Milestones: January 31, 2024

January 31, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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SLAVERY ABOLISHED — THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ON JAN. 31, 1865, PASSED THE 13TH AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION, ABOLISHING SLAVERY IN AMERICA. The amendment read, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude … shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The amendment passed 119 to 56, just barely above the necessary two-thirds majority, with several Democrats abstaining or resisting because of their insistence on protecting states’ rights to keep slaves. Lincoln’s reelection the previous November ensured that the amendment would be kept active.

However, in many places where the Union Army was victorious, slavery had already ended. The Union was keeping escaped slaves rather than returning them to their former owners.

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FUNDING THE HYDROGEN BOMB — ENDEAVORING TO STAY AHEAD IN THE NUCLEAR ARMS RACE, U.S. PRESIDENT HARRY S. TRUMAN ON JANUARY 31, 1950, PUBLICLY ANNOUNCED THAT HE WOULD SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HYDROGEN BOMB. Triggering this decision were two events: the U.S. loss of nuclear supremacy with the Soviet Union’s successful launch of an atomic bomb in Kazakhstan, and the discovery that German-born Klaus Fuchs, a top-ranking scientist purportedly working for the U.S., was actually a Soviet spy. Now that the Soviets knew how the U.S. built hydrogen bombs, Truman had to approve major funding to stay into the race to be the first to create a “superbomb.”

The United States tested its first hydrogen bomb, named “Mike,” on Nov. 1, 1952, with terrifying success, vaporizing an entire landmass in the Pacific Marshall Islands.

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COLLECTED SOCIAL SECURITY FOR ALMOST 35 YEARS — THE FIRST MONTHLY SOCIAL SECURITY CHECK WAS ISSUED ON JAN. 31, 1940 FOR THE AMOUNT OF $22.54. Its recipient was Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont, who had worked for three years under the Social Security program that had been established in 1935 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The accumulated taxes on Ms. Fuller’s salary over those three years were $24.75, and she lived to be 100, collecting a total of $22,888 for the rest of her life, until her death on Jan. 27, 1975, in the same month that her benefits started.

The Social Security program, enacted on Aug. 14, 1935, marks its 89th year in 2024. The first lump sum payments were distributed in 1937, and the first monthly payments in 1940.

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VILLAGE VOICE’S FOUNDER BORN — NORMAN MAILER, CONSIDERED THE COUNTERCULTURE’S LITERARY GIANT, WAS BORN ON JAN. 31, 1923 in New Jersey. He was known for popularizing “creative non-fiction,” in which he placed himself in real-life events and created a narrative about each. This genre was called the New Journalism. Mailer had a reputation for being abrasive and egotistical. He was a co-founder of the Village Voice (along with Edwin Fancher – also born in 1923 – and Dan Wolf) and the author of 12 novels, winning Pulitzer Prizes for his 1967 work “Armies of the Night,” and “The Executioner’s Song,” published in 1979. He died in 2007.

Mailer owned a townhouse at 142 Columbia Heights, in Brooklyn Heights. The neighborhood was long an enclave for authors, including W.H. Auden, Truman Capote, Hart Crane and Carson McCullers.

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REFUSED TO BE TRADED FROM DODGERS — JACKIE ROBINSON, BORN AS Jack Roosevelt Robinson on Jan. 31, 1919, may not have been a native Brooklynite, but he came to epitomize the Brooklyn Dodgers’ commitment to racial diversity. A native of Cairo, Georgia, Robinson became the first African American player to enter professional major league baseball when he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. He was voted the National League’s Most Valuable Player in 1949 and elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.

The Brooklyn Dodgers attempted to trade Robinson to the New York Giants in 1956, two years before owner Walter O’Malley moved the team across the U.S. to Los Angeles. However, Robinson chose instead to retire and became a spokesperson for civil rights and the NAACP.

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GOLFING ON THE MOON — APOLLO 14, A MANNED MISSION TO THE MOON, SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHED ON JAN. 31, 1971, FROM CAPE CANAVERAL IN FLORIDA. The astronauts piloting this vessel were Alan B. Shepard Jr., Edgar D. Mitchell and Stuart A. Roosa. Ten years earlier, in 1961, aboard Freedom 7, Alan Shepard had become the first American in space. He also became the fifth astronaut to walk on the moon. Apollo 14 marked the United States’ third lunar landing, before its safe return to Earth on Feb. 9.

During their lunar walk, the astronauts collected 97 pounds of lunar samples and conducted some fun scientific experiments: hitting golf balls into space with Alan Shepard’s iron.

See previous milestones, here.