April 1: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

April 1, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle History

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ON THIS DAY IN 1842, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “APRIL FOOL. — The lawyers and insurers in a neighboring building were for a time smoked out this morning. Their fires were kindled, as usual, but the smoke puffed out and filled their office till they were almost strangled. They ran about from room to room with streaming eyes to ascertain the cause, and remedy the evil, but in vain, till one bethought him to go to the top of the house and examine the chimney, where he found a piece of board laid over the flue in such a manner as completely to shut it up. This may be a good April fool joke, but it is no fool of a joke to have one’s eyes put out.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1850, the Eagle reported, “John C. Calhoun expired at Washington yesterday morning, between 7 and 8 o’clock, age 68 years.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1899, the Eagle reported, “LONDON — According to a dispatch to the Daily Chronicle from Dover, Signor Marconi, whose brilliantly successful experiments with wireless telegraphy across the Straits of Dover have excited the liveliest interest, says he has received an offer to report the America’s cup races for certain American newspapers. He declares he could flash messages across the Atlantic if he had Eiffel towers on each side.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1949, the Eagle reported, “OTTAWA (U.P.) — Newfoundland, Britain’s oldest colony, will be officially welcomed into the Canadian confederation today as the 10th Province of the Dominion. Viscount Alexander of Tunis, the Governor General, and Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent will mark the historic event with a ceremony in front of the Parliament building. Their speeches of welcome will be answered by F. Gorden Bradley, first Newfoundland Minister to serve in the British Cabinet. The 320,000 inhabitants of Newfoundland and adjacent Labrador officially became citizens of Canada a few minutes before midnight last night, ending the colony’s 94 years of self-government. Newfoundlanders approved the union by a 52 percent vote last year.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1954, the Eagle reported, “Herbert R. O’Brien, director of New York City’s Civil Defense, today was trying to figure out how to evacuate 8,000,000 men, women and children in the event the city is threatened by an H-bomb attack. ‘We hardly know where to start,’ he said. ‘If this new bomb is what they say it is, our system of going to shelters is ancient history.’ The only answer, O’Brien said, is total evacuation, and he estimated at least three days would be needed to accomplish that. It is ‘unlikely,’ he pointed out, that the city would get much warning. But advance studies of evacuation problems have already been made, he revealed. They show mass evacuation must be directed northward through Westchester County, he said. Mass movements to the west would be impossible because of bridge and tunnel bottlenecks and the fact that New Jersey’s industrial areas would also be a prime target.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1960, the Brooklyn Record reported, “Con Edison’s annual report to stockholders for 1959, which is being mailed this week, puts heavy emphasis on the company’s need for further upward adjustments in electric rates. In submitting the report to stockholders, H.C. Forbes, chairman, and C.E. Eble, president, write: ‘In order to finance our enormous construction program it is imperative that we have a level of earnings that will keep our securities attractive to investors. Failing this, we shall be unable to raise the tremendous amounts of money we are going to require.’ The report notes that a recent Public Service Commission order granting interim rate relief to the company seems to recognize ‘that the existing rates produced an undue and unreasonable reduction in price as the customer’s use increased.’ Even this relief, estimated to produce about $14 million on an annual basis, does not fully offset ‘the deterioration that has taken place in the company’s revenues for commercial-industrial service since World War II.’ This group of customers uses more than half of the utility’s electric output. The average price they pay per kilowatt hour has dropped from 3.09 cents in 1946 to 2.63 cents last year, a drop of 15 percent.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1963, the Eagle reported, “WASHINGTON (UPI) — The mere prospect of an automated tax collecting system already has induced many Americans to ‘step up and admit’ they were delinquent in paying taxes, it was disclosed yesterday. Internal Revenue Commissioner Mortimer M. Caplin told a congressional subcommittee that publicity about the automatic data processing (ADP) system now being put into use has started reaping dollar benefits. Caplin, in testimony made public by a House appropriations subcommittee, said that ADP will not only make tax collecting more efficient, but will produce more in additional revenue than it costs to set up and run the system. ADP is an electronic method of comparing the money paid to someone with that person’s income tax return. Every taxpayer will have an individual number. The system will be able to detect when a payment that should have been listed as income wasn’t. It is expected to be in effect throughout the country by 1966.”

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NOTABLE PEOPLE BORN ON THIS DAY include “Love Story” star Ali McGraw, who was born in 1939; U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was born in 1950; “Smallville” star Annette O’Toole, who was born in 1952; aerospace engineer Aprille Ericsson-Jackson, who was born in Brooklyn in 1963; basketball coach and former N.Y. Knicks point guard Mark Jackson, who was born in Brooklyn in 1965; author Brad Meltzer, who was born in Brooklyn in 1970; political commentator Rachel Maddow, who was born in 1973; former N.Y. Mets infielder and 2015 NLCS MVP Daniel Murphy, who was born in 1985; and former Brooklyn Nets center Brook Lopez, who was born in 1988.

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Special thanks to “Chase’s Calendar of Events” and Brooklyn Public Library.

Quotable:

“A judge can’t have any preferred outcome in any particular case. The judge’s only obligation — and it’s a solemn obligation — is to the rule of law.”

— Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was born on this day in 1950