Category Archives: History

After a series of disputes between American citizens, the courts have gone back and forth on how to stop the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and many are not in favor of the vaccine mandates enacted by the government.

But as history shows, there are a lot of similarities to how the courts have handled the spread of diseases with vaccines throughout the years as well as skeptics that come with them.

Yes, they can. The government has done so since at least 1904, when the right of government to impose vaccines was established by the Supreme Court in Jacobson v. Massachusetts. In a 7-to-2 ruling, the Court said Cambridge, Massachusetts could require all adults to be vaccinated against smallpox.

Since then, a wide range of vaccines have been developed to fight against deadly viruses and the diseases they can cause. There are no laws that prohibit employers from requiring COVID-19 -- or any other -- vaccines. Similarly, schools have long been allowed to require vaccinations.

Though the Supreme Court banned vaccines in 1776 to further control the spread of smallpox, General George Washington continued to secretly mandate vaccines for troops who were entering Philadelphia and hadnt yet been infected by the disease, which eventually helped conquer the epidemic.

American soldiers have gotten vaccinated during major conflicts since the American Revolutionary War and continue to cooperate in a vaccination routine required by the U.S. military against more than 20 diseases such as flu, tetanus and cholera.

Yes and this isnt the first time.

As part of President Joe Bidens mandate to require all companies with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated or get tested weekly, the government plans to issue fines for workplaces that refuse to follow protocol as enacted by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Employers could face penalties as high as up to $13,600 per violation.

Similarly, while citizens in Cambridge, Massachusetts were dying from the smallpox epidemic between 1901 and 1903, public health officials began issuing compulsory vaccination orders in efforts to reach the 90 percent vaccination rate required for herd immunity.

The state went as far as closing all schools, public libraries and churches to stem the spread of the disease. Though it wasnt a forced vaccination, those who refused to get vaccinated faced a $5 fine, which is the equivalent of $150 today.

Public schools have required vaccinations for children for years, with some allowances for exemptions. By 1963, 20 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico had vaccination requirements for enrollment into public schools.

The U.S. federal government set up the Childhood Immunization Initiative aimed to increase vaccination rates amongst children against seven diseases: Diptheria, measles, mumps, pertussis, poliomyelitis, rubella, and tetanus. The CDC currently recommends that children from 0 to 6 to get 29 doses of 9 vaccines, including a yearly flu shot after 6 months old.

While all states now require vaccination among children for public school enrollment, there also remains some exemptions, that both vary by state, which are listed here.

Skepticism around vaccines is not new to the United States.

In fact, rules have been altered multiple times in accordance with the climate of each pandemic or epidemic that the country has faced. When the Supreme Court originally issued the right to impose vaccines, they were addressing the views of those in opposition to vaccines in the Jacobson v. Massachusetts case.

Common false concerns center around the alleged unnatural state of vaccines; the belief that they cause autism and claims that the virus isnt real. Another common argument goes that people should be able to decide for their own bodies whether to get vaccinated or not.

Before the Supreme Court decision was made in 1904, they heard the case of a Massachusetts pastor defending his right to choose not to be vaccinated in which he argued over the invasion of liberty to be fined or imprisoned for refusing to get vaccinated and that one shouldnt be subjected to the law. In response, the Supreme Court took action by addressing the governments right to impose compulsory vaccination laws to save lives, especially if children and adults can be saved from disease through vaccination.

Although the major difference between the general response to vaccinations today doesnt depend on the spread of disinformation that is so widely accessible, but rather the division between two parties that indicates one side is more wrong than the other.

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A History of Vaccine Mandates And How People Reacted Then and Now - NBC 10 Philadelphia

When NASA's most recent Mars lander trekked out to the Red Planet, it had historic company: two tiny cubesats, the first to leave the relative safety of Earth orbit.

The Mars Cube One (MarCO) mission's twin briefcase-sized satellites watched NASA's InSight lander touch down in November 2018, confirming that the infamous "six minutes of terror" landing sequence went smoothly before NASA's fleet of Mars orbiters could check in on the newest arrival. The MarCO cubesats, affectionately nicknamed Wall-E and Eva, blazed the trail for other small satellites to adventure beyond Earth's orbit though none of those missions have launched yet.

"MarCO really was a catalyst to enabling a new class of spacecraft," Andy Klesh, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California who was chief engineer for the MarCO mission, told Space.com.

Related: Tiny cubesat snaps photo of Mars for 1st time ever

"We needed someone to be first, to show that they were feasible," Klesh said. "MarCO proved that yes, we weren't completely making things up."

However, feasible doesn't mean simple, and Wall-E and Eva's adventures underscored the difficult choices that are required for cubesats to go interplanetary and the struggles that the mission's successors are facing.

Every mission is governed by unavoidable tradeoffs between spacecraft size, mission cost and technological and scientific sophistication, and spacecraft are never quite large enough for all of the payloads that scientists think would be nice to have on board. But that truism applies particularly harshly to the smallest of spacecraft, cubesats. These tiny spacecraft are built in standardized units about 4 inches (10 centimeters) cubed; a full satellite is typically one, three or six units in size, making these explorers about the size of a breadbox.

And spacecraft venturing beyond Earth need particular prerequisites, like a propulsion system to get the spacecraft where it needs to go and a communications system powerful enough to receive commands and send observations back to Earth, making deep-space cubesat missions significantly more complicated than those staying in low Earth orbit.

Those constraints mean that if cubesat missions are going to reshape exploration, they'll need to be resourceful in new and dramatic ways.

The MarCO project traced its heritage to a project called Interplanetary Nano-Spacecraft Pathfinder in Relevant Environment (INSPIRE) that engineers created to work on miniaturizing a radio system capable of deep-space communications.

The resulting system, called Iris, is now the basis of countless other small missions. But INSPIRE itself never flew instead, MarCO took over the INSPIRE launch opportunity in order to allow engineers to test a more advanced system: Rather than simply demonstrate the Iris radio and other technology, MarCO combined that work with a Mars flyby carefully orchestrated so that the little spacecraft could monitor InSight's landing.

The decision meant that MarCO had to happen fast in just 15 months, Klesh said. "Schedule was really our first and continuing challenge of the program," he said. "In that timeline, we needed to take a concept from PowerPoint slides to two flight spacecraft."

And while traditional NASA missions larger, more expensive projects prioritize safety and avoid risks wherever possible, that approach isn't necessarily desirable for cubesats just along for the ride and tasked with a simple goal.

"A big challenge was convincing everyone that we could adopt a different risk posture for these missions," Klesh said.

Although the MarCO mission turned out to be a stunning success, Klesh knows it could have easily gone a different way. The team wrestled with a propellant leak throughout the flight and suffered communications problems just before the all-important flyby.

The twin MarCO satellites fell silent in January 2019 after settling into orbit around the sun. However, another project currently active on the Red Planet carries MarCO's fingerprints all over it, Klesh said: the Ingenuity helicopter that hitched a ride out to Mars with NASA's newest rover, Perseverance.

