Milestones: February 8, 2024

February 8, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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MISGUIDED REFORMS? — NATIVE AMERICANS AGAIN LOST CULTURAL AUTONOMY WHEN, ON FEB. 8, 1887, PRESIDENT GROVER CLEVELAND SIGNED THE DAWES SEVERALTY ACT. This new law reversed a longstanding policy of allowing the Indian tribes to maintain their traditions of communal use of their lands. The indigenous peoples held a different understanding of land than did the English or Dutch settlers who sought to possess it. Native Americans believed land could not be owned or possessed any more than air or water. The Dawes Severalty Act, named for its chief author, Senator Henry Laurens Dawes from Massachusetts, authorized the U.S. President to parcel out Native American land into individual holdings and allocate it to each adult male based on the size of their family. Moreover, the new law eliminated tribal control of the reservations.

Moreover, the new law allowed reformers to assimilate the Native Americans into a society with the values of the Christian religion; in doing so, they misunderstood or disregarded the societal structures and ethics (particularly on nature and the environment) of the indigenous people, labeling them as “barbarians.”

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ALLIED VICTORY AT GUADALCANAL — AMERICAN TROOPS ON FEB. 8, 1943, SECURED THE ISLAND OF GUADALCANAL WITH AN ALLIED VICTORY that forced the evacuation of the Japanese forces. Guadalcanal was part of the Solomon Islands, in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The Japanese army had invaded the Solomon Islands in 1942; the U.S. responded by deploying 19,000 Marines to Guadalcanal, which became the first major U.S. offensive in the Pacific Theater. The Japanese retaliation and the ensuing battles caused heavy casualties on both sides. Finally, on New Year’s Eve 1942, Japanese Emperor Hirohito allowed his troops to withdraw, and the U.S. secured Guadalcanal five weeks later.

The Solomon Islands gained their independence from Britain in 1978. Twenty-five years later, an Australian-led peacekeeping mission restored order after conflicts broke out between rival ethnic groups on the archipelago.

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BOY SCOUTS FOUNDED — THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA, FOUNDED ON FEB. 8, 1910, IS A YOUTH CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM. It is modeled after the British Boy Scout Association, which Sir Robert Baden-Powell founded in the first decade of the 20th century. Scouts helped an American businessman named William D. Boyce, who had gotten lost during a trip to the United Kingdom. Impressed during a meeting with Baden-Powell, Boyce brought the Scouting program to the United States. Since the BSA’s founding 114 years ago, more than 130 million young men —and, since 2019, women as well — have taken part in the Boy Scouts programs, which are divided by age and activity: Cub Scouting for youth from kindergarten through 5th grade, and Scouts BSA for those in grades 6 through high school senior year.

Boy Scout Troop 23, serving Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, was first chartered in 1910. Bay Ridgeite Jim Clark was featured last year in a Brooklyn Eagle story about his 75 years with the troop.

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FEEDING THE SOULS IN PURGATORY — THE THURSDAY BEFORE ASH WEDNESDAY IS OBSERVED IN ITALY AS THE FEAST OF THE INCAPPUCCIATI (THIS YEAR ON FEB. 8). Members of the Confraternity of Purgatory circulate the town to collect food items from each home. They dress in traditional hooded robes (the plural-form word incappucciati pertains to the hoods) bearing a banner and walking to a drumbeat. Purgatory is where Catholics believe souls are sent after one’s physical death to undergo purification before entering heaven. The food is gathered for these souls, but of course consumed by those still living, particularly the loved ones of the deceased. The banquet from the Incappucciati’s food collection takes place on Ash Wednesday.

Ash Wednesday is normally a fasting day within Christendom. It is also a day on which the faithful are reminded of their mortality: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” as ashes resembling the dust are marked onto people’s foreheads.

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HONORS SLOVENIA’S NATIONAL POET — ITALY’S NEIGHBOR TO THE EAST, SLOVENIA, OBSERVES CULTURE DAY, also called Prešeren Day, each year on February 8. The festival is named for Slovenia’s beloved 19th-century poet, France Prešeren, and memorializes him on the anniversary of his Feb. 8, 1849 death. The holiday, which also honors the accomplishments of talented Slovenians, became an official holiday in 1944 and was declared a nonwork day in 1991. The focus is on expanding one’s education through attending cultural events. The seventh stanza of Prešeren’s poem “A Toast,” reflecting his patriotism and one of his most notable works, became the Slovenian national anthem.

Slovenia is strategically situated on the Adriatic Sea but shares a land border with northern Italy. It also borders Austria to the north, Hungary to the East and Croatia to the south. Slovenia and Croatia were part of the former Yugoslavia.

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STARS ON THE WALK OF FAME — CONSTRUCTION BEGAN FEB. 8, 1960, ON THE HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME. A Hollywood business leader had conceived the idea as a way to “maintain the glory of a community whose name means glamour and excitement in the four corners of the world.” He in turn may have gotten the idea from the ceiling of the famed Hollywood Hotel, which was emblazoned with celebrities’ names. The local Chamber of Commerce then founded the Hollywood Improvement Association (similar to local BIDs here in Brooklyn) which worked with the City of Los Angeles to make the Walk of Fame happen. Committees were formed in the motion picture, TV, radio and recording sectors to nominate the charter class of “stars.” The first star laid in the new Walk, which was dedicated on November 23, 1960, honored producer and director Stanley Kramer.

The Brooklynites with stars on the Walk could fill a village: among them: operatic soprano Beverly Sills, singer/songwriter Carole King; talk show hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Larry King; actors/comedians Danny Kaye, Jackie Gleason, Mary Tyler Moore, Martin Landau, Eddie Murphy, Lou Gossett, Jr. and Jimmy Smits.

See previous milestones, here.