From the Brooklyn Aerie: March 7, 2012

March 7, 2012 A Weekly Column of Trivia and Observations By David Ansel Weiss Brooklyn Daily Eagle

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If someone asks you to tell them the difference between the Lenape Indians and the Delaware Indians who once inhabited Brooklyn, you could inform them there was no difference. It’s just that the former name is the Indian name, and the latter is the Dutch and English name.
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Brighton Beach got a lot of publicity in the 1930s when it hired and trained a chorus line of “lady lifeguards” to assist the regular lifeguards. They were not only featured on the cover of LIFE Magazine, but were also the subject of a short documentary film (which can be seen today on the Internet).
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When the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1957, editors of L.A. newspapers issued a directive to their newsrooms to never refer to the team as “Dem Bums,” the affectionate term they were often referred to as in Brooklyn.
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In the late 19th century Brooklyn had fire towers strategically located in the city from which wardens could spot fires. But what happened to one fire tower in Willamsburg in 1873 could only be described as ignominious, since the tower itself caught fire and burned down.
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At one point in its early history, Green-Wood Cemetery was not open to the public on Sundays. The only people allowed to visit on this day were relatives and friends of those buried there.
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The first night game in major league baseball was played in Ebbets Field on June 15, 1938.
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Did you know almost all the roads in colonial Brooklyn were originally Indian trails?
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The original name for Governors Island was Noten Eylant (Nutten Island in pidgin English). Its present name became official in 1792 when the New York State Assembly named it Governors Island because that was the name it was known by ever since England took over New York from the Dutch and reserved the island for the exclusive use of its royal governors.
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It was not for nothing that Brooklyn was called the “city of churches.” As far back as the 1860s, a census revealed there were no less than 352 churches in the city.
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Believe it or not, Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights was not an official city street until it was discovered in the 1930s that it was privately owned by the Pierrepont family, who at that point sold it to the city of New York.
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Did you know that when you visit Nantucket and the Cape Cod region, you are standing on land that once belonged to New York state? Seems that when the English formed 12 counties in New York in 1683 after taking it over from the Dutch, they set up two counties that no longer exist as part of our state. One was Dukes County, which they transferred later to Massachusetts. The other was Cornwall County, a portion of present-day Maine.