August 19: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

August 19, 2023 Brooklyn Eagle History

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ON THIS DAY IN 1875, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Senor [Gabriel Garcia] Moreno, President of the Republic of Ecuador, has been assassinated. He was fifty-four years old.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1914, the Eagle reported, “The City of New York has conveyed to the State the entire block now occupied by the Long Island State Hospital with a frontage of 542 feet on the west side of Utica avenue and the same on the west side of Albany avenue, with 2,320 feet on the south side of Winthrop street and the same on the north side of Clarkson street. There are 34 acres in the plot or 580 city lots estimated to be worth more than a million dollars. The State in consideration of the conveyance gives to the city all its rights and interests in the Randall’s Island buildings occupied by the House of Refuge for Juvenile Delinquents and the sunken meadows in the East river adjoining Randall’s Island.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1926, the Eagle reported, “Forty-two garment strikers, including five women, were arrested this morning in the wholesale garment manufacturing district on the West Side, Manhattan, charged with disorderly conduct, one prisoner being charged with assault. All of the strikers were doing picket duty, and the assault case grew out of an argument following attempts of four men to prevent a worker entering a shop.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1936, the Eagle reported, “A herd of milk goats that has been grazing on a five-acre crop of the narcotic marijuana weed on Barren Island south of Floyd Bennett Airport will have to return to a more conventional diet of old rags and tin cans beginning today. A squad of 15 WPA workers under Detectives Edward Connell and Peter F. Gallagher of the Narcotics Squad began to uproot the supply of loco weed yesterday. The goats, owned by squatters on the island, have been giving a normal supply of milk despite their unusual food, it was revealed. Workers estimated that the marijuana field, the largest ever discovered in Brooklyn, would yield a crop valued at $500,000.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1940, the Eagle reported, “Mayor LaGuardia, in his own words, ‘is no prude and can stand a lot,’ but many of the so-called love and sexy magazines get him down, and today he peremptorily ordered 34 of them off the newsstands of the city. The Mayor called a conference of the publishers, distributors and dealers in his office at Summer City Hall. Forty-two men were summoned. Thirty-nine appeared. The Mayor directed Acting Police Commissioner John J. Seery, who also was in on the conference, ‘to bring the other fellows in.’ Sanitation Commissioner William F. Carey, also at the meeting, was directed to send his ‘trucks out to collect the filth and smut.’ The Mayor spoke frankly and freely to the men before him and said he was appealing to them as the fathers of families to do the right thing. ‘I don’t think you’re all bachelors or sons of bachelors,’ the Mayor stated. ‘I could couch my language in more polite terms, I know, but after reading your pamphlets I’m going to talk in the language you understand.’ The Mayor said he reached this decision after a conference with Children’s Court Justice Stephen S. Jackson and learning of the influence of such publications on young people. Of the 42 publications studied by the Mayor, 34 would have to go, he said, while eight, which he called borderline cases, could be cleaned up. ‘Comply with the rules of good taste and decency,’ he instructed the publishers. The Mayor said he was entirely within his rights in forbidding the sale of such magazines and would invoke the penal code to do so. ‘I’m not suggesting censorship, but counting on the right of free press and free expression not to tolerate plain smut and filth,’ the Mayor said.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1951, the Eagle published the following letter: “What is the matter with radio programs, magazines, etc., which think nothing of un-Christian principles? I read three magazine stories recently with divorce endings. The same thing happens on radio. Either the characters are divorced or remarried or talking about doing so. God said there can be no divorce.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1953, the Eagle reported, “TEHRAN (U.P.) — Iran’s emotional, weeping dictator Premier Mohammad Mossadegh toppled from power today in a bloody coup d’etat by Iranian army forces loyal to exiled Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Radio Tehran, which broadcast news of the coup, said Mossadegh’s firebrand Foreign Minister Hussein Fatemi was ‘cut to pieces’ by the infuriated population. The army was in control of the capital and Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi, the shah’s appointed successor to Mossadegh, broadcast an appeal to the people to remain calm and promised to ‘raise living standards’ and ‘insure social justice.’ The fate of Mossadegh himself was not disclosed. His palatial residence was burned by shouting, riotous mobs. The tight army control of the city made it unlikely he had escaped the city. The radio reports of the successful coup were considered official since the army, loyal to the shah, was in complete control. Mossadegh, together with Fatemi, had engineered the expropriation and nationalization of the billion-dollar Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. and had resisted all efforts to find a settlement of the dispute for two years, except on Mossadegh’s terms.”

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Jonathan Frakes
Barry Brecheisen/Invision/AP

Christina Perri
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

NOTABLE PEOPLE BORN ON THIS DAY include “The Ten Commandments” star Debra Paget, who was born in 1933; former N.Y. Yankees second baseman Bobby Richardson, who was born in 1935; “Diamonds Are Forever” star Jill St. John, who was born in 1940; Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Ian Gillan (Deep Purple), who was born in 1945; former President Bill Clinton, who was born in 1946; “Simon & Simon” star Gerald McRaney, who was born in 1947; former Second Lady Tipper Gore, who was born in 1948; “Star Trek: The Next Generation” star Jonathan Frakes, who was born in 1952; political consultant Mary Matalin, who was born in 1953; “Chicago Hope” star Adam Arkin, who was born in Brooklyn in 1956; former N.Y. Mets pitcher Ron Darling, who was born in 1960; “Full House” star John Stamos, who was born in 1963; “The Closer” star Kyra Sedgwick, who was born in 1965; “I Hope You Dance” singer Lee Ann Womack, who was born in 1966; “Friends” star Matthew Perry, who was born in 1969; and “Arms” singer Christina Perri, who was born in 1986.