Ingenuity is a 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) helicopter that became the first powered aircraft to fly on another planet. Nearly six months into a one-month mission, Ingenuity has made 13 flights on Mars, far beyond its initial goal of five, and has shown the role that small aerial scouts can play in exploration missions.

While Ingenuity isn't a cubesat, it comes from the same spacecraft stock, Klesh said. "It's certainly evolved into the beautiful flyer that it is today," he said. "The first concepts when it was starting to be looked at was that there was this tiny little cubesat hanging off the bottom."

Unlike the MarCO spacecraft, Ingenuity didn't make its own way to Mars; instead, it spent the ride to the Red Planet tucked away in Perseverance's belly. That arrangement saved the aircraft from needing to protect itself or navigate in deep space proper. Ingenuity also relies on the rover for communication with its handlers, simplifying another difficult piece of the cubesat puzzle. Those sacrifices balance out the little chopper's sharp cameras and the technology needed to fly in the thin atmosphere of Mars.

Klesh thinks that the public's warm embrace of Ingenuity and MarCO alike reflects the sidekick projects' small budgets and big ambitions. "I think we're actually seeing that magic right now with Ingenuity as a tech demonstration," Klesh said. "As these missions launch and go to these different destinations, there will be more of that kind of underdog story."

Even as cubesats make the leap to interplanetary space, these tiny explorers aren't necessarily ready to stand on equal footing with NASA's more traditional planetary spacecraft.

Although both MarCO and Ingenuity achieved their goals and then some during their Red Planet adventures, neither project has been a true planetary science mission. MarCO snagged some photos of Mars and even of its moon Phobos, but those were tourist snapshots, not images carefully designed to provide data. Similarly, Ingenuity's photographs are guiding Perseverance's current choices, but it's the rover doing the meticulous science work.

And if sending these missions to another planet was difficult, fitting bona fide planetary science onto similarly small packages is much, much harder.

"There are always measurements one can make, but measurement isn't the same thing as achieving science," Barbara Cohen, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, told Space.com. "Sending a bunch of small satellites to the planets to make a temperature measurement, or to make a radiation measurement you can do that, but that's not necessarily the science that the planetary science community has prioritized."

Nevertheless, a new generation of cubesats bound to leave Earth orbit is in the works, each negotiating the opportunities and challenges of carrying the format into deep space.

One is the project for which Cohen is the measurement lead, dubbed Lunar Flashlight, which is designed to map ice hidden in the permanently shadowed craters near the moon's south pole, a topic that has fascinated scientists and would-be explorers alike for years. So when NASA asked for ideas for cubesats to launch on the first flight of the megarocket Space Launch System (SLS), Cohen and her team jumped at it as a chance to design a mission to figure out the story of lunar ice. (As of now, Lunar Flashlight will likely miss that launch, which is currently targeting November but may slip farther, and NASA is exploring other launch opportunities for the project.)

"As scientists, we are opportunistic, and so when there is an opportunity, we think about how to make progress toward our goals," Cohen said. "I don't necessarily think that cubesats are the best way to do this kind of science, but they are a way and that way is available to us, so we will try to make the progress that we can."

That said, Lunar Flashlight isn't quite a science mission, either. "Its primary goal has never been to do science," Cohen said. "Its primary goal has always been to show that we can make measurements using this class of satellite, because that's not at all clear we've never done that for planetary science."

Along the way, in fact, Cohen and her team realized they needed to overhaul the whole principle of the spacecraft, which was originally designed to use a large reflective sheet called a solar sail as both a propulsion system and a light source for measurements. But the mission team couldn't make that idea work on a cubesat scale, so the engineers pivoted to a non-toxic fuel NASA wanted to test anyway for propulsion and a laser system to gather data.

Precisely how much data the spacecraft can gather will depend on the details of the launch, and Cohen is not sure yet whether the result will offer the kind of detail that planetary scientists actually need in order to begin untangling the mysteries of lunar ice.

"We're really pushing that lower limit," Cohen said. "I think below this, there's no real science return case for planetary science."

Another cubesat scheduled to ride along on the first SLS launch will visit a near-Earth asteroid (NEA). This project, dubbed NEA Scout, is demonstrating two technologies not only the cubesat format, but also the same solar sail concept that didn't work out for the Lunar Flashlight team.

NEA Scout's solar sail will only be responsible for steering the spacecraft to the asteroid, riding the steady stream of solar wind produced by the sun. But like Lunar Flashlight, the NEA Scout team has struggled to fit its goals into the cubesat scale. For example, it's difficult to keep a computer's heat from interfering with a nearby camera, Julie Castillo-Rogez, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology and science principal investigator for NEA Scout, told Space.com.

And even relatively near Earth and with the radio advances piloted by the never-flown INSPIRE mission, communication is still difficult. In response to that constraint, the team has developed a program that will process and prioritize data on the spacecraft proper, so that only the best data makes its way to Earth.

Because NEA Scout is a secondary payload on a milestone mission, Castillo-Rogez, the only scientist on the team, couldn't be picky choosing a target and due to launch delays, the mission has pivoted four times, she said.

For now, NEA Scout is headed to an asteroid known as 2020 GE, not because there's something that scientists want to learn about it in particular but because it will be in the right place. With its destination governed by other factors, the mission flirts with the same boundary between technology demonstrations and real planetary science.

Another asteroid-bound cubesat project is taking an approach more like Ingenuity's, hitchhiking with a larger spacecraft to avoid the cost and risk of making an independent journey. The European Space Agency (ESA)'s Hera mission, scheduled to launch in 2024, will carry two cubesats inside the primary spacecraft.

The mission is designed to follow up on a NASA mission launching later this year, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which will hurl itself into the small moon of an asteroid to try nudging the rock along its orbit, a planetary defense technique scientists have in mind in case a space rock ever seriously threatens Earth.

The main spacecraft of Hera will arrive about four years after that impact and investigate the scene, helping scientists to precisely determine the consequences of the impact. And after three months working on its own, Hera will deploy the two cubesats to approach the impact site more closely.

"First we take pictures from far away and then we send in the cavalry, we take more risks with the cubesats and go closer and try to get amazing scientific results," Paolo Martino, principle system engineer for Hera at ESA, told Space.com. "The cubesats are more agile, but also you might be less cautious because you don't risk the full mission. To say it politely, let's say that you can afford more risks with a cubesat."

Like Lunar Flashlight, the Hera cubesats, dubbed Juventas and Milani, have been through a few different iterations. A previous mission design had two smaller companion cubesats arriving early enough to watch the impact, a flashier but also riskier arrangement; the final design doubles the size of each cubesat and gives debris from the impact time to settle.

Traveling with Hera means that Juventas and Milani don't need their own shielding, and their communications will also run through the main spacecraft. That arrangement gives the team more space for the propulsion system that will allow the cubesats to attempt to land on the space rock and the instruments they carry to help scientists characterize the aftermath of the collision.

