Posted: Jan 20, 2013 | 1:38 AM
1896: George Burns the film and television actor born in New York City, New York, United States was born.
1903: Today in 1903 "The Wizard of Oz," a play based on L. Frank Baum's beloved book, has its New York premier at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway and 59th Street.
1930: Pilot Charles Lindbergh sets a new record for the fastest cross-country flight when he lands in New York after 14.75 hours.
1956: Happy Birthday, Bill Maher.
1981: Barry Rosen of Brooklyn was one of 52 American hostages freed from Iran's U.S. embassy after 444 days.
1990: Actres Barbara Stanwyck (born in Brooklyn) died on this date.
1993: Audrey Hepburn, Broadway actress and movie star who chronicled New York City life as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's died.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/actress-audrey-hepburn-dies
Posted: Jan 19, 2013 | 1:08 PM
by Jared Goldstein
1770: The Battle of Golden Hill. British soldiers were posting broadsides denouncing the Sons of Liberty. New Yorkers tried to stop them, leading to bloodshed.
1776: The New Jersey Militia enters Queens to disarm and arrest British loyalists in Newtown.
1886:
John Jacob Astor, the London Newspaper publisher born in NYC.
1937: Actress
Suzanne Pleshette was born in New York City.
1957: Johnny Cash makes his first national television appearance on The Jackie Gleason Show.
1972: Former Yankee catcher and soon-to-be Met manager Yogi Berra is voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
1994: New Yorkers brave a record-breaking deep freeze, as the thermometer dips to -2 degrees.
Posted: Jan 18, 2013 | 1:52 AM
by Jared Goldstein
1849: New York's first major semi-public library, the Astor
Library, was founded on Lafayette Street with money donated by financier John Jacob Astor. The Astor is one of three private libraries that merge to form the New York Public Library in 1895.
1850: Seth Low, Philanthropist, Politician and Educator, born. He was the only person to be mayor of both the cities of Brooklyn and Greater New York City.
1975: Brooklyn's Barry Manilow gets his first hit: Mandy.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/quotmandyquot-is-barry-manilow39s-first-351-pop-hit?catId=13
1991: After 62 years in the air, New York City-based Eastern Air Lines announces it is shutting down due to bankruptcy
1961: Rangers Stanley Cup garnering Captain Hockey Hall of Famer Mark Messier born.
1965: Comedian Dave Attell born.
Danny Kaye
Oliver Hardy
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Posted: Jan 18, 2013 | 1:07 AM
by Jared Goldstein
1944...Mobster Louie "Lepke" Buchalter, the leader of
the notorious Brooklyn-based criminal enterprise dubbed "Murder Incorporated," is turned over to New York State by federal authorities after a New York jury convicts him of murder. He is executed later that year.
1763: John Jacob Astor born in Waldorf, Germany.
1899: Brooklyn's Al Capone born.
1916: PGA formed.
1990: Simon and Garfunkel inducted into Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame.
Posted: Jan 16, 2013 | 5:19 AM
by Jared Goldstein
The only good thing about global warming for me is that January walking tours are great.
No leaves blocking the architecture and streetscapes of the Upper West Side, Victorian Brooklyn, and Greenwich Village, for example.
The light is almost horizontal, which is good for photography.
Sidewalk traffic is reduced.
Unfortunately, people don't associate January with "Let's take a walking tour." A liberal weather rescheduling policy is a good idea.
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Posted: Jan 16, 2013 | 2:09 AM
1908: Astoria's Ethel Merman, Broadway star, singer, and comedienne for five decades born.
1920: Prohibition begins and so does the organization, glorification, and international corporatization of crime graduating from street corner thugdom.
The government gives you what you need; the mob gives you what you want.
1933: Writer and intellectual Susan Sontag born.
1938: Benny Goodman's "King of Swing" jazz entertains Carnegie Hall, representing a crossover of Black music to a white audience. This wasn't the only crossover: Goodman's All-Star band was racially integrated, such as featuring Lionel Hampton. Goodman advocated for tolerance.
1947: The New York Knicks made their first major trade, selling forward Ralph Kaplowitz to the Philadelphia Warriors.
I post this to note two things. First, Basketball 'the city game' used to have many great Jewish players who rose from ghetto playgrounds and schools. Secondly, college hoops retained dominance over professional basketball for years. College hoops, such as St Johns and the NIT, would sell out the Garden. Meanwhile, the Knicks and the rest of the NBA was a creation of arenas who wanted events to fill their seats when their profitable hockey teams were away.
What transformed basketball? We explore that on our Basketball tour.
1960: The Knicks played their last home game at the 69th Regiment Armory. Until this year, the Knicks were displaced from Madison Square Garden 131 times, including 15 playoff games, since its founding in the mid 1940s!
1964: The Broadway musical "Hello, Dolly!" with Carol Channing opened on Broadway, the first of 2,844 performances.
