Milestones: February 2, 2024

February 2, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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LANDMARK TRAIN TERMINAL — GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL OPENED IN MANHATTAN ON FEB. 2, 1913, after a 10-year construction period began just after the start of the 20th century. The terminal at 89 East 42nd Street was on the site of an older steam train station dating back to 1879. The station had grown from that decade, but a 1902 fatal collision between two outdated steam trains necessitated a complete overhaul. The same year as the tragedy, which killed 15, railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt teamed up with an engineer named William Wilgus to plan a station with new electric trains free of exhaust fumes that could also operate underground. To outdo Penn Station’s success, Vanderbilt and Wilgus commissioned the design of a towering white marble facade and a ceiling mural interpreting God’s view of the sky.

However, with automobile travel partially replacing trains, Grand Central eventually fell into severe disrepair. During the 1960s, several prominent New Yorkers established The Committee to Save Grand Central, which fought to save the complex from the wrecking ball, securing landmark status and completing a $100 million restoration, a project in which former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was involved.

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ALLIED VICTORY IN WINTER — THE GERMANS SURRENDERED TO SOVIET FORCES ON FEB. 2, 1943, ENDING THE BATTLE OF STALINGRAD and marking an Allied victory and psychological shift during World War II. Starving German soldiers, without supplies since the Soviet blockade three months earlier had no choice but to surrender, and newly-appointed Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, sought out the terms. His actions enraged Hitler, who would have preferred that Paulus and his troops take their own lives. Even with the air evacuation of Germans, 90,000 were captured and sent to Siberia, and tens of thousands perished during the trek.

The Germans had in June 1941 walked back the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, and launched a major invasion of the Soviet Union, which in 1943 joined the Allies with Britain, the United States and France.

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A BETTER WAY TO SCOOP — THE FIRST ICE CREAM SCOOP, THE INVENTION OF A BLACK BUSINESSMAN IN PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA, WAS PATENTED ON FEB. 2, 1897. Alfred Cralle, at the time working as a porter at the Markell Brothers drugstore, observed that his coworkers were struggling to scoop out ice cream cones for their customers. To help them out, he designed an implement to scoop easily with just one hand, and called it an “ice-cream mold and disher.” Cralle’s patent application described the disher as “…extremely simple in its construction, strong, durable, effectual in its operation and comparatively inexpensive to manufacture.” The device quickly gained popularity and enabled people to scoop “40 to 50 dishes of ice cream in a minute,” without soiling one’s hands.

Cralle, who became the first Black man in the city of Pittsburgh to receive his own patent, was part of a post-Civil War wave of Black patent-holders that had its peak in 1899.

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‘BAREFOOT CONTESSA’ — COOKBOOK AUTHOR, CHEF AND TV PERSONALITY INA GARTEN WAS BORN ON FEB. 2, 1948, here in Brooklyn. Author of the cookbook and program “The Barefoot Contessa,” she launched her culinary journey in 1978 when she unexpectedly bought a specialty store on Long Island. Naming the store “The Barefoot Contessa” after a 1954 Ava Gardner movie, she had great success before selling it and writing an eponymous cookbook, which became a best-seller. She then launched a show on The Food Network,” also calling it “The Barefoot Contessa.”

At the time she bought the store in 1978, Garten was working at the White House Office of Management and Budget during the Carter administration, writing nuclear energy budgets.

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BROOKLYN-BORN POET — WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT, BORN ON FEB. 2, 1886. INTO A FAMILY OF POETS, was the brother of the poet and novelist Stephen Vincent Benét and the husband of the American poet Elinor Wylie. Born in Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton neighborhood, he and his siblings received much encouragement in their writing. He was educated at Yale University. Among his works were “Merchants from Cathay” (1913), “Moons of Grandeur” (1920), “With Wings as Eagles”(1940) and “The Dust Which Is God” (1941), which received the 1942 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He was also beloved as founder of The Saturday Review of Literature in 1924 and was an editor and columnist for the magazine until his death.

Benét lived most of his adult life in Greenwich Village. An archival collection of his correspondence, manuscripts, printed material, and personal and family papers documenting his life is housed at his alma mater Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

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COOL JAZZ IMPRESARIO — JAZZ SAXOPHONIST STAN GETZ, BORN IN PHILADELPHIA ON FEB. 2, 1927, HELPED TO INTRODUCE THE “COOL JAZZ” AND BOSSA NOVA SOUNDS. He became the first jazz musician to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year (1965), for “The Girl from Ipanema,” and went on to receive 11 Grammy Awards. Among his signature albums was “Time Out,” which Antonio Carlos Jobim had composed.

Getz was known as “The Sound” because of his warm, lyrical tone.

See previous milestones, here.