And the cubesat mentality isn't just spreading to the companions of larger missions, it's also empowering so-called "smallsat" missions, filling the middle ground between tiny cubesats and more traditional spacecraft. It's an appealing strategy for planetary scientists, who are faced with the competing temptations of seven planets beyond Earth, more than 200 moons and innumerable small rocky bodies in the solar system.

"In planetary science, we're fundamentally resource-constrained, so we want to make sure that for every dollar that we spend on a mission, that we're really maximizing the science return per dollar," Bethany Ehlmann a planetary scientist at JPL and principal investigator of a smallsat mission called Lunar Trailblazer, told Space.com.

Like the Lunar Flashlight cubesat and a host of other missions, Lunar Trailblazer, which is scheduled to launch in 2024, will study water on the moon a pressing topic for scientists this decade. Lunar Trailblazer, which fits in a $55 million cost cap, may prove a model for projects that are less expensive than a traditional planetary mission but able to host larger instruments than a cubesat can. That combination might be one that groups far beyond NASA can afford to consider, Ehlmann said.

"At this sort of price point, it opens it up to, for example, smaller spacefaring nations and their scientific communities to ask and answer scientific questions," Ehlmann said. "I think it has the potential to really open up the question of who does planetary exploration to be more diverse and inclusive."

While Castillo-Rogez is excited to see NEA Scout fly, she isn't sure how strongly the pure cubesat format can catch on among planetary scientists. "Definitely MarCO brought a lot of credibility to the idea of using cubesats for deep-space exploration," Castillo-Rogez said. Nevertheless, "cubesats are not really well-suited for deep-space exploration."

Given the mismatch between cubesats and deep space and the cubesat philosophy on risk, sooner or later the success streak begun by MarCO will likely come to an end. "We may see failures in the future, and that is part and parcel with what we are aiming for," Klesh said. "We are stretching our ability to explore."

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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3 years after tiny spacecraft made Mars history, where are all their successors? - Space.com

By The Associated Press

Todays Highlight in History:

On Oct. 7, 2001, the war in Afghanistan started as the United States and Britain launched air attacks against military targets and Osama bin Ladens training camps in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

On this date:

In 1765, the Stamp Act Congress convened in New York to draw up colonial grievances against England.

In 1849, author Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore at age 40.

In 1910, a major wildfire devastated the northern Minnesota towns of Spooner and Baudette, charring at least 300,000 acres; some 40 people are believed to have died.

In 1949, the Republic of East Germany was formed.

In 1954, Marian Anderson became the first Black singer hired by the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York.

In 1985, Palestinian gunmen hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro (ah-KEE-leh LOW-roh) in the Mediterranean. (The hijackers shot and killed Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish-American tourist in a wheelchair, and pushed him overboard, before surrendering on Oct. 9.)

In 1991, University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill publicly accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of making sexually inappropriate comments when she worked for him; Thomas denied Hills allegations.

In 1992, trade representatives of the United States, Canada and Mexico initialed the North American Free Trade Agreement during a ceremony in San Antonio, Texas, in the presence of President George H.W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (muhl-ROO-nee) and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

In 1996, Fox News Channel made its debut.

In 1998, Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, was beaten and left tied to a wooden fencepost outside of Laramie, Wyoming; he died five days later. (Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney are serving life sentences for Shepards murder.)

In 2003, California voters recalled Gov. Gray Davis and elected Arnold Schwarzenegger their new governor.

In 2004, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney conceded that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction as they tried to shift the Iraq war debate to a new issue, arguing that Saddam was abusing a U.N. oil-for-food program.

Ten years ago: The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to three women: President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakkul Karman, who began pushing for change in Yemen long before the Arab Spring.

Five years ago: The U.S. accused Russia of hacking American political sites and email accounts in an effort to interfere with the upcoming presidential election and also directly accused Russia of war crimes in Syria; Moscow dismissed the allegations. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, receiving a big boost in his efforts to save an agreement seeking to end his countrys half-century conflict.

One year ago: President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office for the first time since he was diagnosed with COVID-19; he credited an experimental drug treatment with helping his recovery. Debating from behind plexiglass shields, Vice President Mike Pence and Democrat Kamala Harris zeroed in on Trumps handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with Harris labeling it the greatest failure of any presidential administration while Pence defended the overall response. President Donald Trump tweeted that remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan should be home by Christmas. (Military officials said they had been given no orders to accelerate a more gradual pullout.) The former Minneapolis police officer charged with murder in the death of George Floyd posted bail and was released from state prison, leading Minnesotas governor to activate the National Guard to help keep the peace in the event of protests.

Todays Birthdays: Retired South African Archbishop and Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu is 90. Author Thomas Keneally is 86. Comedian Joy Behar is 79. Former National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Oliver North (ret.) is 78. Rock musician Kevin Godley (10cc) is 76. Actor Jill Larson is 74. Country singer Kieran Kane is 72. Singer John Mellencamp is 70. Rock musician Ricky Phillips is 70. Russian President Vladimir Putin is 69. Actor Mary Badham (Film: To Kill a Mockingbird) is 69. Rock musician Tico Torres (Bon Jovi) is 68. Actor Christopher Norris is 66. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma is 66. Gospel singer Michael W. Smith is 64. Olympic gold medal ice dancer Jayne Torvill is 64. Actor Dylan Baker is 63. Actor Judy Landers is 63. Recording executive and TV personality Simon Cowell is 62. Rock musician Charlie Marinkovich (formerly with Iron Butterfly) is 62. Actor Paula Newsome is 60. Country singer Dale Watson is 59. Pop singer Ann Curless (Expose) is 58. R&B singer Toni Braxton is 54.

Rock singer-musician Thom Yorke (Radiohead) is 53. Rock musician-dancer Leeroy Thornhill is 52. Actor Nicole Ari Parker is 51. Actor Allison Munn is 47. Rock singer-musician Damian Kulash (KOO-lahsh) is 46. Singer Taylor Hicks is 45. Actor Omar Miller is 43. Neo-soul singer Nathaniel Rateliff (Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats) is 43. Actor Shawn Ashmore is 42. Actor Jake McLaughlin is 39. Electronic musician Flying Lotus (AKA Steve Ellison) is 38. MLB player Evan Longoria is 36. Actor Holland Roden is 35. Actor Amber Stevens is 35. MLB outfielder Mookie Betts is 29. Actor Lulu Wilson is 16.

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Today in History: Today is Thursday, Oct. 7, the 280th day of 2021. - wausaupilotandreview.com

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. He was arguably one of the most powerful New York politicians since the notorious William Boss Tweed.

And like Tweed, hes remembered today more for his own political venality than for anything he did to help the public.

His personal corruption aside, his political offenses have done enduring damage to the state, the city and to Staten Island.

His misguided political gambit more than two decades ago continues to cost New York hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue each year.

He crushed Mayor Michael Bloombergs congestion pricing plan without ever letting it come to a vote in the state Legislature.

He killed a proposed West Side stadium and thus New York Citys chances to host the Summer Olympic Games in 2012.

