June 22: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

June 22, 2023 Brooklyn Eagle History

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ON THIS DAY IN 1891, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “WASHINGTON, D.C. — Assistant Secretary [Alvred] Nettleton has returned to Washington from New York and was at the treasury department this morning. He says that the new immigration station on Ellis Island will be opened August 1, and that thereafter all immigrants will be landed there. A regular government ferry will be established between the depot and the barge office in New York and all immigrants destined for that city and neighboring places will be landed there after having undergone the inspection on the island.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1915, the Eagle reported, “The long-deferred suit brought by the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, Ltd. — the White Star Line — to limit to approximately $97,972 its liabilities growing out of the loss of the Titanic on her maiden voyage in April 1912 was begun today, before Federal Judge Julius M. Mayer, in the United States District Court Annex in the Woolworth building.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1942, the Eagle reported, “ASTORIA, ORE. (U.P.) — An ‘unidentified craft,’ presumed to be a Japanese submarine, fired six to nine shells into a sandy waste on the Oregon coast last night in the second attack on the North American Pacific shore in 24 hours. There was neither damage nor casualties. The shells landed on the empty beach between Seaside, a suburb 20 miles south of this town which is at the mouth of the Columbia River and an abandoned logging camp known as Columbia Beach. In San Francisco the Western defense command issued a communique reporting that six to nine shells were fired but that no damage and no casualties resulted. The attack began at 11:30 p.m. and lasted about 15 minutes. The vessel was believed to have been the submarine which lobbed a few shells in the direction of the Canadian Government telegraph station at Estevan Point on Vancouver Island, off the British Columbia coast, Saturday night.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1950, Eagle columnist Ernest Lindley said, “It seems very likely that the question of American policy on Formosa will be reopened and thoroughly re-examined. This is almost certain to be the case if the Chinese Communists do not succeed in capturing Formosa, by assault or revolution, before August. General [Douglas] MacArthur has not altered his view that Formosa should be kept out of Communist hands. The current visit of Secretary of Defense [Louis] Johnson and General [Omar] Bradley to Japan affords General MacArthur the chance to argue his case at length and with full force.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1951, the Eagle reported, “WASHINGTON (U.P.) — Democratic and Republican Senators alike were at a loss to explain today why Senator Alexander Wiley (R., Wis.) forced a postponement on the nomination of New York Police Commissioner Thomas F. Murphy to be a Federal district judge. They generally indorsed the nomination wholeheartedly. Wiley, ranking Republican of the Senate Judiciary Committee, refused to discuss the matter. But his office said that he has received some ‘allegations’ about Murphy which ‘raised some questions’ about his fitness to hold a Federal judgeship. Wiley would not amplify, out of fairness to Murphy. But his office said it would take ‘several days’ for the Senator to resolve the anonymous objections to Murphy. Murphy was the former Assistant U.S. Attorney who was chief prosecutor in the two perjury trials of Alger Hiss, former State Department official. Hiss was convicted of lying to a grand jury in denying that he ever slipped secret documents to Whittaker Chambers, Communist spy courier. He is now serving a five-year prison term.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1953, the Eagle reported, “‘Let not the world or any part of it be misguided by what is now a soft voice coming from behind the Iron Curtain,’ Francis P. Kilcoyne, associate professor of English at Brooklyn College, warned yesterday in an address before 20,000 Catholics at Ebbets Field. Speaking at the 52nd annual Brooklyn Holy Name Rally, Kilcoyne added: ‘That soft voice is nothing more or less than a temporary shift in strategy, for the nature of the disease remains atheistic and the goal continues to be conquest of the world, preferably through the agency of homegrown traitors.’”

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NOTABLE PEOPLE BORN ON THIS DAY include U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who was born in 1933; singer-songwriter and actor Kris Kristofferson, who was born in 1936; journalist and author Brit Hume, who was born in 1943; The Turtles co-founder Howard Kaylan, who was born in 1947; Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Todd Rundgren, who was born in 1948; Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep, who was born in 1949; “The Bionic Woman” star Lindsay Wagner, who was born in 1949; U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who was born in 1949; “True Colors” singer Cyndi Lauper, who was born in 1953; “Star Trek: Voyager” star Tim Russ, who was born in 1956; “Evil Dead” star Bruce Campbell, who was born in 1958; Basketball Hall of Famer Clyde Drexler, who was born in 1962; “Judging Amy” star Amy Brenneman, who was born in 1964; “The DaVinci Code” author Dan Brown, who was born in 1964; “24” star Mary Lynn Rajskub, who was born in 1971; and “Scrubs” star Donald Faison, who was born in 1974.

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LAW OF THE LAND: The Department of Justice was established by an act of Congress on this day in 1870. It is led by the attorney general, who before 1870 was a member of the president’s cabinet but not the head of a department.

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ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE: Joseph Papp was born in Brooklyn on this day in 1921. At the helm of the New York Public Theatre, Papp produced a wide range of works from the classical to those of the newest American dramatists, including “Hair,” “The Pirates of Penzance,” “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” and “A Chorus Line.” He won three Pulitzer Prizes, six New York Critics Circle Awards and 28 Tonys. He died in 1991.

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

Quotable:

“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”

— comedian George Carlin, who died on this day in 2008