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Even though the headline of this November 5, 1928 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article refers to plural “autoists,” Jimmy Burns is the lone driver named who made cross-country trips blindfolded, guided only by his trusty dog Pedro. No explanation for Burns’ behavior is provided.
Tags: Jimmy Burns
From the July 6, 1896 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“The officials of a company which makes a feature of insuring the lives of animals notified the management of Glen Island to-day that they would not pay the policy on the life of Franko, the monkey which committed suicide yesterday. They claim the suicide clause holds good in this instance the same as in the case of a man. It is claimed that Franko deliberately hanged himself and that back of the sad affair is a love story of strong interest which goes to show that Cupid darts can play havoc in a monkey’s cage as well as elsewhere. Franko was desperately in love with a female monkey in the same cage. Last week he was removed to another cage and suicide followed.”
Tags: Franko
From the February 19, 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Pittsburgh — Ten dollars added to his board bill for extra bologna eaten during the month was more than Ignac Merter could stand when he was leaving Mrs. Francis Petre’s boarding house at Ford City. He frankly imparted his feelings to the landlady, declaring he had paid all he owed and refused to pay the $10. Alleging he was hit with a club, he hauled the woman before a justice who held her in $300 on the charge of assault and battery.”
Tags: Ignac Merter, Mrs. Francis Petre
While the early twentieth-century mobster Arnold Rothstein has entered into American culture in everything from The Great Gatsby to Boardwalk Empire, he most infamously left his mark on major-league baseball. The “Brain,” as he was often called, transformed the often chaotic world of crime into a corporate-type affair, becoming the first “legitimate businessman.” One Rothstein deal saw him and other gamblers entice members of the 1919 White Sox to throw the World Series, a scandal which nearly killed the sport. And then there was the unintended consequence of the fix which occurred when Kenesaw “Mountain” Landis, a federal judge, was subsequently named baseball’s first commissioner with the imperative to clean up the game. In addition to other policies, Landis was steadfast in not allowing players of color to participate in the league, keeping the sport segregated. It’s no sure bet the game would have been integrated without Landis, but there was no way it was happening with him. The following article from the November 5, 1928 Brooklyn Daily Eagle reports on the murder of Rothstein, not shockingly a gambling-related crime.
Tags: "Bald" Jack Rose, Arnold Rothstein, George "Hump" McManus, Kenesaw "Mountain" Landis
From the July 11, 1901 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“James Driscoll, a boy 14 years old, who lives at 84 Lynch Street, when he stays home, eats and chews cigarettes. At least that is what his mother has to say about him. And according to her, he makes a regular diet of them, for he has the tobacco habit in an advanced degree.”
Tags: James Driscoll
Famed attorney Clarence Darrow was an extremist when it came to criminality, believing in circumstance but not culpability. He saw criminals the way the writer of a naturalist novel views characters, as prisoners of nature and nurture, incapable of circumventing either. Based on the remarks he made as reported in an article in the April 4, 1931 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Darrow would have treated all misdeeds as maladies, the perpetrators receiving treatment in hospitals rather than stretches in prison.
Tags: Clarence Darrow
From the August 24, 1912 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Denver, Col. — If the strange request of William J. Abrams, a blind man of Denver, is granted, he hopes to see through the eyes of Lewis J. Weichter, condemned to be hanged at Canon City next week for murder. Abrams asks that after the execution the eyes of the condemned man be grafted upon his own.
If the request is granted, surgeons will be in the death chamber when the trap is sprung. Immediately after Weichter has been officially pronounced dead, his eyes will be removed and placed in a saline solution, after which the surgeons will hurry to a hospital nearby where the corneas from Weichter’s eyes will be grafted into the sightless eyes of Abrams.”
By the time he filed his final patent in 1928, an “Apparatus for aerial transportation,” the 72-year-old inventor Nikola Tesla was a punchline at best and a forgotten man at worst, and he would remain so for the final 15 years of his life, until he died alone and without money in the New Yorker Hotel. His swan song was a small plane which purportedly could rise from an open window like a helicopter and transport two people cheaply and efficiently to their destination. It would revolutionize travel. Alas, unlike a swan, it wouldn’t have been able to fly even if it had been built, which it wasn’t. An article in the February 23, 1928 Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported on the dubious machine.