He ignobly stalled the renovation of the 1/9 subway station at South Ferry following the 9/11 attacks.

He stopped the Staten Island secession movement dead in its tracks.

He is former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

COSTING NEW YORK BILLIONS

Silver was the undisputed leader of the Assembly from 1994 to 2015, when corruption charges finally brought him down.

During that time, he was one of the enormously powerful three men in a room, along with the governor and the state Senate majority leader, who divided the spoils in the state budget every year.

No legislation could proceed without Silvers assent. Assembly members voted the way he told them to.

His ability to rule by fiat was seen over and over again, but the most costly instance was when Silver spearheaded the repeal of the commuter tax in 1999.

Commuters get on and off a New Jersey Transit train at Newark Penn Station. (Larry Higgs/NJ.com)

The commuter tax was a 0.45 percent income levy on suburbanites who commuted to the city for work.

The logic was that the workers got the benefit of New York City police and fire protection and sanitation services while at work, so they should help pay for it all.

The commuter tax brought about $360 million into the citys treasury every year.

Politics, not economics, fueled Silvers decision to scuttle the tax.

Retiring GOP state Sen. Joseph Hollands seat in Rockland County was up for election that year. The Republican candidate running there opposed the commuter tax. To help the Democratic candidate be more competitive in the race, Silver moved to get the tax repealed.

But Silvers gambit failed and the seat remained in Republican hands. Meanwhile, state coffers are $7.2 billion, and counting, poorer because of the repeal of the commuter tax.

It could be argued that the congestion pricing plan currently under review might not be necessary were revenue from the commuter tax still rolling in.

KILLED CONGESTION PRICING TOO

Speaking of congestion pricing, Silver also killed Mayor Michael Bloombergs congestion pricing proposal in 2008, a proposal that pre-dates the one being looked at now.

Bloombergs plan would have charged motorists $8 and truckers $21 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street.

The silver lining for Staten Islanders and other outer-borough drivers was that under Bloombergs program, any tolls paid on the way to the congestion zone would offset the fee, eliminating the congestion charge outright for many.

With key assistance from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Bloomberg saw his congestion pricing plan approved by the Council.

All that remained for a congestion pricing pilot program to go forward was for the state Legislature to give its OK.

Thats where Silver stepped in, rejecting the proposal without even bringing it up for a vote. Silver claimed that there was scant support for congestion pricing in the Assembly.

The move killed congestion pricing and hung out to dry Council lawmakers whod publicly voted in favor of it even through their constituents were against it.

There are no indications that the current congestion pricing plan under review by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will include toll carve-outs for outer-borough motorists.

NO FRIEND OF BLOOMBERGS

It wasnt the only time that Silver cut the legs out from under Bloomberg.

The mayor in 2005 was leading the effort to have New York City host the 2012 Olympic Summer Games.

The centerpiece of the citys pitch was the building of a new 80,000-seat stadium on the West Side of Manhattan.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2005 makes pitch for New York City to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. (Monika Graff/Staten Island Advance)

Once the Olympics were over, the new stadium, with a retractable roof and other amenities, would be the new home of the New York Jets, meaning that at least one of New Yorks two NFL teams would actually play in New York and not New Jersey.

Unanimous approval by the three-member state Public Authorities Control Board was needed in order for the stadium plan to proceed. While GOP Gov. George Patakis representative on the board voted in favor, reps for Silver and GOP state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno turned thumbs-down.

Silver had said that the New York Olympic bid was a long shot and that he didnt see a great need for a West Side stadium.

The scuttling of the stadium doomed New Yorks Olympic bid. London won the balloting to host the 2012 Summer Games. And the Jets still play in New Jersey and still share a stadium with the New York Giants.

NO FRIEND TO STATEN ISLAND

Silver in 1994 refused to allow Assembly lawmakers to vote on the question of whether Staten Island should secede from the other four boroughs, even though then-Gov. Mario Cuomo said that he would sign secession legislation if it ever reached his desk.

Silver by one-man fiat thwarted the will of tens of thousands of Staten Island whod overwhelmingly voted in favor of exploring secession.

The borough charter commission in 1994 had submitted a bill to the Assembly and state Senate to create a City of Staten Island.

In this 1994 photo Gov. Mario Cuomo, seated, has just signed a measure authorizing a study and initiating the process of Staten Island's secession from New York City. Shaking Cuomo's hand, left, is state Sen. John J. Marchi. Applauding the signing are, from the left, Assemblywoman Elizabeth A. Connelly, College of Staten Island president Edmond Volpe and Assemblymen Robert Straniere and Eric Vitaliano. (Irving Silverstein/Staten Island Advance)

But Silver said that he would not permit the bill to come to a vote without a home-rule message from the city, which was as good as killing secession because Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and then-Council Speaker Peter Vallone both opposed secession.

Silvers home-rule edict was challenged in the courts to no avail, and the secession movement died.

POST-9/11 SUBWAY STALL

In another egregious slap at Staten Islanders, Silver in 2004 stalled the $400 million reconstruction of the 1/9 subway station at South Ferry, a rebuild that was part of the citys recovery from the 9/11 attacks. Tens of thousands of Island commuters use the station every day.

Silver said that the South Ferry improvements werent related to the damage wrought by the 9/11 attacks, but the federal Department of Transportation, the MTA, Bloomberg and Pataki were all on board with allocating the $400 million to the South Ferry station.

Silver denied accusations that he wanted to steer the money instead to his pet Second Avenue subway project.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, right, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg announce the deal on the South Ferry 1/9 subway station in 2004. (Frank Johns/Staten Island Advance)

Silver eventually relented on South Ferry in return for $15 million in improvements to Battery Park.

But the snub of the Island was clear: When the funding agreement was announced, then-GOP Rep. Vito Fossella, whod publicly stood up to Silver, was pointedly not invited to the press conference. Pataki was also excluded.

END OF THE ROAD

It all finally came crashing down for Silver in 2015, when he was was arrested on federal corruption charges connected to his outside legal work, including his work with a top city asbestos firm.

Silver was found guilty at two separate trials but served less than a year in prison before being furloughed during the COVID-19 epidemic. He is serving out the remainder of his six-and-half-year sentence under home confinement on the Lower East Side.

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Is this the greatest villain in NYC political history? - SILive.com

Left: Matthias De Visch, Portrait of Empress Maria Theresa (1749), Musea Brugge Groeningemuseum ( Lukasweb); right: Sleeve fragment in bobbin lace, Brussels region, Southern Netherlands, 174050 ( The Metropolitan Museum of Art, courtesy of Lannoo Publishers)

The term lace today might summon images of over-the-top wedding dresses, intricate lingerie, or perhaps the doilies and table runners that adorned our grandmothers table: sweet, decorative, and maybe a little kitsch. But when the latticed fabric first appeared in the 16th century, says Kaat Debo, director of the ModeMuseum (MoMU) in Antwerp, it was something completely new.

