November 12: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
HISTON THIS DAY IN 1918, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “WITH THE AMERICAN ARMY IN FRANCE, MONDAY, NOV. 11 (AP) — Hostilities along the American front ended with a crash of cannon. The early forenoon had been marked by a falling off in fire all along the line, but an increasing bombardment from the retreating Germans at certain points stimulated the Americans to a quick retort. From their positions north of Stenay to Southeast of the town, the Americans began to bombard fixed targets. The firing reached a volume at times almost equivalent to a barrage. Two minutes before 11 o’clock, the firing dwindled, the last shells shrieking over no man’s land precisely on time. There was little celebration on the front line, and American routine was scarcely disturbed over the cessation of fighting. In the areas behind the battle zone, there were celebrations today on all sides. Here and there, there were little outbursts of cheering, but even those instances were not on the immediate front.”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1947, the Eagle reported, “Mayor [William] O’Dwyer told a Congressional Committee on Housing today that there are at least 150,000 families in the city without homes of their own and urged the allocation of funds for the immediate constructing of 20,000 more dwelling units to ease a ‘desperate’ shortage. At the same time, in a discussion of quasi-public housing projects, the mayor expressed disappointment over the progress in actual construction shown by savings banks and insurance companies. He acknowledged that there were stumbling blocks to private construction such as the problem of relocating families on housing sites and high construction costs. Then he added: ‘Because of these conditions, some savings banks and other financial institutions have postponed their projects indefinitely.’ He said that with few exceptions the savings banks ‘have greatly disappointed us in our attack upon the housing problem. I refer to both equity investment and mortgage loans.’ The mayor also paid his respects to the federal government, declaring it had ‘run out’ on the job of seeing that returned veterans and others displaced by the war were receiving proper housing. He declared that there were between 800,000 and 900,000 persons who went into the armed forces during the war, as well as thousands of others who had taken war jobs away from home. Many of these, he said, had returned and their presence added to the problem already existing in finding homes for those living in the slums.”
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’.