September 25: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

September 25, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle History

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ON THIS DAY IN 1904, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “The business of electing a President has no analogy in the commercial world. It is even more than a business — almost a science, certainly entitled to rank as a profession. It is a thing of magnitude. No enterprise which employs men by the thousand and expends anywhere from $500,000 to $1,000,000 can fairly be called small, even in this land of surpassingly big things. The business of electing a President has grown with time. It is twice as big a thing now as it was twenty years ago, and yet in 1884, when Grover Cleveland first went into office, over the heads of the startled and astonished Republicans, it was two or three times as big as it was in the final days of the Civil War.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1912, the Eagle reported, “Perhaps the one question Brooklyn fans are asking more than any other is: Will Charley Stengel, the outfield recruit from Montgomery in the Southern League, continue his heavy hitting? Certainly, no babe from the bullrushes has created more of a sensation in Brooklyn since the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. His clouting has been timely and hard, and the ball has gone a long way when he met it full. The fans like his style at the plate, and he has made several catches that have demonstrated that he is there with the defensive work, as well as with the offensive. ‘They all look good in the spring,’ is a trite and true saying, and the same might be said for the autumn phenoms. A man’s real ability with the stick is never properly gauged until he has been around the entire circuit at least once.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1948, the Eagle reported, “PARIS (U.P.) — Russia accused the United States today of preparing an atomic war against the Soviet Union and simultaneously appealed to the United Nations for a one-third reduction in world armaments. The charge and appeal were made before the U.N. General Assembly by Soviet chief delegate Andrei Vishinsky in a slashing one-hour statement of Soviet policy. Military leaders in the United States already have prepared plans for the atomic destruction of such Soviet cities as Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Kharkov and Odessa, Vishinsky charged. He proposed that the United Nations outlaw the atomic bomb and call upon the Big Five powers to reduce their armed forces by one-third during the course of one year.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1950, the Eagle reported, “Formal announcement of a brand new setup in the high command of the Police Department was expected momentarily today, with the replacement of Police Commissioner William P. O’Brien as one of the major steps. His departure from the department, in the form of an ordered resignation by Acting Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri, was revealed exclusively in Sunday’s Eagle. The announcement will pave the way for County Judge Samuel Leibowitz to make his decision today on District Attorney Miles F. McDonald’s request to extend the life of the racket-probing grand jury for six months. It was reported early today that Impellitteri was ready to demand the jobs of Chief Police Inspector August W. Flath and Chief of Detectives William T. Whalen. The names of several well-known men, including cops and civilians, have been mentioned as among those likely to succeed O’Brien.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1951, the Eagle reported, “‘There is within the Police Department a hierarchy of corrupt officials molded into a tightly knit organization … to protect the gambling fraternity for graft.’ The Brooklyn holdover grand jury, which has been probing into borough — and citywide — rackets since December, 1949, so charged today in a presentment handed up to County Judge Samuel S. Leibowitz. Thwarted and angry at the failure of the Harry Gross police-graft prosecution, the grand jurors asserted in the presentment that ‘heads must roll’ — heads of high police officers who, knowingly or incompetently, permit underworld gangs, gamblers or others to carry on their sinister activities by payoffs to police. The presentment stated in part: ‘We charge that, with few notable exceptions, members of the Police Department who have held at any time during the ten-year period preceding October, 1950, the rank of inspector or deputy inspector in charge of so-called plainclothes divisions, were and are ipso facto, aware of the venomous conspiracy. We charge categorically that they are or were members of the conspiracy, even those who did not take graft, in that they have permitted it to exist and in that they have, in distressingly numerous instances, derived an ill-gotten personal profit from it.’”

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NOTABLE PEOPLE BORN ON THIS DAY include Basketball Hall of Famer Hubie Brown, who was born in 1933; Oscar-winning actor Michael Douglas, who was born in 1944; model and actress Cheryl Tiegs, who was born in 1947; “Star Wars” star Mark Hamill, who was born in 1951; Basketball Hall of Famer Bob McAdoo, who was born in 1951; “Dynasty” star Heather Locklear, who was born in 1961; “The Sopranos” star Aida Turturro, who was born in Brooklyn in 1962; “Damages” star Tate Donovan, who was born in 1963; Basketball Hall of Famer Scottie Pippen, who was born in 1965; Oscar-winning actor Will Smith, who was born in 1968; Oscar-winning actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, who was born in 1969; former NFL quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, who was born in 1975; actor and musician Donald Glover, who was born in 1983; and figure skater Keauna McLaughlin, who was born in 1992.

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BREAKING NEWS: The first American newspaper was published on this day in 1690. The first (and only) edition of Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick was published by Benjamin Harris at the London-Coffee-House in Boston. Authorities considered the paper offensive and ordered its immediate suppression.

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WOMAN OF THE YEAR: Sandra Day O’Connor was sworn in as the first woman associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court on this day in 1981. She was nominated by President Ronald Reagan — who promised during his 1980 campaign that he would appoint a woman to the court — and the Senate confirmed her by a vote of 99-0. She retired in 2006 and was succeeded by Justice Samuel Alito.

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

Quotable:

“I have affected the way women are regarded, and that’s important to me.”

— journalist Barbara Walters, who was born on this day in 1929