Lace, originally intended as an openedge finishing for clothing and interior textiles, creates a dimension that both obscures and accentuates the boundary between textiles, body and space, Debo writes in a foreword for the book accompanying the recently opened exhibition P.LACE.S Looking through Antwerp Lace. The show explores the citys role in the trade and production of lace across the centuries, bringing together historical fabrics, paintings, and archival documents to reveal how the delicate, weblike design became a staple of art, craft, fashion, status, and commerce.

P.LACE.S is on view at the museum and at four sites connected to the history of lace in Antwerp. Presentations at the Plantin-Moretus Museum, which holds one of the oldest archives in the world on the lace trade, and the St. Charles Borromeo Church, home to a large collection of 17th- and 18th-century lace, illuminate the international lace trade and its local production, respectively. At the Snijders & Rockox House, where Nicolaas Rockox, mayor of Antwerp, displayed his art collection, the exhibitionfocuses on lace as a symbol of wealth and class.

The final location is the Maagdenhuis (Maidens House), a former orphanage for girls turned into an art and historical museum. Throughout history, lace has been primarily produced by women, and in the 16th century, the Maagdenhuis housed a workshop where they learned sewing and lacemaking. For the show, a film by Rei Nadal inspired by the aesthetic of Dutch 17th-century paintings follows three young girls who lived at the orphanage and made lace.

Lace is a relatively modern development, unlike weaving and embroidery, which had both been in existence for thousands of years. An accompanying publication from Lannoo publishers traces the evolution of the latticed pattern, from early forerunners like pre-Columbian woven cotton textiles to the development of bobbin lacemaking. Paintings and other media, in addition to patterns and pattern books, were critical primary sources for the exhibition, and Old Master works are juxtaposed with lace fragments to illustrate their prominence. Matthias De Vischs Portrait of Empress Maria Theresa (1749), for instance, is shown with an 18th-century sleeve fragment in bobbin lace from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

MoMus own galleries, meanwhile, center on the impact of lace on fashion from its origins to the present. Most interestingly, the presentation highlights industry innovations, like 3D printing and laser cutting, that are changing how lace is produced and worn designers including Iris van Herpen, Azzedine Alaa, and Prada are all using new technologies and mediums to reimagine the possibilities of the enduring fabric.

This ambitious project tells the extraordinary story of the emergence of lace as a new luxury product at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and of the prominent role played by the city of Antwerp: a story of extraordinary professional skill and craftsmanship, technology and innovation, international trade and enterprise, writes Debo. It is also a story of girls and women who played an important role not only in the creative process and the production of lace, but also in the commercial activities of the international lace trade.

Link:

Not Your Grandmothers Doilies: New Exhibition Explores the History of Lace - Hyperallergic

COURTESY OF THE CITY OF MASSILLON| The Times-Reporter

Massillon Health and History Walks willlaunchOct. 19 indowntownMassillon.

The Massillon Rotary Foundation and Massillon Main Street have collaborated to sponsorthe program,whichincludesfour new walking tours in and around downtown Massillon.

The Massillon Health Department and the YMCA of Western Stark County have added a fitness component, and the Massillon Street Department will install the directional signs. The Massillon Public Library and the Massillon Museum have helped provide information and images.

Four walks, each starting outside the Massillon Museum,willfeatureaspects of Massillons history. The walk themes will be DowntownChurches,Femininity in Football City,PublicArt andHistoricDowntown.The guided route and history narration will be found atmhhwalk.comon mobile devices beginning Oct.19.

Walkers can follow the routes at any time and at their own pace.Sunscreen, comfortable shoes and ear buds are recommended.

Walkers can follow each route by listening to narration and directions or by reading them on their mobile devicesbyvisiting the websiteatmhhwalk.comor using the QR code found on every sign.Each stop along the way includes a brief history and photograph of the site.Signs will be posted along the routes with color-coded arrows to assist with wayfinding.

A free public launch of the walks will be held in the MassillonMuseums Gessner Hall, 121 Lincoln Way E,at5:30 p.m. Oct. 19.

For information:330-833-3146.

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Massillon Health and History Walks to lunch - New Philadelphia Times Reporter

Paul S. Flores goes over a new part as Vanessa Sanchez listens during the rehearsal of Flores documentary theater performance that pays homage to artists, activists and leaders of the Mission at La Brava Theater. Photo: Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

Two years ago, Paul S. Flores sat down to talk with feminist Chicana artist Yolanda Lpez. He was brainstorming ways to incorporate historical events into Paseo Artstico, a free bimonthly art walk he has coordinated since 2018 with the nonprofit Accin Latina.

His visit to the artists Mission District home turned out to be more than a conversation. Flores recalls bringing her a cup of coffee, and then taking her to a clinic appointment, at Lpezs request, at San Francisco General Hospital.

It feels like it was just yesterday, Flores, a poet and playwright, told The Chronicle, tearing up on a recent Wednesday. This was the first time I really had intimate time with her.

Lpez, known for her paintings that reimagine the Virgin of Guadalupe as a feminist superhero and her political posters in the 1970s and 80s, would meet with Flores about four more times over the next two years. But in September, she died of cancer. She was 79 years old.

On Oct. 23, viewers will get to experience some of what Flores learned from Lpez in the latest Paseo Artstico event, History Matters in the Mission, a documentary-theater performance inspired by the late artist and dedicated to her. Flores wrote the play and is featuredin several roles.

Using archival material from the Latino bilingual newspaper El Tecolote and contemporary interviews, the play will also pay homage to four other local artists and activists in addition to Lpez artist Michael Ros, journalist Juan Gonzales, and playwrights Joan Holden and Carlos Barn. Performers will re-enact and interpret events from the late 1960s and 70s that helped bring the Mission District what it is known for today: its historic murals and culture as well as its Latino activism.

Nine performances are scheduled between noon and 6 p.m. at different locations along 24th Street between York and Mission streets. The event aims to serve as a mini-historic tour of the area, Flores said.

The show is designed to be both loud and political, with giant puppets, a live band playing on the bed of a truck, and elements used in radical street theater, such as a cranky, a moving painted illustration. Used as a backdrop, it displays the opposite of what the person is talking about on stage, Flores explained. It points out the lies and the truths.

During Flores first meeting with Lpez in 2019, the artist pointed him to the book Restaging the Sixties: Radical Theaters and Their Legacies, by James M. Harding and Cindy Rosenthal. It examines the radical theater movement from that period and its role in political activism. Two companies born in those times the San Francisco Mime Troupe and El Teatro Campesino from San Juan Bautista (San Benito County) are featured in the book.

She was like, Paul, you should do a piece about how the Board of Supervisors and the mayor are fighting over how to deal with the homeless, but nothings happening with the homeless. But do a street theater piece and let people know that their leaders are taking them in (the) wrong direction, with the homelessness crisis, Paul recalled Lpez telling him.

She was very keen on what was happening in city politics, he added.

