History Brooklyn Boro

October 15, ON THIS DAY in 1924, ZR-3 blimp flies over Brooklyn

October 15, 2018 Shlomo Sprung
Eagle file photo
Eagle file photo
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ON THIS DAY IN 1924, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Springing suddenly out of the October haze hanging like a fog over the lower bay at 7:40 o’clock today, and swimming the skies with all the grace of a huge silver fish, the ZR-3 came sailing over New York straight from the works of her German builders. Her entry through the gateway of America could not have been more auspicious. The day was perfect, the air still, and she came in impressive majesty, turning and maneuvering over Manhattan and Brooklyn for more than an hour. As she swam over the lower bay and the river, dipped toward the skyscrapers, passed over the Equitable Building and behind the great tower of the Woolworth Building, not so much taller than she is long, she was under perfect control. At times she almost seemed to stand still under the morning sun, and she gave New York as great an aerial show as this city ever had before.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1860, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “There was another great rush to the ferries on Saturday night, for the purpose of witnessing the display in honor of the Prince of Wales. Many thousands crossed in the early part of the evening, and the jam on the return, from ten o’clock to midnight, was tremendous. The bridge on this side of the Fulton Ferry having been completed on Saturday morning, the crowd was transferred to Brooklyn with greater expedition than on other similar occasions recently. No accidents occurred, but a number of pockets were picked.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1912, the Eagle reported, “Chicago, Oct. 15 — Col. [Theodore] Roosevelt is resting as quietly as possible at the Mercy Hospital in this city. He will be confined there, according to the doctors, for about ten days, if all goes well. The bullet which was fired into his chest last night at Milwaukee by a would-be assassin has not been removed. His condition is announced as ‘hopeful’ in a bulletin issued over the signatures of four doctors in attendance, headed by Dr. John B. Murphy, the noted Chicago surgeon.” Roosevelt, who made a 50-minute speech before going to the hospital, was reported to have said, “It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1917, the Eagle reported, “Paris, Oct. 15 — Mata Hari, the Dutch dancer and adventuress, who two months ago was found guilty by a court-martial on the charge of espionage, was shot at dawn this morning. Mlle. Mata-Hari, long known in Europe as a woman of great attractiveness and with a romantic history, was according to unofficial press dispatches accused of conveying to the Germans the secret of the construction of the Entente ‘tanks,’ this resulting in the enemy rushing work on a special gas to combat their operations.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1939, the Eagle reported, “London, Oct. 14 (U.P.) — Streams of ‘refugees’ kept trickling back to the slums of London and other big cities of Great Britain today in a ‘revolt’ against country life. They are part, although only a small part, of the mass migration of more than 1,300,000 women, children and invalids to the countryside at the outbreak of war. They were glad to be back, no matter how squalid their homes. Many insisted on returning despite repeated warnings of the peril of air raids. Their numbers included children who had never known anything but margarine. They objected to the taste of fresh country butter. They found bulls far more terrifying than city traffic or bombs. They were accustomed to fish, chips and beer for ‘supper’ and found fresh eggs and milk strange to their palate. “

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ON THIS DAY IN 1946, the Eagle reported, “Progress, a noisy but necessary thing and no respecter of backyard flower gardens, as Columbia Heights residents living along the route of the superhighway that’s to carry the Brooklyn-Queens Connecting Highway around Brooklyn’s downtown area have learned, now and then does turn up relics of the past. So far 30 ‘cradles,’ lying 24 inches apart, through which ran the cable of the trolley that many years ago transported passengers from the old Wall Street ferry to the top of Montague Street hill have been unearthed … An octogenarian who stood by when the first of the ‘cradles’ was uncovered recalled that in the plush era when financiers and big business men living on Brooklyn Heights made the East River crossing by ferry, a canopy covered the entire trolley route – from the ferry slip to the top of the hill. ‘Times have changed on Montague Street,’ the aged man observed.”

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ON THIS DAY IN 1951, a listing in the Eagle’s Video Highlights column read, “9:00 WCBS (2) ‘I Love Lucy,’ featuring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (premiere).”

 

 


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