Tags: Nikola Tesla
From the January 24, 1913 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Iowa City, Iowa — A woodchopper working near a cemetery here yesterday found the bones of two human legs imbedded in a tree he had just felled. Forestry students from the State University, who examined the bones, said that they probably have been there for at least thirty years. It is thought that medical students at the university placed the bones there.”
Brilliant writer though he was, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was gullible to lots of complete bullshit, mostly centered around spiritualist shenanigans, even believing frenemy Harry Houdini was doomed to an early death due to his skepticism. In an article in the April 10, 1922 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes explained his vision of the afterlife, which he believed to be a childless place where a man could trade in his wife for a new model.
Tags: Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini
From the March 14, 1913 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Rutland, Vt. — George C. Chalmers, president of the Rutland Business Men’s Association, underwent a peculiar operation here for the removal of a button from his nose. He has been in poor health for some time and recently came to believe that the nasal trouble, with which he was afflicted, might be due to a button which he had pushed into his nose when he was a child, fifty-four years ago. He told a physician of the circumstance and the latter agreed that the button was the root of the trouble. Upon removal, the button was found to have become so encrusted that it had increased from a quarter-inch to an inch in diameter.”
Tags: George C. Chalmers
A century ago, Gobi Desert dwellers didn’t desire dinosaur eggs for their historical value but for their utility, often fashioning from them jewelry or other trinkets to wear or trade. In 1923, a motorcar-powered expedition, which numbered naturalist Roy Chapman Andrews as one of its leaders, was the first to ever secure the prehistoric eggs and bring them back to America. It was a sensation, of course. Chapman, a showman at heart who was not immune to utility himself, parlayed the jaw-dropping find into international celebrity, the directorship of the American Museum of Natural History and a young trophy wife. It’s conjectured by some that he was the model for Indiana Jones, but most likely that character is a composite of numerous explorers. A couple years after his dino-egg windfall, the scientist returned to the Gobi and purchased an armful of shells from a Mongolian villager for a bar of soap (see caption of fourth photo from top). One odd thing about the October 29, 1923 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article below, which heralded Chapman’s discovery, is its surprise that dinosaurs laid eggs. It doesn’t mention what the prevailing theory had been.
Tags: Roy Chapman Andrews
From the June 16, 1934 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Milwaukee — Tales of crude sorcery used in a purported attempt to prevent childbirth and to bring a ‘curse’ on a household were told today in two warrants issued for Mrs. Anna Jurich.
The complainant, Mrs. Sophie Obradovich, 37-year-old mother of four children, said she sought out Mrs. Jurich to prevent the birth of a fifth child.
The weird ritual which Mrs. Obradovich said the woman used included administering massages and bandages, cutting off corners of pillows and slitting a mattress.
After she refused to pay a $50 fee, Mrs. Obradovich said, the woman put a ‘curse’ on the household and threw a witch-ball containing finger ad toenail parings, human hair, colored string and other alleged black luck omens through the window.”
Vladimir Lenin’s corpse has had a perplexing postscript, but one particular body part, his brain, may have had the most fascinating “afterlife” of all, as the Soviet leader’s adoring people sliced it and diced it, hoping to find the source of genius that propelled the Bolshevik Revolution. In an article in the February 24, 1929 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the paper underestimated the pieces the organ had been pulverized into, numbering it at 15,000 when it was actually more than twice that many.
Tags: Vladimir Lenin
From the February 23, 1906 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Babylon, L.I. — A story of a mouse dying from fright comes from the Godwin place, at West Islip, where a tiny mouse was for hours secreted in the hair of Miss Isabella Goodwin.
The young woman, a night or so ago, went out to feed the chickens, when the mouse, it is presumed, leaped from the measure into her hair. She knew nothing of the incident until the little animal became restless and jumped from its hiding place, late in the evening.
The next morning the animal was found dead on the rug in the room, and it is thought it died of fright, as there were no marks of violence and no indications of poisoning.”
Tags: Miss Isabella Goodwin
This weekend we’re having a huge multi family (well, two dykes and a fat guy) yard sale. need to downsize, just moved and way too much Shit. everything must go. I’m gonna be like Crazy Eddie in this motherfucker. Many previously enjoyed items: TVs, video games, fishing poles, kitchen appliances, knives, furniture, porn, Xmas crap. we got Shit that works we got Shit that don’t work. I’ll be here drunk ready to make a deal or just verbally abuse people. Sat-Sun 9am Till I get sick of your Shit and throw you the fuck out.
At the time of his death in 1945, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s approval ratings were not at their highest.
