June 15: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

June 15, 2023 Brooklyn Eagle History

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ON THIS DAY IN 1902, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Members of the Brooklyn Naval Reserves are looking forward to an eventful season. Never since its organization have the prospects of the Second Battalion Naval Militia been so promising. In the first place, work is about to be begun on the new armory, and, in the second place, the battalion is to have a taste of real service in a ten days’ cruise with a squadron of the Navy. The new armory is badly needed. In the five years of its existence the Second Battalion has never been properly housed. It has had no place to gather for instruction or drill except in detached sections, and then solely by the courtesy of other militia organizations or at the personal expense of individual members and their officers. At present the battalion has a little frame dwelling at the foot of Fifty-fifth street, where their belongings are kept, but that is all. For many months the armory has been promised. Now it is to be built. Land has been set aside for it — a block on the water front, extending from Fifty-first street to Fifty-second.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1913, the Eagle reported, “‘The National Road is one thing needed to make this country a bigger and better and greater nation,’ is the assertion put forward by Laurens Enos, president of the American Automobile Association and head of the largest organized body of road users in the world. ‘A vast amount of misinformation seems to exist regarding the usefulness of a national highway system. Primarily, it must be understood that every road entering into a system of national roads would be the main thoroughfare between centers of population and interest, and on that basis alone would be subject to heavy traffic. Further, it is a well-known fact that the principal road between important centers runs through the most thoroughly developed sections of country within that region, with the most populous and progressive smaller cities and villages and the most thoroughly cultivated farming sections.’”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1914, the Eagle reported, “Police Commissioner Arthur Woods today began a comprehensive change in the Detective Bureau of the department by announcing his plan to remove the various divisions of the Detective Bureau, of which there are seventeen, with headquarters in various precincts in the city, to other headquarters entirely separate from the precinct where the branch bureaus are now housed. The seventeen branches of the Detective Bureau will be reduced to nine, and Police Commissioner Woods is at present determining who will have charge in the nine branch bureaus with the title of Acting Captain of Detectives or Division Commanders. Commissioner Woods had adopted the plan which he fathered when he was Fourth Deputy Commissioner under Commissioner [Theodore] Bingham, and which was abolished when Commissioner [Rhinelander] Waldo entered office. He believes that his plan will do away with a great deal of unnecessary clerical work on the part of the officers of the precincts and the detectives themselves. In addition, he believes that the system of ferreting out crimes and hunting criminals will be rendered more efficient by the changes.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1952, the Eagle reported, “Straight from a video spine-tingler plot comes the story of a Vanderveer mother who selected a Father’s Day card for her two young children, Roger and Barbara, to send to her husband. Out of hundreds of cards in the drug store, the woman chose one, opened it and shrieked. Inside, over the poem, was written in pen and ink, ‘To Daddy.’ And below the card was signed, ‘Roger and Barbara.’”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1952, the Eagle reported, “A Sheepshead Bay citizen embarrassed the Brooklyn Dodgers when he took a radio announcement literally. The Dodger ball game announcer said the price of the Father-Son Sunday game tickets was two clams, and urged fans to mail in for them as soon as possible. Lo and behold, two clams (Sheepshead Bay Style) arrived at the Dodger office with a polite request for tix. No one can say the fans ain’t clammering for tickets.”

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Courteney Cox
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

NOTABLE PEOPLE BORN ON THIS DAY include Baseball Hall of Famer Billy Williams, who was born in 1938; political activist and businessman Ward Connerly, who was born in 1939; Super Bowl-winning coach Mike Holmgren, who was born in 1948; Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker, who was born in 1949; “Dance Fever” host Deney Terrio, who was born in 1950; Kansas lead singer Steve Walsh, who was born in 1951; “According to Jim” star Jim Belushi, who was born in 1954; Baseball Hall of Famer and former N.Y. Yankees third baseman Wade Boggs, who was born in 1958; “The Young and the Restless” star Eileen Davidson, who was born in 1959; Oscar-winning actress Helen Hunt, who was born in 1963; “Friends” star Courteney Cox, who was born in 1964; “The King of Queens” star Leah Remini, who was born in 1970; former N.Y. Yankees pitcher and 2001 ALCS MVP Andy Pettitte, who was born in 1972; “How I Met Your Mother” star Neil Patrick Harris, who was born in 1973; and Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast Madison Kocian, who was born in 1997.

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LAW OF THE LAND: On this day in 1215, King John of England sealed the Magna Carta “in the meadow called Ronimed between Windsor and Staines.” Continually reinterpreted, the Magna Carta influenced the rise of England’s constitutional monarchy and lent historical weight to 18th-century ideas about inalienable natural law. It is still invoked popularly and in jurisprudence as a symbol of the written law’s power to subdue tyranny. Four original copies of the 1215 charter survive.

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COLLEGE CREDIT: The 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on this day in 1804. It changed the method of electing the president and vice president after a tie in the electoral college during the election of 1800. Rather than each elector voting for two candidates, with the candidate receiving the most votes elected president and the second-place candidate elected vice president, each elector was now required to designate their choice for president and vice president, respectively.

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

Quotable:

“You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”

— former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, who was born on this day in 1932