singer-songwriter J.D. Souther, who was born in 1945; “Dewey Defeats Truman” author Thomas Mallon, who was born in 1951; “Right Back Where We Started From” singer Maxine Nightingale, who was born in 1952; former National League MVP Willie McGee, who was born in 1958; “Constant Craving” singer k.d. lang, who was born in 1961; “Friends” star David Schwimmer, who was born in 1966; “Riverdale” star Marisol Nichols, who was born in 1973; and San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, who was born in 1991.

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BREAKING NEWS: The first commercial radio station went on the air on this day in 1920 when KDKA of Pittsburgh broadcast the results of the U.S. presidential election. The station got its license to broadcast on Nov. 7, 1921. By 1922 there were about 400 licensed radio stations in the U.S.

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TOP GUN: The mammoth flying boat Hercules made its only trip on this day in 1947. Designed, built and flown by Howard Hughes, the 200-ton plywood craft — nicknamed the “Spruce Goose” — was the world’s largest airplane at the time. It flew for about one mile at an altitude of 70 feet over Long Beach Harbor, Cal.

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

Quotable:

“You have to respect your audience. Without them, you’re essentially standing alone, singing to yourself.”

— singer-songwriter k.d. lang, who was born on this day in 1961