History Brooklyn Boro

January 25, birthdays for Alicia Keys, Vince Carter, Michael Trevino

Brooklyn Today

January 25, 2017 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Singer and actress Alicia Keys celebrates her birthday today. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

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Greetings, Brooklyn. Today is the 25th day of the year.

Notable people born on this day include Alicia Keys and Vince Carter, among others.

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ON THIS DAY IN 1954, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published an article titled “Man, 40, Gets 30 Days for Sounding False Alarm.”

The article focused on a man who served jail time for sounding a false alarm at 3:45 a.m. at Vanderbilt and DeKalb avenues.

“It was the sixth false alarm from the box this month and a patrolman was assigned to watch it,” the Eagle reported.

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NOTABLE PEOPLE born on this day include basketball player VINCE CARTER, who was born in 1977; former hockey player CHRIS CHELIOS, who was born in 1962; musician and singer ALICIA KEYS, who was born in 1981; Tony Award-winning actress DINAH MANOFF, who was born in 1958; actress ANA ORTIZ, who was born in 1971; actress LEIGH TAYLOR-YOUNG, who was born in 1945; actor MICHAEL TREVINO, who was born in 1985; and soccer player XAVI, who was born in 1980.

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VIRGINIA WOOLF WAS BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1882. The modernist writer, critic and member of the Bloomsbury artistic circle authored “Mrs. Dalloway,” “Orlando” and “To the Lighthouse.” After completing her last novel “Between the Acts,” she collapsed under the strain and drowned herself in the River Ouse near Rodmell, England in 1941.

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“ROBOT” ENTERED THE WORLD LEXICON ON THIS DAY IN 1921. The play “R.U.R.” premiered at the National Theater in Prague, Czechoslovakia, whose title stands for “Rossum’s Universal Robots.” It focused on artificial human workers who rebel against their human masters. Czech dramatist Karel Capek and his brother Josef Capek derived “robot” from the Czech noun “robota,” which means “labor” and “servitude.” As the play became a hit worldwide (with an English translation published in 1923), the concept of the robot took hold. Capek’s robots were chemically created; today’s real and fictional robots are metallic machines.

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FLORENCE MILLS WAS BORN ON THIS DAY IN 1896. The leading black American singer and dancer of the Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance appeared in Langston Hughes’ “Shuffle Along” in 1921 and “Plantation Review” on Broadway in 1922, and then at the London Pavilion in “Dover Street to Dixie” in 1923. Offered a spot in the Ziegfeld Follies, she turned it down and joined in creating a rival show with an all-black cast. Mills was the first black woman to appear as a headliner at the Palace Theatre. She was so revered for her efforts to create opportunities for black entertainers and to bring the unique culture of blacks to Broadway that more than 150,000 people filled the streets of Harlem to mourn her when she died in New York City in 1927.

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NELLIE BLY TRAVELED AROUND THE WORLD IN 72 DAYS ON THIS DAY IN 1890. Newspaper reporter Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman (whose pen name was Nellie Bly) set off from Hoboken, N.J. in 1889 to attempt to break Jules Verne’s imaginary hero Phileas Fogg’s record of voyaging around the world in 80 days. She did beat Fogg’s record, taking 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds to make the trip, arriving back in New Jersey in 1890.

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AMNESTY BROOKLYN WILL HOST THE BROOKLYN HUMAN RIGHTS FILM Festival tonight from 7 to 9 p.m. at 899 Bergen St. Its purpose is to educate, organize and build community around human rights issues locally as well as globally. The film festival will feature short films related to women’s rights, refugees and incarceration. For more information, visit amnestybrooklyn.org.

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

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“Arrange whatever pieces come your way.” — writer Virginia Woolf, who was born on this day in 1882