February 23: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

February 23, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle History

Share this:

ON THIS DAY IN 1899, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “TRENTON, N.J. — Articles of incorporation were filed today by the New York Electric Vehicle Transportation Company, with an authorized capital of $25,000,000. The company is empowered to acquire and manufacture, buy and sell vehicles of all kinds to be operated by electricity, compressed air, gas, oil and other means of motive power; also to acquire franchises for the operation of these vehicles to carry passengers and freight of all descriptions. The incorporators are James E. Hayes, Camden; Edwin Gratz, 18 William street, New York, and Augustus Treadwell, 20 Broad street, New York.”

***

ON THIS DAY IN 1901, the Eagle reported, “WASHINGTON — The bill providing for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, at St. Louis, has passed the Senate with an amendment, which provides for the closing of the exposition on Sunday, and a further amendment providing for a government exhibit at the Charleston Exposition. The bill passed the Senate without division.”

***

ON THIS DAY IN 1906, the Eagle reported, “The local health officer today denied that there had been any carelessness in quarantining patients suffering from measles. ‘Our staff is depleted by sickness just now,’ he said, ‘but all cases of measles are quarantined and fumigation takes place in due time. There have been, it is true, times when there was no fumigation, but that was only when the patients had been kept in the house ten days after the twenty-one days of isolation.”

***

ON THIS DAY IN 1924, the Eagle reported, “That we have not yet reached the goal of Washington’s ideals, that service and character must reign in the United States and that Washington’s greatness lay in the fact that he was successful in calling the people to the performance of a higher duty was the theme of President Coolidge’s Washington Birthday address. The address was delivered last night from the study of the White House and broadcast to millions of people. In other cities the President’s voice was heard as plainly, speaking from his study hundreds of miles away, as if he were seated in an adjoining room. He did not speak more than 15 minutes. His entire appeal was a solemn one to the people for service and sacrifice if the institutions of Washington were to be perpetuated and improved. It was summed up most effectively in this paragraph: ‘If we are to maintain the institutions which he founded, if we are to improve what he created, we must be like minded with him, we must continue to accept responsibilities, we must continue to make sacrifices. Under all laws of God and man there is no other way.’”

***

ON THIS DAY IN 1944, the Eagle reported, “WASHINGTON (U.P.) — Senator Alben W. Barkley of Kentucky, who became Democratic leader of the Senate in 1937 with the aid of President Roosevelt, decided today to resign that leadership in a sensational split with the Chief Executive. In a dramatic speech on the Senate floor, the normally placid Kentuckian denounced Mr. Roosevelt’s veto of the $2,000,000,000-plus tax bill. The tax dispute was the climax of a series of conflicts with the White House that caused Barkley to feel he no longer can carry on as the administration’s leader in the Senate. The situation was a far cry from August, 1937, just after the death of Senate Democratic Leader Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas, when Barkley and the late Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi were engaged in a neck-and-neck battle for the leadership. It was Mr. Roosevelt’s now-famous letter to ‘Dear Alben’ which finally decided the issue and swung the election to Barkley by a one-vote majority. Barkley told his colleagues that in vetoing the tax bill, Mr. Roosevelt ‘resorted to one of the most unjustifiable methods of calculations possible’ in order to make the bill’s yield appear lower than it actually was. Those calculations, he added, were ‘probably handed to him by a mind that was more clever than honest.’”

***

ON THIS DAY IN 1954, the Eagle reported, “Councilman Philip. J. Schupler will introduce a resolution today calling on Mayor Wagner to appoint 3,000 additional foot patrolmen to cope with ‘the hordes of thieves and robbers prowling the streets.’ Schupler, who says the high incidence of lawlessness indicates ‘we are in the grip of a crime wave,’ also will call for a Mayoral order directing the police commissioner to make a monthly report on unsolved crimes. The Brooklyn Councilman cited the raping of a 12-year-old girl in Coney Island last week as a ‘revolting and heinous crime’ that ‘can be blamed on the failure to employ enough patrolmen.’”

***

ON THIS DAY IN 1962, the Brooklyn Record reported, “Rudolf Nureyev, whose name hit international headlines last June when he quit Leningrad’s Kirov Ballet in a Paris airport and defected to the West, will make his U.S. stage debut at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on March 10 at 8:30 p.m. He will be guest artist for this single performance with the Ruth Page-Chicago Opera Ballet opposite the company’s prima ballerina, Sonia Arova, in the ‘Don Quixote’ pas de deux, an acknowledged favorite of balletomanes.”

***

NOTABLE PEOPLE BORN ON THIS DAY include Pro Football Hall of Famer Jackie Smith, who was born in 1940; former N.Y. Mets second baseman Ron Hunt, who was born in 1941; former NFL defensive end Ed “Too Tall” Jones, who was born in 1951; “Home Improvement” star Patricia Richardson, who was born in 1951; Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Brad Whitford (Aerosmith), who was born in 1952; “No One is to Blame” singer Howard Jones, who was born in 1955; Queensryche co-founder Michael Wilton, who was born in 1962; former N.Y. Mets outfielder Bobby Bonilla, who was born in 1963; former N.Y. Yankees outfielder Rondell White, who was born in 1972; political commentator S.E. Cupp, who was born in 1979; “Master of None” star Aziz Ansari, who was born in 1983; “A Quiet Place” star Emily Blunt, who was born in 1983; “The Alienist” star Dakota Fanning, who was born in 1994; and former Brooklyn Nets point guard D’Angelo Russell, who was born in 1996.