October 16, ON THIS DAY in 1946, how 11 top Nazis died
ON THIS DAY IN 1946, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Nuernberg, Oct. 16 — Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering succeeding in cheating the gallows of allied justice by committing suicide in his prison cell a short time before the 10 other condemned remnants of the Nazi hierarchy were hanged earlier today. Despite the fact that an American security guard was supposed to be watching his every movement, the Crown Prince of Nazidom managed to place in his mouth, chew and swallow a vial containing cyanide of potassium. The vial of poison was hidden in a copper cartridge shell. Goering swallowed the poison while Col. S. Burton Andrus, American security commandant, was walking across the prison yard to death block to read him and the 10 other condemned Nazi leaders the International Military Tribunal’s sentence of death … Goering had not previously been told that he was going to die this morning, nor had any of the other condemned men. How he guessed that this was to be his day of doom and how he managed to conceal the poison on his person is a mystery that has confounded the security forces.”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1842, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Colt’s Submarine Battery. — A third experiment with this engine of destruction will be made in our harbor tomorrow afternoon, at 4 o’clock precisely, under the patronage and direction of the American Institute, now holding its annual fair at Niblo’s Garden. The vessel to be blown up is larger than either of those already experimented upon, and will fully test the power of the battery.”