Brooklyn Today for March 21
Good morning. Today is the 80th day of the year. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle for March 21, 1864, reported on a speech about the ongoing Civil War by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights. Beecher was a foe of slavery and the Confederacy, but he took the occasion to praise the bravery of “Jeff Davis’ supporters.” He said that “they fight better for a bad cause than we do for a good one.” The unnamed writer of the article took Beecher to task for suggesting that the rebels were merely “misguided.”
Well-known people who were born today include actor Timothy Dalton (James Bond movies, “Cleopatra”), actress Rosie O’Donnell (“A League of Their Own,” “The Rosie O’Donnell Show”), and actor Gary Oldman (Harry Potter films, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” “Sid and Nancy”).