Dancer and choreographer Vanessa Sanchez is familiar with outdoor performances. Sanchez is the founder of the dance company La Mezcla, which blends tap dance, the son jarocho music of Mexico and Afro-Caribbean rhythms with the mission of bringing the often unseen histories and experiences of communities of color to stages, streets and fields, according to its website.

But Flores play will be Sanchezs first time acting in front of a crowd. She will play the role of Lpez.

Im excited, but Im nervous, said Sanchez, who also did the plays choreography. I always say Id rather answer a question by dancing it, so having to learn and memorize words is a little nerve-racking for me. But (Im) also honored in the sense that I will be portraying Yolanda Lpez.

In one of her monologues, Sanchez talks about some of Lpezs most famous works: the Guadalupe and Tableaux Vivant series, in which she redefined the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and aimed to elevate Latina women by using depictions of herself, her mother and grandmother. In one of her works, Lpezs mother is painted sewing the Virgin Marys blue mantle.

Lpezs art is something thats always spoken to me, said Sanchez, who identifies as Chicana and Native American. The second I read the words that were to be recited for this section, I was immediately moved and immediately saw and felt the choreography (and) the music that would accompany it.

Another person being celebrated in the play is Gonzales, the founder of El Tecolote, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.

When Flores sat down to interview the 74-year-old journalist, he wanted to learn about the biggest story Gonzales had worked on in the 1970s.

Flores, who will play Gonzales in his production, will focus on El Tecolotes 1977 investigation into the lack of medical interpreters at San Francisco General Hospital after a pregnant woman tried to get care and ended up losing her baby when no one understood what she was saying. Their coverage resulted in hospital officials creating a bilingual unit with 26 interpreters, according to Accin Latina.

There were a lot of issues at that time, a lot of things going on in the neighborhood, that werent being written about by the major papers, and there was very little neighborhood-based media at that time, recalled Gonzales, who started the newspaper while teaching a course called La Raza Journalism at San Francisco State University.

Gonzales, who now chairs the journalism department at City College of San Francisco, said El Tecolotes coverage also helped establish the modern Mission Districts identity by profiling artists, community members and cultural institutions that helped create a sense of pride among its residents.

Yes, theres still some issues, still some challenges, he said, but overall they feel good about this (being) their neighborhood, and the paper reflects that.

Flores hopes his play reflects that, too. He said hes wants to teach the tech and social media-raised generation the history of the Mission District.

I thought, What are we doing now with our art to educate people? What are we sharing with them that can educate them about where they come from and who they are?

History Matters in the Mission: Outdoor documentary theater performance. Noon-6 p.m. Oct. 23. Starting at the Balmy Alley murals at 50 Balmy St., S.F. Free. Masks are required. http://www.paseoartistico.org

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Outdoor theater makes Mission District heroes, history real in the actual streets - SF Chronicle Datebook

When Daddy Yankee showed up at a Montebello gas station to hype his infectious hit Gasolina, the Puerto Rican recording star drew so many fans he couldnt get out of the limo. That was the moment it hit local music publicist Ximena Acosta: Reggaeton was here to stay.

Im never going to forget. I had a chunk of my hair pulled out it was so bad, Acosta recalls in the buzzworthy Spotify podcast Loud: The History of Reggaeton. We tried taking him out of the limo a few times, and we just we couldnt. And I had that feeling in my gut of, Oh, my god, this is gigantic.

It was the mid-2000s, and Daddy Yankee, who had never been to Los Angeles, was pushing his 2004 breakout album Barrio Fino. He plays for the Yankees? Acosta remembers a local TV news station asking in response to her pitch.

But the streets of Los Angeles were well aware of Daddy Yankee and the sound of reggaeton, which naysayers at the time called a passing fad. After Daddy Yankee was trailed across East L.A. until he stopped at a taqueria, Acosta in the podcast recalls turning on the radio to a new soundscape. Power 106 was playing Don Omar, Super Estrella was playing Daddy Yankee, KIIS FM was playing Ivy Queen, and I was like ... This s is here to stay. This was going to completely, completely change the landscape of music.

When reggaeton star Daddy Yankee was promoting his 2004 album, some called reggaeton a fad. But by 2008 even Republican presidential candidate John McCain seen here with the Puerto Rican artist during a campaign event at a Phoenix high school knew the value of appealing to reggaeton fans.

(Getty Images)

It is a thrilling recollection in the middle of a deeply researched production by Spotify Originals and Futuro Studios. Loud, which comes out with its 10th and final episode this week, has arguably set a new standard in Latin music-focused historical cultural podcasts, after last years WBUR hit Anything for Selena. Its also breaking ground in its use of Spanish and Spanglish as the de facto lingua of the show, and the inspired choice of reggaeton original Ivy Queen as its host.

The podcast charts the journey of this amalgamation of musical influences in a direct line from Jamaica, to Panama, to New York, to Puerto Rico, where it boomed, and now to Colombia and the world.

A listener can hear Ivy Queen, a strong female leader in a male-dominated subculture, barely containing her wonderment at the global acceptance of the genre that was once the subject of censorship, police crackdowns and political persecutions. Its all detailed in the series.

I still remember the first time I got paid to rap, it was like $500, y yo pens que quinientos pesos era un millions of dollars, you know! Ivy Queen recalls in the 10th episode.

Tantas cosas han pasado, so much has happened. And look at reggaeton now! the host says. It kind of makes me ask myself, what is it that reggaeton has given to the world? What is our legacy?

Well, the 2017 reggaeton remix of the Luis Fonsi track Despacito, featuring Daddy Yankee and written by Erika Ender, became the most viewed video in YouTube history, and has notched more than 7.5 billion plays. Today Bad Bunny is making commercials for McDonalds and Cheetos, and was the most streamed artist on Spotify in 2020.

Bad Bunny was the most streamed artist on Spotify in 2020.

(Chris Walker / For The Times)

Listening to Loud, I was struck by the realization that one of the uglier footnotes to the history of reggaeton is that many people who now swoon over its reach probably disliked it when they first heard it.

To many ears in the early 2000s, reggaeton sounded somehow uncouth or vulgar. Lyrics were definitely not safe for work and artists who were club favorites were often said to be tied to the drug trade or to be overtly objectifying women. Many people with whom I otherwise shared plenty of cultural touchstones scoffed or simply said they hated it.

Not surprisingly, institutional respect was hard to come by. Even today, artists complain that the Latin Recording Academy puts reggaeton in its urban categories, using what many see as a term of exclusion and segregation. Latin Grammy wins in major categories have been rare for reggaeton stars. This year, artist J Balvin is calling for a boycott of the awards, two years after he and Daddy Yankee were no-shows at the 2019 ceremony following a social media campaign with the phrase Without reggaeton, theres no Latin Grammys.

These gatekeepers of what proper music is, whether they were in journalism or cultural institutions, had many objections, including the claim that the reggaeton delivery style did not qualify as singing, says Raquel Z. Rivera, one of the earliest writers on reggaeton. It was an aesthetically conservative argument. People dance to it, and you refuse to call it music?

