Officials Protest 'Secret' Plan to Close LICH - Brooklyn Daily Eagle

FROM THE
BROOKLYN
AERIE
A Column of Trivia and Observations
By David Ansel Weiss
weissdavid76@gmail.com
Did you know that Walter Camp, the “Father of Football” who
invented the forward pass, was the first president of Brooklyn’s elite
Crescent Athletic Club, which was in Bay Ridge where Fort
Hamilton High School is now
I don’t know how many Roosevelts are buried in Green-Wood
Cemetery, but three of Theodore Roosevelt’s immediate family were,
i.e. his parents and his first wife.
According to one account, the last full-blooded Canarsee Indian
in Brooklyn was a man named Joel Skidmore, who died in his
nineties in 1902.
It has been just one half century since Junior’s introduced its
cheesecake.
Lafayette was not the only famous Frenchman to visit Brooklyn in
the 19th century. Talleyrand, who later became one of his nation’s
leading diplomats and statesmen, supposedly lived here briefly in
exile in a farmhouse on Hicks St. near what is now Old Fulton St.
Walt Whitman once went all-out describing the local saloons.
“They are the source of the mighty outpourings of ale and lager beer,”
he said, “refreshing the thirst of drinkers in cold and hot weather.”
The Battle of Brooklyn was not only the first battle of the
American Revolution, but unlike the skirmishes at Concord and
Lexington it was fought in hand-to-hand combat instead of behind
barricades.
In the 1910 obituary of Charles Feltman in the New York Times, he
is described as “the man who turned the sandy wastes of Coney Island
into a pleasure ground.” Not mentioned once is the fact that according
to most historians, it was Feltman who invented the hot dog.
Among the many big-league baseball players whose careers
started with playing ball in Prospect Park were Sandy Koufax, Joe
Torre, Lee Mazilli, Chuck Connors, Joe Pepitone and Willie Randolph.
The first Dutch Reformed Church in Brooklyn had two unusual
features: First, it had a hexagonal shape. Second, it stood smack in the
middle of Fulton St. (near Duffield), with traffic having to walk or ride
around it.
Did you know that at the turn of the last century, one of the most
poular sports in Brooklyn was lawn bowling It was even played in
the Parade Grounds after they were no longer used for parades.
Sign of the times! For years you would have had to be a resident of
Brooklyn for fifty years to qualify for membership in the Society of Old
Brookynites, but now you can become a member after a residency of
only twenty-five years.
They Decide
in Favor of
These
Fine
Restaurants
OPEN 7-DAYS-A-WEEK
WE DELIVER!
8 • Brooklyn July 18, 2013 Eagle • INBrooklyn • Friday, July — Section 19, 2013 of Brooklyn Eagle/Brooklyn Daily Eagle