1970: Baseball teams' privileges challenged by a traded major player. Curt Flood, who played 12 years for the St. Louis Cardinals, and the baseball players' union, sued the league over anti-trust laws enabling them to freely trade players. For six of those seasons Flood won the top ranking of outfielder in his league, the Golden Glove. He also batted .293. He stated that he did not deserve to be traded around "like a slave."
The District Court disagreed a few months later, since baseball has an anti-trust exemption, and the Supreme Court agreed in 1972. In 1976, an arbitrator in baseball enabled free agency for the players.
1974: Yankees Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The were teammates on and off the fields. Ford was a leading southpaw pitcher who held the World Series record for ten pitching victories and 33 consecutive scoreless innings. Mantle held the World Series record for 18 home runs.
1979: Brooklyn's singer, Aaliyah born.
1988: Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder was fired from CBS as a sports commentator for making racist remarks in a television interview. He died in 1996.
1996: NYC's Minnesota Fats, Rudy Wanderone, the pool hustler and entertainer who helped popularize the sport, died. His birth year was unclear: somewhere between 1900 and 1913.
Posted: Jan 15, 2013 | 12:21 AM
1777: The independent republic of "New Connecticut," colloquially known as the Republic of the Green Mountains, it is created from territories claimed by New Hampshire and New York.
The dominance of New York was so great that, what was later named Vermont, did not join the nation until after the 12 original colonies, and what caused that was slavery politics. Kentucky, the 13th state, was admitted as a slave state. Vermont was one of the freest places around there.
So fierce was Vermont's desire for independence from New York that, although they fought for American independence, they petitioned Britain for admission into Canada! Perhaps this is why the state's name was inspired by French for Green Mountains, les monts verts. Quebec is across their national border.
1870: The Democrat donkey makes its first appearance courtesy of Thomas Nast and Harper's Magazine. Nast did not like the Irish or the Democrats, so he picked an ass to personify them.
We go into this a bit on our Santa Claus Tour, because Thomas Nast popularized the look of the fat old jolly man, as well as other American icons.
1936: The Ford Foundation founded. For decades this diverse international philanthropic funder was the largest grant-giving foundation.
I point out the foundation's ecologically sustainable headquarters, designed in the late 1960s, on my 42nd Street tour. I don't think such architecture is coincidental that it's development is based on a carbon combustion fortune.
1939: The 1938 NFL Champion New York Giants won the first Pro Bowl against the All-Stars 13-10.
1982: Red Smith, Pulitzer Prize winning sportswriter and columnist, died at 76 in Connecticut. His career spanned 35 years from 1947-1982 in four NYC based publications.
My parents, part of sports media, took me along to Martha's Vineyard in 1979 or 1980 on a visit to his summer home there. He seemed very old to a 12 year old who had a nice life and a great deal of admiration from my parents.
1983: Meyer Lansky, pioneering organized crime figure, died in the role as old Jewish man walking his dogs in Miami Beach.
We go near Lanksy's speakeasy on Jewish Lower East Side tours.
1994: Legendary Giants Quarterback Phil Simms and linebacker "LT" Lawrence Taylor played their last game, losing to the 49ers 44-3.
2001: The Giants won the NFC Championship against Minnesota 41-0, paving the way to their third Superbowl, which they lost to Baltimore 34-7. On today's glorious date, Giants quarterback Kerry Collins passed for 381 yards and five touchdowns.
2009: The "Miracle on the Hudson" just when America and the world needed a hero, as financial institutions and economies were falling, Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger safely landed a disabled jet on the Hudson River. All 155 people aboard US Air Flight 1549 survived without even a serious injury.
The plane glided between the towers of the George Washington Bridge, skitched its tail on the river west of 96th Street, bouncing up slightly, perfectly landing 2.5 miles down to the Hudson's equivalent of 45th Street.
Local commuter ferries, as the Captain had planned on, quickly pulled up to the wings and discharged passengers. After all, he, literally, recently wrote the book on emergency waterborne landings.
Meanwhile, 'Sully' was wading waist high through the freezing water pouring into the plane, checking between the seats for any missing injured passengers.
In my safety training to be a harbor tour guide we learned that in winter waters people have about seven minutes before paralyzing shock. This is what the Captain was risking to save others after such an amazing landing.
I like to recount these stories while doing tours of the West Side, Foliage Tours that cross the GW Bridge, Downtown and Harbor Tours.
When I regularly did winter harbor tours, our ship was Coast Guard restricted from the World Financial Center, where the plane, heavy with water, was hauled straight up from the river by huge mobile cranes. We couldn't get past the buoys because the wakes would have disturbed the recovery.
Posted: Jan 13, 2013 | 2:22 AM
by Jared Goldstein
1895: 5,000 Brooklyn trolley workers strike shutting down 200 miles of tracks and 900 cars. When management attempted to reopen a riot ensued. Labor-friendly police do little to quell the unrest, so the governor called in the state troopers to restore order. The strike lasted two weeks.
1915: Gameshow Producer Mark Goodson (Goodson & Todman Productions) born. His career took off in NYC in radio then television from the late 1940s through the late 1960s when his company moved to California. His innovations include pitting celebrities against each other, buzzers, and returning champions.