Then, to top it off, she adds, there was the prejudice that people always have toward music genres if theyre produced by young Black people from lower income communities.

I loved reggaeton from the second I first heard it. It had an aggressive, very Latin baseline and somehow the music always sounded significantly better played, yes, loud, across FM radio or through subwoofers. It made me want to dance. Whats not to like?

When reggaeton really began to take hold locally, the city had already shifted to a majority-youth brown metropolis. In that sense, it sounded like popular music aimed primarily at urban immigrant young people, as opposed to, say, middle-class rockers from the outer cities, whose tastes have long defined the boundaries of youth popular culture.

The once-total dominance of Mexican regional genres in L.A. now had a formidable competitor for young peoples attentions.

And in the early days it was everywhere. Literally, every car stuck in lanes around me in South or East L.A., or cruising past in the other direction, was loudly playing Tego Calderon or Ivy Queen, la reina del sonido urbano. On Broadway or Central Avenue, streams of two-color fliers announcing shows at immigrant dance halls crowded all the available space on light posts.

In 2005, the station 96.3-FM moved to a full-time Latin urban format, giving reggaeton a permanent home on the L.A. airwaves that remains a leader to this day in a robust local market.

Ivy Queen on stage at Grand Slam Party Latino at Marlins Park in Miami on Dec. 5, 2015.

(Rodrigo Varela / Getty Images)

The Ivy Queen posters stood out. To the L.A. Latin queer community, Ivy Queen was an underground goddess. Her sharp features and deeper alto voice made some fans (and haters) assume she was transgender, which Ivy Queen acknowledges, but also who cared? How could you not dance even a little bit to her 2003 banger Yo Quiero Bailar?

It goes to your ear and once youre moving, thats it, its done, youre trapped, Ivy Queen says with a big laugh in a recent interview with The Times.

Reached via video conference to her studio in Miami, Ivy Queen calls L.A. one of her favorite places, a city that any hungry artist must conquer in order to go massive. Look at it: Nearly half the population is Latino and nearly a third of it is between 15 and 34. No wonder it had a part in catapulting reggaeton to the U.S. mainstream.

We have a lot of mexicanos, hondureos, salvadoreos coming to our shows, she says of her L.A. performances. Cada show que vamos hacer todava ponen los posters en las luces en la calle, and yo, thats an OG movement, thats retro, thats how you do the promo!

The podcast project for Ivy Queen has been an emotional roller coaster, which involved confronting her personal history and the challenging histories of some of her fellow trailblazers in the movement.

From the beginning, she wanted the production to remain true to the players, the roots, as well as the language that united it all. I asked Spotify [if] I could please maintain my essence and do my little Spanglish, Ivy Queen says. Because Im talking about the history of reggaeton and the whole movement is in Spanish. This music belongs to the Latinos, you know?

More than a hundred interviews were conducted for the podcast, and Spotify and Futuro Studios hired some of the most experienced and respected field producers around. The production also emphasized hiring female talent and engineers.

The reggaeton story had never really been told in a comprehensive way before, and we wanted to treat it with the same respect that any other great music had been told, whether it was jazz or hip-hop, says Marlon Bishop, executive producer of Futuro Studios.

The response has been overwhelmingly positive, according to Spotify executives. I had high expectations, and they delivered, says journalist Rivera.

With the dancing style of perreo think Latin twerking embraced by younger generations that did not experience the reggaeton backlash, its nice to hear Ivy Queen reflect on how far the music has come, especially for women and queer artists.

After all, change is constant.

I just hope that we dont lose the essence, que no la perdamos, the artist says. We see a lot of blend. Now its the pop reggaeton era, using all those drum patterns that reggaeton has. Im an OG. I need that beat to hit hard. I know music is supposed to evolucionar, but I hope we dont lose the true meaning of the lucha that we did.

Read more here:

How a Spotify podcast got the history of reggaeton right - Los Angeles Times

ON THIS DAY IN 1931, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, Manager Paul Binstock of the Fortway Theater reports a rush of youngsters to join the Mickey Mouse Club about to be launched by that theater and co-operating stores among which membership blanks have been distributed. The Mickey Mouse Club, suggested by the Mickey Mouse cartoons in sound, is one with a very definite purpose, explains Manager Binstock. For instance, here is the creed of the Mickey Mouse Club: I will be a square shooter in my home, in school, on the playground and wherever I may be. I will be truthful and honorable, and strive, always, to make myself a better and more useful little citizen. I will respect my elders and help the aged, the helpless and children smaller than myself. In short, I will be a good American!

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ON THIS DAY IN 1942, the Eagle reported, Today is the day Brooklyns millions deliver their own private kick in the pants to Hitler and Hirohito. Today at 3 p.m. Brooklyn begins putting out its scrap. Tomorrow morning at 6:45 the Department of Sanitations trucks start rumbling through the graying light to pick up the stuff with which your Uncle Samuels sinews of war will be strengthened. All day long 250,000 volunteers, shock troops in Brooklyns battle for material, were going from door to door, flat to flat, block to block, urging all to get it out. They told householders about the deadline. That is important. Begin putting the scrap on the sidewalk in front of your home at 3 p.m. today. Get it all out before 6:45 a.m. tomorrow. Dont miss the boat. When the trucks pass, it will be too late for them to turn back. Dont be too late. And dont give too little. Every patriotic man, woman and child searched today through every apartment, cellar, attic and garage in the borough to get every bit of scrap metal out to the curb this afternoon or tonight. Today brought to a climax the boroughs greatest treasure hunt, a search for an unlimited amount of scrap desperately needed to keep the nations war production on the march. Today it was up to Brooklyn to answer the last call.

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ON THIS DAY IN 1948, the Eagle reported, BOSTON The Braves, eager to make it two in a row over the [Cleveland] Indians in their World Series duel here this afternoon, jumped into an early lead by scoring a run off Bob Lemon in the first inning. The Indians who are changing their name to the Guardians next year ended up winning Game 2 of the 1948 World Series 4-1. Eddie Robinson, Clevelands 27-year-old first baseman, went 1-for-3 with a walk. In his 13-year career, Robinson also played for the Washington Senators, Chicago White Sox, Philadelphia As, N.Y. Yankees, Kansas City As, Detroit Tigers and Baltimore Orioles. The four-time All-Star later served as general manager of the Atlanta Braves and Texas Rangers. He was baseballs oldest living former player and the last living former Indians player to have won a World Series when he died Oct. 4, 2021 at age 100.

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ON THIS DAY IN 1954, the Eagle reported, The state campaign warmed up today with Republican and Democratic candidates heatedly trading racial prejudice charges. Averell Harriman, Democratic gubernatorial candidate, started the ball rolling when he accused his opponent, Senator Irving M. Ives, of trying to create a spirit of hatred between the state and New York City voters. At the same time, Tammany Leader Carmine DeSapio charged the Onondaga County Republican organization with bigotry because a picture of Jacob K. Javits, GOP candidate for attorney general, was left off campaign literature distributed by the upstate group. Javits countered that both Democrats were using gutter tactics and charged that Harriman had become a weak and willing mouthpiece for the masterminds of gangster-connected Tammany Hall. He described the Onondaga organizations omission as inadvertent and ascribed it to the fact that he had not supplied the committee with his picture. Ives lashed out at the Democrats and accused Harriman of trying to tie anti-Semitism to me. Of course my whole record completely and absolutely belies anything of that kind, the GOP candidate told newsmen accompanying him on his upstate swing of 12 counties.

