Milestones: December 29, 2023

December 29, 2023 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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RAF RESISTANCE — LONDON, ENGLAND ON Dec. 29, 1940, SUFFERED ITS MOST DEVASTATING AIR RAID in the German firebombing of the city, an attack which also demonstrated the steadfast resistance and resiliency of the British people. The iconic newspaper coverage the next day showed a photo of St. Paul’s Cathedral standing undamaged. Even though outnumbered, the Royal Air Force pilots resisted the invasion; and through a combination of immeasurable bravery, maneuverable aircraft and radar, were able to destroy two Luftwaffe warplanes to every British aircraft shot down. Convinced that they could not supersede Britain’s air supremacy, the German high command halted its daytime attack, instead engaging in nighttime attacks, called the Blitz, which lasted until May 1941. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said of the RAF fliers, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

Britain’s cancellation of Germany’s anticipated quick victory and its averting the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union also helped convince the United States that its arms support was worthwhile.

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TRAGEDIES AT WOUNDED KNEE — ONE OF AMERICA’S LONG WARS AGAINST THE FIRST NATIONS HAD A TRAGIC CLIMAX ON DEC. 29, 1890, when U.S. Cavalry killed 146 Sioux at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. The U.S. government had grown fearful of the Ghost Dance spiritual movement in which the Sioux believed that by rejecting the customs of the white man — including the confinement to reservations — if they practiced the Ghost Dance, all non-indigenous and non-believers would be destroyed. Alarmed that the Ghost Dance was a precursor to an armed uprising, the white settlers struck preemptively and the Pine Ridge Reservation turned into a bloodbath in which almost 150 Native Americans were killed. Some historians consider this a gross underestimate of Sioux fatalities, nearly half of them women and children.

Wounded Knee would again become the scene of conflict in February 1973 when the activist group AIM (American Indian Movement) occupied it for 71 days, in protest of the U.S. government’s mistreatment of Native Americans. During that conflict, two Native Americans were killed, while a federal marshal was seriously injured.

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AMERICA’S FIRST YMCA — THE AMERICAN YMCA WAS ESTABLISHED ON DEC. 29, 1851, IN BOSTON, BASED ON THE MODEL FOUNDED IN ENGLAND IN 1844. The London YMCA was the answer of George Williams, a 22-year-old farmer-turned-department store worker, who formed the first Young Men’s Christian Association to offer a refuge from street life. The YMCA also helped blur England’s firmly established class distinctions, providing for the social needs of youths, and it was open to whoever needed it. Drawing on this model was a retired sea captain in Boston, Thomas Valentine Sullivan, who had already created a “home away from home” for sailors and merchants. Learning about the YMCA model in England, he established the first Y in Boston, at the Old South Church.

Since then, YMCA branches have been established to serve African American and Asian men and, in 1879, a Dakotan Indian started the first Y serving Native Americans in Flandreau, South Dakota.

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‘GRAND OLD MAN’ — WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, A FOUR-TIME BRITISH PRIME MINISTER WHO WAS BOTH LOVED AND HATED, WAS BORN ON DEC. 29, 1809, in Liverpool. Gladstone was an author and English statesman for whom a luggage bag was named. Considered eccentric at times, Gladstone was a gifted orator and an impassioned moral reformer, particularly concerned with helping “rescue and rehabilitate” women from lives of prostitution. Gladstone served as prime minister for four non-consecutive terms. Queen Victoria called Gladstone “a half-mad firebrand.” However, to the British working classes he was the “Grand Old Man.”

Shaped like a carpet bag, the Gladstone bag was a lightweight and durable bag that the London leathercrafter J. G. Beard designed at his shop in the City of Westminster in 1854.

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FROM BROOKLYN HEIGHTS! — ICONIC ACTRESS MARY TYLER MOORE HAILED FROM RIGHT HERE IN BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, ON DEC. 29, 1936. Considered America’s TV Sweetheart, particularly as she played the loving housewife Laura Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” Moore won seven Emmy Awards for revolutionizing the roles of women in sitcoms. Most notable was the eponymous series about a single career woman, Mary Richards, who worked at a Minneapolis TV station. A versatile actress, Moore won a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for playing Beth Jarrett, an angry, grieving professional-class housewife in the 1980 movie, “Ordinary People,” which also won that year’s Oscar for “Best Picture.”

Moore’s production company, MTM Enterprises, launched numerous hit shows, including “The Bob Newhart Show,” “WKRP in Cincinnati” and “Hill Street Blues.”

See previous milestones, here.