December 16: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
ON THIS DAY IN 1923, Brooklyn Daily Eagle columnist Frederick Boyd Stevenson wrote, “What does the President of the United States of America mean to you? The day after the election when the hollering is all over — what difference does it really make to you who is elected? And how much do you have to do with selecting the President? … They are beginning to round up the starters in the Big Race. The Republicans have fixed on the place and the date of their convention and the Democrats are logrolling and pulling in that direction. Candidates are beginning to come to the front for nomination on the tickets of the two big parties. There are lots of would-be candidates who, in the pleasing vernacular of the day, have thrown their hats into the ring and who are willing to endeavor to boost themselves into the arena by their bootstraps. But, outside of seeing their names in the papers among the ‘other rans,’ their dreams of the Chair will fade softly and gently away like an Ectoplasm.”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1939, the Eagle reported, “WASHINGTON — The possibility of creating an atomic explosion powerful enough to blow up a skyscraper was discussed today at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. At the institution’s annual exhibition, Dr. Merle Tuve and his associates showed for the first time publicly the process by which they can release more than 200,000,000 electron volts of energy from an atom of uranium with the use of only one-thirtieth of an electron volt of energy. This tremendous ‘dividend’ was not discovered until about a year ago in Germany. Many laboratories have duplicated the original experiment. Such a tremendous release of energy raises the problem of whether one atom which was struck in the bombardment with atomic particles might create enough particles of high energy to set off many of its neighboring atoms in a ‘chain reaction’ similar to the explosion of a bunch of firecrackers. The resulting explosion might be greater than any yet generated by man, even though it were produced from only a small pinch of uranium, which is being used in the experiment. If such power could be generated and controlled it would eliminate coal, oil and water as sources of heat and energy.”
Brooklyn Boro
View MoreNew York City’s most populous borough, Brooklyn, is home to nearly 2.6 million residents. If Brooklyn were an independent city it would be the fourth largest city in the United States. While Brooklyn has become the epitome of ‘cool and hip’ in recent years, for those that were born here, raised families here and improved communities over the years, Brooklyn has never been ‘uncool’.