Here are some of his biggest hits: Winner Take All, What's My Line? I've got a Secret, To Tell the Truth, The Price is Right, Concentration, Password, Beat the Clock, Family Feud, and Match Game.
It seems that these gameshows were a precursor to so-called Reality TV, which just uses higher production values.
1919: 60 Minutes Television columnist and cranky curmudgeon Andy Rooney would have celebrated his birthday today had he not died at 92.
1952: NBC's "Today" show premiered with Barbara Walters.
We see the studio and sometimes the show itself on tours of Rockefeller Center.
1957: New York native Humphrey Bogart died of cancer at age 57.
1964: Shepard Smith, Broadcast journalist "The Fox Report" born.
1966: Fifth Avenue went one-way southbound while Madison Avenue went one-way northbound.
1968: Queens rapper, clothing designer, and actor L.L. Cool J born.
1970: Composer and Maestro Conductor Leonard Bernstein hosted a meeting at his home, "That Dinner at Lenny's," to raise funds for the legal defense of the Black Panther Party. Tom Wolfe's droll coverage of the event and its media flap popularized the term "radical chic," but not 'limousine liberal.'
1993: Late-night TV talk show host David Letterman announced he was moving from NBC to CBS.
2000: Late Show host David Letterman underwent quintuple-bypass surgery at 52. He recuperated and returned to work 6 weeks later.
2001: The Giants won the NFC Championship against Minnesota 41-0, paving the way to their third Superbowl, which they lost to Baltimore 34-7. On today's glorious date, Giants quarterback Kerry Collins passed for 381 yards and five touchdowns.
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Posted: Jan 13, 2013 | 1:58 AM
1864: Great American composer Stephen Collins Foster, famous for songs including "Oh! Susanna," "My Old Kentucky Home," and "Camptown Races," died in the charity ward of Bellevue Hospital days after completing another hit, "Beautiful Dreamer."
1910: The first opera broadcast was Enrico Caruso singing Cavalleria Rusticana with the Metropolitan via the De Forest Radio Telephone Company.
1922: Gene Tunney of NY wins the American light heavyweight championship against "Battling Levinsky" (Barney Lebrowitz) after 12 rounds.
1939: The owner of the Yankees (1915-1939, great years) who started the sports' greatest dynasty, Colonel Jacob Ruppert died in NYC age 71.
1942: NYC's quickest knockout: 11 seconds in the first round in Brooklyn with Joe Jakes flooring Al Forman.
1950: Soviets boycott the UN Security Council over admitting Nationalist China (Formosa/Taiwan) over Communist mainland China.
1952: Geoffrey Canada, founder of Harlem Children's Zone - a national model in 20 cities, and writer, born. We see at least one Children's Zone facilities on Harlem walking tours.
1959: The Cold War thaws when Krushchev's deputy visits the United Nations, the Financial District, and Macy's. He declared that Americans want peace.
1961: Actress and C0medienne Julia Louis-Dreyfus of "Seinfeld," "the New Adventures of Old Christine," and "Saturday Night Live" celebrates her birthday.
1976: The Metropolitan Opera's first woman conductor, Sarah Caldwell led Verdi's La Traviata.
1978: The Yankees manager who led them to 7 World Series Champions, four of them in a row, and 8 pennants, Joe McCarthy died in Buffalo at 90.
1987: LT, Lawrence Taylor named NFL MVP, very rare for a defense player.
1989: Subway viglilante shooter Bernhard "Bernie" Goetz sentenced to a year in prison for possessing an unlicensed gun that he used against four youths he said were about to rob him.
He served 8 months. More about Bernie Goetz here.
2002: Off-Broadway musical "The Fantasticks" ended nearly a 42 year run of 17,162 performances. Mostly at the Sullivan Street Playhouse. Some of the children of the stars grew up performing their parents' roles.
Posted: Jan 12, 2013 | 12:33 AM
by Jared Goldstein
1906: Inter-collegiate Athletic Association (now NCAA) announced new rules addressing the weekly death toll in college football, and legalizing the forward pass.
The previous season claimed 18 lives and caused 149 serious injuries. University presidents and President Roosevelt called to suppress "savagery and foul play."
1928: Pianist Vladimir Horowitz makes his American debut at Carnegie Hall.
1954: Howard Stern, Radio talk show host, TV judge on "America's Got Talent" celebrates his birthday again.
1969: The New York Jets led by Quarterback Joe Namath upset the Baltimore Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III at the Orange Bowl in Miami. Namath brashly guaranteed that the 18 point underdog would win. He did his part connecting 17 out of 28 passes for 206 yards (over two lengths of field). This earned him game MVP.
The NY Mets will later upset the Baltimore Orioles to win the World Series autumn 1969.
1971: The ground-breaking sitcom "All in the Family," starring the Emmy-winning Carroll O'Connor as Archie Bunker, premiered on CBS. Rob Reiner was a supporting actor, along with Ruth Stapleton.