September 8: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

September 8, 2023 Brooklyn Eagle History

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ON THIS DAY IN 1910, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “In every Long Island town and village touched by the railroad, excitement and enthusiasm reigned supreme today in honor of the great epoch in transit which makes New York City a closer neighbor to the Island. Decorations of course played the most prominent part of the event from a spectacular standpoint, for the course traversed by the first tunnel trains led through a path of flags and bunting which decorated almost every building. Big delegations representing every town were out in force to greet the trains in a manner that appropriately expressed the enthusiasm of the people. As the trains passed through every station, the passengers, composing the celebration committee representing each town, leaned out of all the train windows or gathered on the platforms, waving and cheering in exchange with the enthusiastic greetings that they received from the depots.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1929, the Eagle reported, “Death takes the last veteran of the War with Mexico in Owen Thomas Edgar of Washington, D.C., who reached the ripe age of 98. He was not a spectacular hero, but let it be noted that he was a volunteer. There were no drafted men under Taylor and Scott when their victories brought Aztecland to its knees.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1930, Eagle columnist John MacElhinny said, “When the ‘talkies’ were first introduced I thought they were impossible. In fact, I indulged in much raucous laughter at their expense. I now admit that, ridiculous as it may appear, I was wrong. The movies have grown up, and no longer will I claim that they ‘should be seen but not heard.’ I was converted last week when I happened to drop into a theater that was exhibiting one of the old silent pictures. The sight of those poor, inarticulate shadows moving around between captions was heartrending. There was a feeling of being in a deaf-and-dumb asylum, together with the thought that it was wrong to gaze at the afflictions of the inmates.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1936, the Eagle reported, “After a week of previews, the ‘Edison Wonder House’ opened today at 9 p.m. in the ground floor showroom of the Brooklyn Edison Company at 380 Pearl St. About 500 persons visited the completely electrified two-story, ten-room home up to noon. Twelve girls were assigned to take people in small groups through the exhibit. The applications on view range from air conditioning to apparatus for opening and closing the bedroom window by pressing a button on the side of the bed. According to A. Augustus Low, executive vice president of the Brooklyn Edison Company, the wonder house is a practical effort to develop new business by showing in an actual home setting the many modern domestic applications of electricity. About 17½ miles of wire are required to carry current to all the hundreds of gadgets in the house. Almost 300,000 watts of electricity would be needed to power all of them if they were all turned on at the same time. H. Edward D’Andrade, director of the electrical home, said he does not expect any individual to incorporate in his own home all its electrical features, but hopes that every visitor will carry away a number of ideas which he wants to adopt.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1941, the Eagle reported, “With sharpened pencils and spotless copybooks clutched in their hands, more than 1,000,000 boys and girls trotted off to the city’s public and parochial schools today to delve for another ten months into the intricacies of reading, writing and arithmetic. The precise number of bright young faces that turned in the direction of elementary, vocational, junior and senior high schools was not available from official sources, but it was estimated that 1,010,680, or 40,000 less than last February, would be pretty nearly correct. A steady decline in enrollment in recent years, resulting from fewer births and reduced immigration, has been hailed in many quarters as auguring well for individualized instruction, but the drop this year bids fair to be accompanied by a slash in teaching rolls. It has been announced that 863 teaching positions have been eliminated during the Summer and Dr. Harold G. Campbell, Superintendent of Schools, has revealed that some classes will be consolidated, although efforts will be made not to lower standards of instruction.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1954, the Eagle reported, “SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS (U.P.) — Turn-about POW Claude J. Batchelor, who says he began smoking marijuana when he found out the Communists had made a dupe of him, both hates and fears the Reds. The first part of a 148-page statement which Batchelor gave to Army Intelligence officers in Tokyo last January, shortly after he finally accepted repatriation, was read as the second week of his court martial opened. Batchelor said in the statement he felt ‘terribly bitter toward the Communists’ and had a ‘personal fear of Communism coming to the United States.’ The 22-year-old Kermit, Tex., corporal is being tried at Fort Sam Houston on charges he connived with his Chinese Communist captors and informed on his fellow prisoners of war.”

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NOTABLE PEOPLE BORN ON THIS DAY include U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who was born in Brooklyn in 1941; civil rights activist Ruby Bridges, who was born in 1954; Dokken drummer Mick Brown, who was born in 1956; Basketball Hall of Famer Maurice Cheeks, who was born in 1956; “The Fall Guy” star Heather Thomas, who was born in 1957; ’Til Tuesday singer Aimee Mann, who was born in 1960; New Pornographers singer Neko Case, who was born in 1970; former N.Y. Knicks guard Latrell Sprewell, who was born in 1970; “Scream” star David Arquette, who was born in 1971; political commentator Kennedy, who was born in 1972; “Menace II Society” star Larenz Tate, who was born in 1975; “Just Give Me a Reason” singer Pink, who was born in 1979; “Home Improvement” star Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who was born in 1981; rapper and actor Wiz Khalifa, who was born in 1987; N.Y. Knicks point guard Miles McBride, who was born in 2000; and “Stranger Things” star Gaten Matarazzo, who was born in 2002.