Posts tagged history

Dutch fur traders had established a trading post on nearby Governors Island a few years earlier. In 1625, construction began on Manhattan Island in the form of a citadel, Fort Amsterdam. The Dutch West India Company appointed Minuit Director of the Colony of New Netherland. He arrived to find a small village already in place, with more land being cleared. There were stands of hickory, oak, and chestnut trees among the grasslands and salt marshes. Times Square was a red maple swamp. A creek ran through Midtown. On the west side of the island, there was a cemetery, a small farm, an orchard, and two wealthy estates. Most of the houses were built along the East River, since its shore was more protected from winds than the shore of the Hudson. The main street was built over an old Indian path running from the southern tip of the island north to what is now City Hall Park. First, it was called Heere Straat, or Gentlemen’s Street, but it eventually came to be known as Breede Wegh — which became the name we know it by today, Broadway.

On this day in 1908, a mysterious explosion over Siberia flattened eighty million trees. Happening at an altitude of eight kilometers, scientists believe a comet collided with earth and blew up before it hit the ground. An eyewitness, who was sitting on his porch 40miles away reported, “Suddenly in the north sky..the sky was split in two, and high above the forest the whole northern part of the sky appeared covered with fire…at that moment there was a bang in the sky and a mighty crash…the crash was followed by a noise like stones falling from the sky, or of guns firing. the earth trembled.”

Growing up feeling as if no one wanted her she wrote in her unfinished autobiography, “I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.”

In her last interview before he death, she pleaded in vain with the journalist saying, “What I really want to say: That the world really needs is a feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers. Please don’t make me a joke. End the interview with what I believe.”
Her words did not appear in the article.