March 22: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

March 22, 2023 Brooklyn Eagle History

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ON THIS DAY IN 1934, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “WASHINGTON (AP) — A national bank call is considered at the Treasury to be an early possibility. Last year, because of the bank holiday, the first 1933 call was delayed until June. This year with the banks considered by officials to be in excellent condition, especially with the bolstering of millions of Reconstruction Corporation funds, a much earlier call seems in order. The last national bank call was for the end of 1933 and the one before that was for Oct. 25. Three are required each year.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1936, the Eagle reported, “A meteor flashing across the night sky may hit the front pages and send astronomers scurrying to their telescopes, but to old Mother Earth it is nothing to get excited about, for, scientists say, about 15 million such balls of fire sweep through her atmosphere every 24 hours. Many of them, of course, are not visible at all to the human eye. Others appear as shooting stars on a clear night. Traveling at a speed of 30 miles a second, they are small bodies which, in following their own orbits about the sun, have happened to strike the earth’s atmosphere. It usually means disintegration for meteorites when they come that close to the earth’s surface. The friction of the earth’s atmosphere against the speeding bodies causes them to burst into flames. The heat consumes the smaller shooting stars in a short time.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1950, the Eagle reported, “HOLLYWOOD (U.P.) — A husky young aircraft worker invited today a careless winner of a 1935 Motion Picture Academy award to step forward and claim his or her ‘Oscar.’ Bruce Kiernan, 20, said he found the metal statuette across the street from his South Los Angeles home about eight years ago. He’d like to learn whom it belongs to. The battered Oscar, labeled ‘First Award, 1935, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,’ was in a trash can when he found it, the youth said. It could have belonged to one of a score of movie celebrities. Among possible winners of the time-dulled figure are Bette Davis, Victor McLaglen, John Ford and the late D.W. Griffith.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1953, the Eagle reported, “ALBANY, MARCH 21 — A virtual mandate for a transit fare rise in New York City was steam-rolled through the State Senate tonight by a G.O.P. majority bent on clinching Governor [Thomas] Dewey’s amended transit program before the Legislature’s adjournment. The Democratic minority immediately began laying the groundwork for a court challenge of the Dewey bills, which would prohibit the city from using special taxing powers as long as it retains control of its subway and bus lines. Dewey was accused of perpetrating a ‘rape on the people of New York City’ by altering the ‘permissive’ nature of the already-passed tax-empowering bill and denying new powers unless the transit system is turned over to a five-man authority. Senate Democrats, with Brooklyn members in the vanguard, charged that the measure violated the State Constitution by cutting off the city’s right of ‘home rule.’”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1954, the Eagle reported, “TAIPEI, FORMOSA (U.P.) — Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek won re-election to another six-year term as president today by an almost unanimous vote of the National Assembly. Chiang received 1,507 votes on the second ballot. When the results were announced, millions of firecrackers were set off in Formosa and messages of congratulations began pouring in. Chiang’s only opponent, Hsu Fu-Lin of the Democratic Socialist party, received only 48 votes.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1963, the Brooklyn Record reported, “Representative Hugh L. Carey, Bay Ridge Democrat, has called for the voluntary and honorary admission of the Republic Eire as the fifty-first state. Representative Carey noted the action of the House in extending honorary citizenship to Sir Winston Churchill and suggested that related legislation retroactive in effect to admit Ireland would be both fair and proper.”

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Reese Witherspoon
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

Andrew Lloyd Webber
Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

NOTABLE PEOPLE BORN ON THIS DAY include “Star Trek” star William Shatner, who was born in 1931; singer-songwriter George Benson, who was born in 1943; former N.Y. Knicks coach Don Chaney, who was born in 1946; “Kiss the Girls” author James Patterson, who was born in 1947; Oscar-winning composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who was born in 1948; sportscaster Bob Costas, who was born in 1952; “Alias” star Lena Olin, who was born in 1955; actress and singer Stephanie Mills, who was born in Brooklyn in 1957; “Mad TV” star Keegan-Michael Key, who was born in 1971; former N.Y. Knicks center Marcus Camby, who was born in 1974; Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon, who was born in 1976; former NFL linebacker Joey Porter, who was born in 1977; former N.Y. Mets first baseman Ike Davis, who was born in 1987; and N.Y. Mets pitcher Edwin Diaz, who was born in 1994.

William Shatner
Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

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NET GAIN: The first women’s collegiate basketball game was played on this day in 1893 at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. Senda Berenson, Smith’s director of physical education and “mother of women’s basketball,” supervised the game, in which Smith’s sophomore team beat the freshman team 5-4.

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REACH FOR THE SKY: The Tuskegee Airmen were activated on this day in 1941. The pioneering and highly decorated African-American aviator unit gained its name during training at the U.S. Army airfield near Tuskegee, Ala., and the Tuskegee Institute. During World War II, they shot down 111 enemy planes and destroyed 273 planes on the ground. The group was deactivated when President Harry Truman integrated the U.S. military in 1948.

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

Quotable:

“Regret is the worst human emotion. If you took another road, you might have fallen off a cliff. I’m content.”

— “Star Trek” star William Shatner, who was born on this day in 1931