
January 24: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

ON THIS DAY IN 1916, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “The Supreme Court today upheld the constitutionality of the Income Tax Law. Chief Justice [Edgar Douglass] White gave the court’s decision, sweeping aside all the objections to its constitutionality in whole or in part. Five separate suits to test the constitutionality of the new income tax law were brought in the federal courts throughout the country soon after the law became effective, and all found their way to the Supreme Court of the United States soon after. For nearly fifty years the fight for and against a Federal Income Tax has been somewhere in the courts. The income tax imposed during the Civil War and the years immediately following were not attacked with the seriousness of later cases. It was not until the Cleveland administration placed an Income Tax in the Wilson Tariff Act that the fight became serious.”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1926, the Eagle reported, “SANTA BARBARA, CAL. (AP) ― When a forest fire ignited an oil shale deposit far up on the headquarters of Santa Ynez river in Santa Barbara National Forest, the smoke curling upward became a beacon attracting interest of geologists. Heretofore, knowledge that such shale deposits existed was possessed only by forest rangers, hunters, or the few persons who have on occasion wandered through that section. None had given thought to the probable value of these oil shales. Now geologists are making a survey of the shale, and oil prospectors are delving deeper into the wilds searching for oil structures and anticlinal features.”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1926, the Eagle reported, “COLUMBUS, O., JAN. 22 (AP) ― Changes in rules regulating the use of college players in organized professional football will be discussed at the National Football League meeting in Detroit, Feb. 6 and 7, according to Joseph F. Carr, National president. While the National League always has had rules forbidding the use of athletes who still engage in intercollegiate sports, the Detroit meeting may result in new regulations which would prohibit college stars engaging in professional football during the same year they played as amateurs. Such a ruling would prevent a repetition of the Harold ‘Red’ Grange incident of last season. Grange began playing professional football in less than a week from the time his intercollegiate career ended.”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1935, the Eagle reported, “FLEMINGTON COURT HOUSE — The Lindbergh kidnap ladder fitted snug into Bruno Richard Hauptmann’s automobile. When Arthur Koehler, the Government wood detective supreme, telescoped the sections together, loaded them into the back of the car, he had an inch or two left over. He said so on the witness stand today. He was the only witness of the morning and the last for the prosecution. As he stepped down from the witness chair, at 12:20 p.m., Attorney General David T. Wilentz announced, ‘The State rests,’ and the stage was set for Hauptmann to speak for himself, to deny that he kidnaped and murdered the infant Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. Koehler was the man who yesterday ‘wrapped the kidnap ladder around Hauptmann’s neck,’ as the prosecution had promised he would, with technical evidence that the ladder was smoothed with Hauptmann’s carpenter plane, that a rail of one section of the ladder was sawed from a board in the Hauptmann attic in the Bronx.”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1937, the Eagle reported, “Gaggers take delight in portraying a night ball game going deep into extra innings and getting called on account of daybreak. It never happened, at least in the major leagues, but did you know that ‘wee-small-hours’ baseball is not a gag but a reality in one ball park in this broad land? Get this. Last Summer a regularly organized league played a complete pennant race in the hours between midnight and dawn! The park is known as Deer Creek No. 6, municipally owned and lighted. The municipality is Cincinnati. The league is the Theatrical League, its teams composed of players who work as movie operators, ushers, etc., which prevents them from playing ball in afternoons or evenings. Old Deer Creek can claim a national championship among ball parks for the greatest number of hours in use out of any given 24. It was Jim Wostenholme, energetic organizer on the staff of Cincy’s Public Recreation Commission, who solved the problem of providing baseball facilities for these young men. By appropriating the necessary amperes, Cincinnati added to its civic laurels, already rich as a pioneer city in professional ball (1869), and pioneer of major league night baseball, the title of ‘pioneer of wee-small-hours baseball.’”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1947, the Eagle reported, “You can ride anywhere in the city for a nickel ― and that’s about all your chances of getting help would be worth if you were set on by a mugger in some of the dark, deserted platforms or passages of subway lines criss-crossing the borough. Many of the stations offer made-to-order havens for the thug to commit his dirty work, out of sight in some cases, out of earshot in others. The two recently reported subway attacks, one at the High St. station in Brooklyn, the other on the B.M.T. elevated station at Queens Boulevard, are not surprising in the light of a Brooklyn Eagle survey of subway lines. What is surprising is that more such incidents have not occurred. The stealthy mugger or rapist could find, as did the Brooklyn Eagle, unused exits which have not been closed off, platforms so far removed from the ticket agent that it would be impossible to hear cries for help, and lean-tos located on the dead ends of stations behind which the victim could be dragged for a thorough going-over.”
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NOTABLE PEOPLE BORN ON THIS DAY include Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Neil Diamond, who was born in Brooklyn in 1941; “Tell It Like It Is” singer Aaron Neville, who was born in 1941; science fiction writer David Gerrold, who was born in 1944; “Twin Peaks” star Michael Ontkean, who was born in 1946; comedian and actor Yakov Smirnoff, who was born in 1951; “Cat People” star Nastassja Kinski, who was born in 1961; “Mad TV” star Phil LaMarr, who was born in 1967; gymnast and Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton, who was born in 1968; “The Hangover” star Ed Helms, who was born in 1974; actress and writer Kristen Schaal, who was born in 1978; “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” star Tatyana Ali, who was born in 1979; former San Francisco Giants pitcher Scott Kazimir, who was born in 1984; and “The O.C.” star Mischa Barton, who was born in 1986.
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ELEMENT OF SURPRISE: On this day in 1848, James W. Marshall, an employee of pioneer John Sutter, accidentally discovered gold while building a sawmill near Coloma, Cal. Efforts to keep the discovery a secret failed and the California Gold Rush was soon under way.
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COMEDY AND TRAGEDY: John Belushi was born on this day in 1949. The Chicago native was an original cast member of “Saturday Night Live” (1975-79), and starred in the hit films “Animal House” (1978) and “The Blues Brothers” (1980). He died of a drug overdose in 1982.
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Special thanks to “Chase’s Calendar of Events” and Brooklyn Public Library.
Quotable:
“Brooklyn is not the easiest place to grow up in, although I wouldn’t change that experience for anything.”
— Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Neil Diamond, who was born on this day in 1941
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