Posted: Sep 24, 2012 | 12:48 PM
by Jared Goldstein
1625: Johan de Witt the Dutch statesman and political leader of Holland (1653-72) was born. He presided during the end of Nieuw Amsterdam. But that was not to be the last that New-York City and the British would here from the House of Orange...
1869: "Black Friday" was precipitated by financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk's attempts to corner the gold market. Thousands' of fortunes lost on Wall Street as investors panicked.
1896: F. Scott Fitzgerald born. He died too soon in 1940.
1921: Jim McKay, Emmy Award winning Sportscaster on CBS and ABC for decades, born.
1936: Jim Henson, father of the Muppets, born.
1948: NYPD Blue Actor Gordon Clapp born.
1957: The Brooklyn Dodgers play their last Brooklyn home game at Ebbets Field; they beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-0. 'Dem Brooklyn Bums' were shipped to LA in a championship era.
1968: "60 Minutes" premiers on CBS. I've watched it all my life, along with Sesame Street at the beginning, on a different channel.
1972: Joe Namath passes for 496 yards over 15:28 completions leading to six touchdowns, enabling the Jets to beat the Colts 44-34. Rich Caster caught three of those touchdown passes. Baltimore must hate Joe Namath.
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Posted: Sep 23, 2012 | 11:49 PM
1626: Peter Minuit is appointed Director General (CEO and/or Governor) of New Amsterdam. He had recently acquired Manahatta from the local natives for $24 worth of tools and shells. There is more to that story that I tell on my Downtown and Colonial Tours.
1838: Victoria Woodhull, who ran for United States president in 1872, 47 years before women could vote, was born. She had a fascinating life involving being an incredibly wealthy investor, advisor, publisher, and pro-sex feminist.
1889: Walter Lippmann the newspaper columnist, intellectual, and author who popularized the terms "Cold War" and "stereotype" was born in NYC. He died here in 1974.
1948: Edward Bayard Moss, founder and Editor of the Associated Press Sports Department, dies at 74.
1959: Jason Alexander, "George" from "Seinfeld" born. New York Code: When you see an actor like Jason around town, you don't greet them as "George." You would greet him as "Jason" and say "I like your work."
1962: Avery Fisher Philharmonic Hall, opens Lincoln Center.
1973: NY Football Giants play their final game at Yankee Stadium where they had been since 1956. They tied at 23 with the Philadelphia Eagles. They finished their season at the Yale Bowl. Before Yankee Stadium they were at the Polo Grounds for 31 years.
1987: Choreographer and director Bob Fosse dies at age 60.
2011: Soap opera "All My Children" broadcasts its final episode on ABC after 41 years. ABC's Soap Opera Stages are on 66th Street between Columbus and Central Park West. Sometimes you see good looking people in their own worlds talking to themselves, learning their lines for that day's show. They were written the night before.
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Posted: Sep 23, 2012 | 12:52 PM
by Jared Goldstein
Today's NYTimew.com
..economic disparity, especially in New York, is hardly diminishing. Last week, census numbers showed that the median income for the lowest fifth of New Yorkers was $8,844, down $463 from 2010. For the highest, it was $223,285, up $1,919. The wealthiest fifth of Manhattanites made more than 40 times as much as what the lowest fifth reported, a gap that widened over the previous year."
Posted: Sep 22, 2012 | 6:30 PM
by Jared Goldstein
Storm on Fifth Avenue
A sallow waiter brings me six huge oysters...
Gloom shutters up the sunset with a plaque
Of unpropitious twilight jagged asunder
By flashlight demonstrations. Gee, what a peach
Of a climate! (Pardon slang: these sultry storms
Afflict me with neurosis: rumbling thunder
Shakes my belief in academic forms.)
An oyster-coloured atmospheric rumpus
Beats up to blot the sunken daylight's gildings.
Against the looming cloud-bank, ivory-pale,
Stand twenty-storied blocks of office-buildings.
Snatched upward on a gust, lost news-sheets sail
Forlorn in lone arena of mid-air;
Flapping like melancholy kites, they scare
My gaze, a note of wildness in the scene.
Out on the pattering side-walk, people hurry
For shelter, while the tempest swoops to scurry
Across to Brooklyn. Bellying figures clutch
At wide-brimmed hats and bend to meet the weather,
Alarmed for fresh-worn silks and fluffed feather.
Then hissing deluge splashes down to beat
The darkly glistening flatness of the street.
Only the cars nose on through rain-lashed twilight:
Only the Sherman Statue, angel-guided,
Maintains its mock-heroic martial gesture.
A sallow waiter brings me beans and pork...
Outside there's fury in the firmament.
Ice-cream, of course, will follow; and I'm content.
O Babylon! O Carthage! O New York!
- Siegfried Sassoon 1886-1967
(NYC after World War I)
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Posted: Sep 22, 2012 | 1:01 AM
1776: Nathan Hale, America's first spy, was hanged after declaring that "I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country," He was caught in Brooklyn, near today's City Hall, where he is memorialized by a flattering sculpture, but he was executed somewhere between today's First Ave and 42nd St. and Third Avenue and 65th St. (Three different sources place his execution at three different corners.)
