Brooklyn Daily Eagle for June 11
Good morning, Today is the 162nd day of the year. On June 11, 1898, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle carried a front-page ad from Abraham & Straus on Fulton Street (now Macy’s) for toys. Toys of that era, if you go by the ad, included ceramic dolls, rag dolls, miniature beds for the dolls, doll furniture, toy trains, rocking horses, lead soldiers (apparently people didn’t know about lead poisoning back then), stuffed dogs and cats, toy horses-and-wagons, and even “doll toilet seats.”
Teddy bears were still a few years in the future. The first ones were made in 1902 or 1903, inspired by a hunting incident in which President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear that other hunters had tied to a tree, calling it unsportsmanlike.
Well-known people who were born today include actor Peter Bergman (“All My Children”), sportscaster Marv Albert, actor Jim Nabors (“The Andy Griffith Show”) and banker David Rockefeller.