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May 7, ‘1885 Brooklyn Elevated Railroad’

May 7, 2014 Brooklyn Daily Eagle
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Good morning. Today is the 125th day of the year.

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Brooklyn Community Board 14’s Seventh Annual Youth Conference is today from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Brooklyn College Student Center. The event will feature over 60 New York City agencies and community organizations offering summer jobs, internships and volunteer opportunities. … Guy Fieri will be at BookMark Shoppe in Bay Ridge presenting and signing his new book, “Guy On Fire” at 7:30 p.m. … Williamsburg choreographer and MacArthur Fellow Elizabeth Streb and real estate developer Jed Walentas will be in conversation on art, real estate and an ever-changing Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Historical Society at 6:30 p.m.

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Notable people born on this day include “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” filmmaker Amy Heckerling, who was born in the Bronx, and turns 60; Republican Utah Gov. Gary R. Herbert, who turns 67; basketball player Shawn Marion, who turns 36; and “Days of Our Lives” actor Peter Reckell, who turns 59.

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Beethoven’ Ninth Symphony Premiered today in 1824. It was performed, in D Minor, for the first time at Vienna, Austria. Known as the Choral because of his use of voices in symphonic form for the first time, the Ninth was his musical interpretation of Schiller’s Ode to Joy. Beethoven was completely deaf when he composed it, and it was said a soloist had to tug on his sleeve when the performance was over to get him to turn around and see the enthusiastic response he could not hear.

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It is the 125th anniversary of the first Presidential Inaugural Ball, which celebrated the inauguration of George Washington. It was held in New York City.

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Germany’s First Surrender occurred on this day in 1945. Russian, American, British and French ranking officers crowded into a second-floor recreation room of a small red-brick schoolhouse (which served as General Dwight Eisenhower’s headquarters) at Reims, Germany. Representing Germany, Field Marshal Alfred Jodl signed an unconditional surrender of all German fighting forces. After a signing that took almost 40 minutes, Jodl was ushered into Eisenhower’s presence. The American general asked the German if he fully understood what he had signed and informed Jodl that he would be held personally responsible for any deviation from the terms of the surrender, including the requirement that German commanders sign a formal surrender to the USSR at a time and place determined by that government.

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David Hume was born on this day in 1711. The Scottish Enlightenment philosopher was born in Edinburgh. His ideas present the culmination of the philosophical movement of empiricism. Hume addressed such questions as the limits of knowledge. He rejected metaphysical questions and stated that we should be skeptical of all conclusions reached by the use of reason. A prolific author, Hume wrote the six-volume “History of England,” as well as other essays and historical work. Today his “A Treatise of Human Nature” is seen as his most important work. He died in Edinburgh in 1776.

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On this day in 1885 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published an article about the new Brooklyn Elevated Railroad. It would cost five cents to ride. “We will run twenty trains each way per hour then, and as each train will seat 1250 passengers we will be able to carry and seat 108,000 persons in the eighteen hours between six in the morning and midnight,” Fred Uhlmann, President of the Board of Trustees, told the Eagle. “We have not anticipated getting more than one-fifth of the travel over Fulton Ferry, the Bridge and Catharino Ferry. The Bridge carries about 50,000 persons a day now and Fulton Ferry about 60,000,” he continued.

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

 

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