MILESTONES: October 10, birthdays for Mario Lopez, Brett Favre, Marina Diamandis
ON THIS DAY IN 1849, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reprinted an article from the New York Evening Post, which read, “Edgar A. Poe. — This distinguished author, who was well known in our city for his infirmities as for his genius, died suddenly in Baltimore, on Sunday. His life had been one of unusual and painful vicissitudes. His youth was embittered by the wreck of hopes in which he had indulged until it was too late for him to be educated to the career of independence that awaited him. After leaving the University of Virginia, he passed some time in Europe, and on his return, still young, he entered the Military Academy at West Point, which he left, to undertake the profession of literature. His experience is an addition to the many mournful examples of the vexations and sufferings which follow such an election. He was an industrious, original and brilliant writer; and besides his numerous contributions to the periodicals, he published in volumes Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque; Arthur Gordon Pym (a nautical romance), Poems, Eureka (an essay on the material and spiritual universe), Tales, and two or three elementary books on science. He resided the three or four last years at Fordham near this city.”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1871, the Eagle reported, “The gloomy details of the great Chicago disaster are beginning to be received, and the first intelligence of the awful calamity instead of being exaggerated as is usually the case under similar circumstances appears to have been only an outline of the substantial features of the great conflagration. In its estimated loss of 12,000 buildings up to the time of the latest advices may be included every public building, hall and hotel of any note in the city; every leading wholesale and retail house in the sale of any commercial commodity, every place of amusement, many churches and every newspaper office … The origin of the fire was in a stable where a woman took a kerosene lamp at milking time … A large number of firemen were killed, and all did their duty nobly; but streams of water in the burning blocks were like fountain jets against the awful heat of the conflagration … The county records are safe, but the city records are lost.”
Brooklyn Boro
View MoreNew York City’s most populous borough, Brooklyn, is home to nearly 2.6 million residents. If Brooklyn were an independent city it would be the fourth largest city in the United States. While Brooklyn has become the epitome of ‘cool and hip’ in recent years, for those that were born here, raised families here and improved communities over the years, Brooklyn has never been ‘uncool’.