I used to think that his cover, disguised as a Dutch schoolteacher, while following British occupying troops around was silly, since Nieuw Amsterdam became New-York City 110 years before, but later I learned that the old Dutch Nieuwe Amsterdamers, 'Knickerbockers,' continued their old world traditions, including wearing knickers, into the 19th Century. In addition, Hale was a 21 year-old school teacher.
1931: Television debuts at Madison Square Garden.
1942: Longtime NBA Commissioner David Stern born.
1957: Singer Nick Cave born.
1958: Rocker Joan Jett born.
1964: "Fiddler on the Roof" debuts on Broadway, the first of 3,242 performances.
1989: Irving Berlin, son of a Jewish praying singing Cantor, composer of "White Christmas," one of the most popular songs in the history of music, dies at his home on Beekman Place at 101 years old.
1995: Time Warner purchases Turner Broadcasting for $7.5B, forming the largest entertainment company.
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Posted: Sep 21, 2012 | 1:00 AM
by Jared Goldstein
"At its best New York [is] a city of accidental epiphanies."
- Pat Conroy
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Posted: Sep 20, 2012 | 10:25 PM
The Great Fire of 1776 destroys about a quarter of NYC. Officially, the cause of the fire is a mystery, but 10 miles away when George Washington saw the smoke, he smiled. NYC's resources were being denied to the occupying British Army.
1895: At history's 1st International Amateur Track and Field event, the NY and Manhattan Athletic Clubs battled the London AC. The Americans set the world record in the 220 yard run, the 880 run, the high jump, and the mile. An American tied the 100 yard dash record.
1897: An 8 year old girl teased for believing in Santa writes to the New York Sun for guidance. The normally dour editor, in a front page editorial intoned: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" .... "the most real things in the world are those which neither children nor men can see..." If you think Christmas hype starts early these days, consider that this is over three months before Christmas. All newspapers of the era promoted Santa Claus, especially the ones in department stores. Take my Santa Claus tour!
http://jaredthenyctourguide.com/SantaClausNYCBirthDayTour.htm
1938: A hurricane slams New York and New England, killing more than 600 lives and devastating property.
1948: Milton Berle premiers as the permanent host of NBC's Texaco Star Theater.
1950: NYC's Bill Murray, Actor and Saturday Night Live Comedian, born.
1966: NY Rangers' Hockey Goalie Great Mike Richter born.
1970: Monday Night Football premiers. The Jets lose to Cleveland.
1980: At Shea Stadium, the Jets' Richard Todd sets the NFL record with 42 passes for 447 yards and 3 touchdowns, yet they lost to San Francisco!
1989: Tony Sparando, the severely visually impaired bowler who won four championships over a successful 20 year career in the mid twentieth century, died at 83 in Rego Park.
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Posted: Sep 20, 2012 | 12:40 AM
by Jared Goldstein
1873: The New York Stock Exchange suspends trading for 10 days following a bank failure, sparking a severe five-year Depression, blunting the post-war boom.
This Depression delayed New York City's construction of the Statue of Liberty for ten years.
1947: Fiorello LaGuardia, three-term mayor who inspired New Yorkers during the Great Depression, who reformed politics, modernized slums and transportation, pioneered public housing, who used mass media, died at home in the Bronx.
LaGuardia inspired a generation of children, now in their eighties, my father included, during the newspaper strike by reading the funnies over the radio.
Did you know: that LaGuardia was NYC's first Jewish and Italian Mayor; that LaGuardia, master of many languages, worked at Ellis Island as a youth?
1973: Billie Jean King, part-time New-Yorker, wins the 'Battle of the Sexes,' beating tennis champion, impresario and hustler Bobbie Riggs in straight sets 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 in a $100,000 winner-take-all tennis match, which raised the profile of women's sports. Despite the hype, King and Riggs grew close decades later.
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Posted: Sep 20, 2012 | 12:40 AM
by Jared Goldstein
1873: The New York Stock Exchange suspends trading for 10 days following a bank failure, sparking a severe five-year Depression, blunting the post-war boom.
This Depression delayed New York City's construction of the Statue of Liberty for ten years.
1947: Fiorello LaGuardia, three-term mayor who inspired New Yorkers during the Great Depression, who reformed politics, modernized slums and transportation, pioneered public housing, who used mass media, died at home in the Bronx.
LaGuardia inspired a generation of children, now in their eighties, my father included, during the newspaper strike by reading the funnies over the radio.
Did you know: that LaGuardia was NYC's first Jewish and Italian Mayor; that LaGuardia, master of many languages, worked at Ellis Island as a youth?
1958: Dr. Martin Luther King stabbed by a deranged African-American woman during a book signing in Harlem. The wound was inches away from fatal, but doctors removed the knife and King recovered.
1973: Billie Jean King, part-time New-Yorker, wins the 'Battle of the Sexes,' beating tennis champion, impresario and hustler Bobbie Riggs in straight sets 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 in a $100,000 winner-take-all tennis match, which raised the profile of women's sports. Despite the hype, King and Riggs grew close decades later.
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Posted: Sep 20, 2012 | 12:34 AM
by Jared Goldstein
"New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village—the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up!"
More E.B. White from Here is New York
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