Il Duce was executed by a firing squad and hung upside down from the roof of an Esso gas station for bringing ruin to the nation during World War II, his corpse later lowered into a pile with 16 other dead Fascists, where it could be further brutalized by an outraged citizenry. In an article in the May 30, 1945 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Mussolini’s astounding end was described in gory detail.
Tags: Benito Mussolini
From the June 7, 1911 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Muldrow, Okla. — A.D. Dutton, 92 years old, who attributes his longevity to his habit of eating beans, was married yesterday to Miss Rebecca Jane Galoway, 24 years old. Despite his advanced years, Dutton farms every working day of the week. He is apparently as hale as any man half his age.”
Before he found religion in the non-profit sector, L. Ron Hubbard garnered some acclaim as a writer of pulp fiction, his first full-length work a Western. Below are the positive Brooklyn Daily Eagle review of that 1937 book; the paper’s dyspeptic 1950 take on Hubbard’s psychotherapy treatise, Dianetics; and a best-seller list from when the latter had begun to make its mark.
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From the August 1, 1937 edition:
From the December 10, 1950 edition:
From the November 26, 1950 edition:
Tags: L. Ron Hubbard
From the December 12, 1938 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Nashua, N.H. — The Beacon Animal Farm today boasted a dog with a glass eye. Jackie, a Dalmatian, lost an eye in a fight. Owner John T. Benson summoned a specialist and had it replaced with a glass one.”
Telephone instructions, electric eyes and beams of light were used to maneuver an early robocar that followed remote orders and needed no driver. It was a novelty from Westinghouse, though it doesn’t appear any long-term application was planned. (Scroll down to the bottom of this PDF to see a photo of the actual demo.) An article follows about the driverless Willys-Knight from the January 7, 1930 Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
Tags: L.A. Miller, R.H. Maxwell
From the November 8, 1895 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Complaints have reached Flatbush that the residents of the northeastern section of the Twenty-ninth ward are annoyed by a man named Thomas McCormick, who is well known to the police. He served two years and a half in state’s prison for highway robbery and two more years for house breaking, beside having been arrested and convicted for minor offenses a dozen times during the last fifteen years. He is 35 years old, powerfully built and as strong as three ordinary men. No particular charge has been brought against him this time for the reason, the police say, that people in his neighborhood are unwilling to appear against him in a police court because they fear his vengeance. Sergeant Zimmerman told an Eagle reporter last night that a few days ago McCormick went into a Flatbush barber shop, the owner of which is a bird fancier, and ate two live canary birds, feathers and all.”
Rust never sleeps, and Walt Disney, even with all his great success and grand imagination, wasn’t immune to the quiet terrors of life any more than the rest of us. Almost two decades before he built his first safe and secure family theme park in California, the Hollywood house he’d purchased for his parents was invaded by a silent killer. Two articles follow from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
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From the November 27, 1938 edition:
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From the May 16, 1954 edition:
Tags: Elias Disney, Flora Disney, Walt Disney
From the August 18, 1889 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“‘Gloves which are sold as kid are often made of human skin,’ said Dr. Mark L. Nardyz, the Greek physician, of 716 Pine Street, yesterday. ‘The skin on the breast,’ continued the physician, ‘is soft and pliable and may be used for the making of gloves. When people buy gloves they never stop to question about the material of which they are made. The shopkeeper himself may be in ignorance, and the purchaser has no means of ascertaining whether the material is human skin or not. The fact is the tanning of human skin is extensively carried on in France and Switzerland. The product is manufactured into gloves, and these are imported into this country. Thus you see a person may be wearing part of a distant relative’s body and not know it.'”
Tags: Dr. Mark L. Nardyz
Space-travel enthusiast and labor organizer David Lasser was one of the first Americans to champion a mission to the moon, and one of the most influential. His 1931 book, The Conquest of Space, suggested such a rocket voyage was possible, not fanciful. In Lasser’s 1996 New York Times obituary, Arthur C. Clarke said of the then-65-year-old volume: “[It was] the first book in the English language to explain that space travel wasn’t just fiction…[it was] one of the turning points in my life — and I suspect not only of mine.”
While an article about the book’s publication in the October 6, 1931 Brooklyn Daily Eagle took seriously Lasser’s vision of rocket-powered airline travel–from New York to Paris in one hour!–it gave less credence to his moonshot scenario.
Tags: Arthur C. Clarke, David Lasser