***

NOTABLE PEOPLE BORN ON THIS DAY include talk show host Joy Behar, who was born in Brooklyn in 1942; former N.Y. Yankees coach Jose Cardenal, who was born in 1943; Rock and Roll Hall of Famer John Mellencamp, who was born in 1951; Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Tico Torres (Bon Jovi), who was born in 1953; cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who was born in 1955; American Idol judge Simon Cowell, who was born in 1959; Unbreak My Heart singer Toni Braxton, who was born in 1967; Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Thom Yorke (Radiohead), who was born in 1968; Boiler Room director Ben Younger, who was born in Brooklyn in 1972; former NFL running back Priest Holmes, who was born in 1973; American Idol winner Taylor Hicks, who was born in 1976; former NFL cornerback Charles Woodson, who was born in 1976; San Francisco Giants third baseman Evan Longoria, who was born in 1985; and L.A. Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts, who was born in 1992.

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SIGNING IN: Caesar Rodney was born on this day in 1728. The Delaware native was a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia and cast a tie-breaking vote that led to the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which he signed. He died in 1784 after a long battle with cancer.

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MEOW AND FOREVER: Cats premiered on this day in 1982. The second-longest-running production in Broadway history (after The Phantom of the Opera) was based on a book of poetry by T.S. Eliot and had a score by Andrew Lloyd Webber. More than 10 million theatergoers saw the New York City production, which closed Sept. 10, 2000 after 7,485 performances.

***

Special thanks to Chases Calendar of Events and Brooklyn Public Library.

Quotable:

If you break your knee, you have therapy on your knee, and its the same for your heart.

singer-songwriter Toni Braxton, who was born on this day in 1967

October 6 |Brooklyn Eagle History

October 5 |Brooklyn Eagle History

October 4 |Shlomo Sprung

October 1 |Brooklyn Eagle History

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October 7: ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY - Brooklyn Daily Eagle

The Astros and White Sox are set to square off, hopefully for five games, in the American League Division Series starting Thursday in Houston. Managers Dusty Baker and Tony La Russa have combined for 58 years of experience on the job. It isn't too surprising, given that, to say that their paths have crossed a few times. But there is a ton of history here, actually, between two men who for years and years insisted they were still friends off the field.

They were actually teammates for a quick second with the 1971 Braves. That's seemingly when they first got to know one another. Then, in 1986, La Russa was fired from his post as White Sox manager and hired midseason by the Athletics. Baker was on that team in his final season as a player. La Russa in the past often spoke glowingly about what a good veteran leadership presence Baker was in the clubhouse. Once Baker retired, though, he didn't join the A's coaching staff. He went across the bay to the Giants. He was their hitting coach in 1989, when La Russa's A's beat the Giants in the World Series.

Still, there wasn't really anything simmering between the two. They were just friends who once played together and then later saw one manage the other for a bit.

It was Baker's Giants against La Russa's Cardinals. In the third inning of Game 1, Kenny Lofton homered and apparently didn't run around the bases fast enough for the Cardinals' liking. Next time Lofton came up, his tower was buzzed with a fastball and he didn't like it. Benches cleared. Along the side of the scrum, La Russa and Baker were involved in a shouting match. It was a big enough deal that both managers were fined for "conduct unbecoming" of a manager. La Russa was still angry with Lofton for what he believes was an overreaction to a pitch that wasn't intentionally with a purpose.

"I think Lofton should pay the fines for both Dusty and myself," La Russa said (via nytimes.com).

He actually made that request, too, pushing for the player to pay the price for his and Baker's actions.

Lofton would end up hitting a walk-off single in Game 5 to send the Giants to the World Series.

During the course of 2003, Baker's Cubs and La Russa's Cardinals were fighting for first place in the NL Central. Things finally simmered to a boil on Sept. 3. There had been back-and-forth talk in the media about some hit batsmen possibly being one of the Cubs' "tricks" to get into the heads of the Cardinals. To which Baker said, "I've heard Tony say things before. As far as I'm concerned, tricks are for kids, and I don't take kindly to threats." (via chicagotribune.com)

In the second inning on Sept. 3, Cubs starter Matt Clement hit Cardinals starter Dan Haren with a pitch. Next time Clement came up, Haren returned the favor. And then, fireworks (2:44 is specifically the juiciest part. Baker's lips are NSFW)

The two managers were screaming at each other from the opposing dugouts! Amazing theater right there.

After the game, Baker said this was "just the beginning" and that the Cardinals were overreacting to the Cubs bringing the fight to them on the field.

Baker was now with the Reds while La Russa was still with the Cardinals. Brandon Phillips paved the way for this one. Before this game against the Cardinals, the Reds second baseman said the following (via stltoday.com): "I hate the Cardinals. All they do is bitch and moan about everything, all of them, they're little bitches, all of 'em. I really hate the Cardinals."

Many will remember before the bottom of the first even started that Phillips and Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina got this thing going and it turned into an ugly melee with La Russa and Baker again squaring off.

We're now up to two times when both managers were suspended as a result of their actions against one another in addition to being fined during the NLCS.

This one lingered into 2012, too.

Remember, La Russa retired from his post with the Cardinals after winning the 2011 World Series. He also had the right to manage the 2012 All-Star team. Reds players involved in the fight, Johnny Cueto and Phillips, had cases to make the team, but did not. Baker suggested the snubs stemmed from the 2010 fight and that La Russa was holding a grudge. Cueto had words as well. La Russa replied as such.

"The comments Dusty made clearly disappoint me and are attacking my integrity. The All-Star experience is too important to let anything stand in the way of a decision like that." (via Yahoo)

More: "I feel betrayed by him," La Russa said (via CBS local). "Professionally is one thing, but that was personal. I'm really upset about it. That was a knife in the back there that I don't think I'll forget."

La Russa even mentioned this incident in his book and referenced Baker, but he only called him "the Reds manager" and didn't use his name, saying this harmed the "friendship" the two claimed they shared for so long.

Will we add another chapter during the 2021 ALDS?

The best guess is that isn't very likely. Sure, they'reare meeting in the postseason yet again, but La Russa is 77 and Baker is 72 and they haven't sparred in years. Their teams played six times this season and nothing of note happened between the two. They shake hands before the game and then get down to business.

If there is an issue between the two teams, however, remember the extensive history here between these two. It would be pretty funny if there was another issue.

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Tony La Russa and Dusty Baker have history -- here's a look at a growing feud that has lasted multiple decades - CBS Sports