August 19: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

August 19, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle History

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ON THIS DAY IN 1920, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “MARION, OHIO — Senator [Warren] Harding declared today that the grant of suffrage to American women would be especially welcome to the Republicans in the coming campaign because ‘a great moral and social reform, recently achieved, is menaced by the covert purpose of our opponents to attack it.’ He predicted that voting women would stand with the Republican party through a realization that it had led in achieving social betterment, while the Democratic party had ‘notoriously refused’ to enforce reform policies. ‘American women,’ said Senator Harding, ‘have won their suffrage fight, which, as an organized continuing movement has covered three-quarters of a century. Their victory is dramatic, because it comes as the reward of a great final drive that now has insured to all American women a full participation in the most crucial national election in many years. Yet, important as are the issues in this political contest, we may well doubt if history will recognize any other phase of it as equal in importance to the fact that in this year the women of America for the first time took their full part in determining the national destinies, and maintaining our nationality.’”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1928, the Eagle reported, “ST. PAUL, AUG. 18 — An epochal event in American transportation will be observed tomorrow when for the first time regular coordinated rail and air service will be inaugurated. The fastest movement of passengers from the Pacific to the Atlantic across the nation ever in regular commercial service will be established. Seattle, Tacoma and Portland on the west, and New York and Washington on the east, will be the extremes geographically benefited by this new service which, however, will be extended to all intermediate points. The air link which is the key in the speed element of this transcontinental service will be between Minneapolis, St. Paul and Chicago. Nowhere in the country today is this rail-air service now coordinated as will be effected in this new service, according to E.E. Nelson, passenger traffic manager of the Northern Pacific Railway. A feature of the service is that an eastbound passenger from the Northwest en route to New York or Washington, for instance, will be able to save an entire business day, and a westbound passenger from New York or Washington and intermediate points will be able to spend a large part of the business day in Chicago en route without loss of time.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1936, the Eagle reported, “A herd of milk goats that has been grazing on a five-acre crop of the narcotic marijuana weed on Barren Island south of Floyd Bennett Airport will have to return to a more conventional diet of old rags and tin cans beginning today. A squad of 15 WPA workers under Detectives Edward Connell and Peter F. Gallagher of the Narcotics Squad began to uproot the supply of loco weed yesterday. The goats, owned by squatters on the island, have been giving a normal supply of milk despite their unusual food, it was revealed. Workers estimated that the marijuana field, the largest ever discovered in Brooklyn, would yield a crop valued at $500,000.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1943, the Eagle reported, “SOMEWHERE IN NEW GEORGIA, SOLOMONS, AUG. 8 (Delayed) (U.P.) — The luck of the Irish — and some first-class skill — brought lanky Lt. (j.g.) John F. Kennedy, son of former Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, and ten of his torpedo-boat mates back from a brush with the Japanese and death today. A week after they had been lost and practically given up, another PT boat went through hostile waters to rescue them in response to an SOS scrawled on a cocoanut shell and carried through enemy lines by a native. Three men, including Machinist’s Mate 2nd Class Patrick H. McMahon, 39, of Los Angeles, who has a son in the navy, credited the 27-year-old Kennedy with saving their lives.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1953, the Eagle reported, “TEHRAN (U.P.) — Iran’s emotional, weeping dictator Premier Mohammad Mossadegh toppled from power today in a bloody coup d’etat by Iranian army forces loyal to exiled Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Radio Tehran, which broadcast news of the coup, said Mossadegh’s firebrand Foreign Minister Hussein Fatemi was ‘cut to pieces’ by the infuriated population. The army was in control of the capital and Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi, the shah’s appointed successor to Mossadegh, broadcast an appeal to the people to remain calm and promised to ‘raise living standards’ and ‘insure social justice.’ The fate of Mossadegh himself was not disclosed. His palatial residence was burned by shouting, riotous mobs. The tight army control of the city made it unlikely he had escaped the city. The radio reports of the successful coup were considered official since the army, loyal to the shah, was in complete control. Mossadegh, together with Fatemi, had engineered the expropriation and nationalization of the billion-dollar Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. and had resisted all efforts to find a settlement of the dispute for two years, except on Mossadegh’s terms.”

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Christina Perri
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

Jonathan Frakes
Barry Brecheisen/Invision/AP

NOTABLE PEOPLE BORN ON THIS DAY include “The Ten Commandments” star Debra Paget, who was born in 1933; former N.Y. Yankees second baseman Bobby Richardson, who was born in 1935; “Diamonds Are Forever” star Jill St. John, who was born in 1940; Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Ian Gillan (Deep Purple), who was born in 1945; former President Bill Clinton, who was born in 1946; “Simon & Simon” star Gerald McRaney, who was born in 1947; former Second Lady Tipper Gore, who was born in 1948; “Star Trek: The Next Generation” star Jonathan Frakes, who was born in 1952; political consultant Mary Matalin, who was born in 1953; “Chicago Hope” star Adam Arkin, who was born in Brooklyn in 1956; former N.Y. Mets pitcher Ron Darling, who was born in 1960; “Full House” star John Stamos, who was born in 1963; “The Closer” star Kyra Sedgwick, who was born in 1965; “I Hope You Dance” singer Lee Ann Womack, who was born in 1966; and “Arms” singer Christina Perri, who was born in 1986.

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TO BOLDLY GO: Orville Wright was born on this day in 1871. On Dec. 17, 1903 near Kitty Hawk, N.C., he and his brother Wilbur achieved the first documented successful powered and controlled flights of an airplane, revolutionizing human transportation. He died in 1948.

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SPACE AND TIME: Gene Roddenberry was born on this day in 1921. The Texas native left his career as an airline pilot to be a writer. In 1966 he created the TV series “Star Trek,” which spawned one of the most successful science fiction franchises in history. He died in 1991.

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

Quotable:

“Earth is the nest, the cradle, and we’ll move out of it.”

— “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, who was born on this day in 1921