Geneva1939
Jan 20
Charles Ives "Concord" Sonata is given its premiere in
New York City.
Jan 25
Boxer Joe Louis knocks out John Henry Lewis in New York City.
Feb 22
22,000 American Nazis rally in Madison Square Garden.
Feb 24
Tammany Hall district leader James H. Hines is convicted of taking
bribes from the Dutch Schulz gang. The prosecution is conducted by New
York District AttorneyThomas E. Dewey.
Feb 28
A contractor admits he erased "Made in Germany" from machines sold to
the City of New York. ** Broadway dancer-choreographer-director
Tommy Tune is born in Wichita Falls, Texas.
March
Recovered from tuberculosis, trumpeter L
Carter Big Band at New York City's Savoy Ballroom.
Mar 3
John Ford's Stagecoach premieres at Radio City Music
Hall.
Mar 11
Trolley service in Elmira is discontinued.
Mar 25
A New York City anti-Nazi march draws 20,000 people.
Mar 30
Hitler's nephew William, living in New York City, calls his uncle a
"menace".
Apr 1
Actress Ali Macgraw is born in Pound Ridge.
Apr 29
The Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, linking the Bronx with Long Island, opens
to traffic.
Apr 30
The New York World's Fair opens in Long Island's Flushing Meadows.
Roosevelt opens the fair from the Court of Peace, by pushing a button
that starts a reaction utilizing the light from the star Arcturus. 22
foreign countries, not including Germany, exhibit. The event is
televised and broadcast from New York City's Empire State Building.
May
Louis Bacon leaves Benny Carter's Big Band to sail to Europe and join
Willie Lewis and his orchestra. ** Office space is provided for
the City Health Department in the basement of Batavia's City Hall.
May 2
Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig breaks his streak of 2,130 consecutive
games, never plays again.
May 4
The New York World's Fair's one-millionth visitor enters.
May 16
Rochester begins the first food-stamp plan, to get surplus food stocks
to the needy.
May 20
Regular transatlantic air service begins as the Pan American Airways'
Yankee Clipper, takes off for Europe from Port Washington
Jun 1
A Douglas DC-4 flies 40 passengers from Chicago to New York,
inaugurating service between the two cities.
Jun 10
England's King George and Queen Elizabeth visit the World's Fair.
Jun 12
The Baseball Hall of Fame Museum opens in Cooperstown. The first
players chosen for membership are Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy
Mathewson, Babe Ruth, and Honus Wagner.
Jun 28
Pan-American Airways' Dixie Clipper lands in Lisbon
with 22 people aboard from Port Washington, Long Island, inaugurating
transatlantic passenger air service with a flight lasting 23 hours and
52 minutes. ** Joe Louis defeats Tony Galento in New York City.
Jul 4
Lou Gehrig says goodbye to 61,808 of his fans at Yankee Stadium as he
retires from baseball because of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, which
will be nicknamed after him.
Jul 10
Pan Am's Yankee Clipper establishes regular
transatlantic passenger service when it lands in London.
Jul 14
State Senator C. Tracey Stagg is found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot
wound in the woods near his Ithaca home. A note blames poor health and
work pressures.
Jul 25
Rookie pitcher Atley Donald leads the Yankees to a 5-1 victory over the
St. Louis Browns, in his 12th straight victory - an American League
record for a rookie starting pitcher.
Jul 27
Switzerland's Bank of Basle announces it will open a branch in New York
City.
Aug 9
Yankees third baseman Red Rolfe scores the beginning run of a 18-game
scoring streak. He will score 30 runs altogether in that time. **
New York television station W2XBS is the first television station to
telecast a tennis tournament, from Rye.
Aug 12
90,000 people in New York City march in an American Federation of Labor
(AFL) parade.
Aug 26
W2XBS televises the first baseball games in a double-header between the
Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.
Aug 27
Baseball player Carl Michael Yastrzemski is born in Southampton. **
The World's Fair sets an one-day attendance record of 306,480.
Sep 5
Prices soar on the New York Stock Exchange.
Sep 17
Alice Marble and Bobby Riggs win the U. S. tennis championships at
Forest Hills.
Sep 28
1,000 delegates to the Women's Christian Temperance League (WCTU)
convention being held in Rochester, travel by 52 buses fifteen miles
west to Churchville, to honor the 100th birthday of founder Frances
Willard, born there.
Oct 8
The Yankees win the World Series, against the Cincinnati Reds, seven
games to four.
Oct 15
New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia dedicates North Beach Airport,
since named after him.
Oct 20
Frank Capra's film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
premieres at Radio City Music Hall.
Oct 21
The Advisory Committee of Uranium meets in New York City to consider
the possibility of making an atomic bomb.
Oct 31
The New York World's Fair closes.
Nov 1
Rockefeller Center, designed by Corbett, Harrison and MacMurray; Hoat,
Godley and Fouilhouz; and Reinhard and Hofmeister, opens.
Nov 8
Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's dramatization of Life with
Father opens with Lindsay playing the title role, runs for
seven years. ** Admiral Richard Byrd's snow cruiser, on its way
to Boston for an Antarctic expedition, breaks down on Route 20 at the
Texaco Town truck stop. It's repaired three days later and continues
on.
Nov 29
Bund leader Fritz Kuhn is found guilty of larceny, in New York City.
Dec 5
Fritz Kuhn is sentenced to two to five years in prison.
City
The dismantling of the Sixth Avenue elevated line begins. **
President Roosevelt steps in to settle the dispute over the building of
a bridge between lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, denying federal funds
for the project. The bridge project becomes a tunnel project, 1949's
Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. ** The Museum of Modern Art moves to its
present location. ** Berenice Abbott finishes working on the
photographic document of the city that will be published as
Changing New York. ** Louis Zabar opens a
delicatessen at 2245 Broadway. ** Morocco-born Sheik Daoud Ahmed
Faisal and his wife, Bermuda-born Sayedah (Mother) Khadijah Faisal
found Brooklyn Heights' Islamic Mission of America mosque. **
8,000,000 vehicles use the George Washington Bridge this year. **
William Zorach sculpts Builders of the Future for the
World's Fair. ** Leo Durocher becomes manager of the Brooklyn
Dodgers. ** Lou Gehrig is elected to the Hall of Fame. **
The Group Theater produces William Saroyan's Time of Your
Life. ** George F. Kaufman and Moss Hart's The
Man Who Came to Dinner, Lillian Hellman's The Little
Foxes and Philip Barry's The Philadelphia
Story, premiere on Braodway. ** Dorothy Schiff becomes
owner and publisher of the New York Post . ** A
Princeton-Columbia baseball game is the first televised college sports
event. ** The Straw Hat Revue opens at th
Ambassador Theater. It stars unknowns Danny Kaye, Jerome Robbins,
Alfred Drake and Imogene Coca.
State
Future Hammondsport mayor C. Arthur Niver and his wife Julia move
there. ** The approximate date Italian immigrant Augustino
Iacovelli begins selling spiedies, a shish-kabob variation, in
Binghamton. ** The children of Orator F. and Cora Talmadge
Woodward donate a library to the village of Le Roy. ** Samuel I.
Newhouse buys New York's Syracuse Journal.
Batavia
Businessman Fred B. Parker serves as commissioner of New York State
exhibits at the New York World's Fair. ** The Clippers baseball
team contends in the Class D Pennsylvania, Ontario and New York (PONY)
League.
Rochester
The city's Italian Cultural Club is formed, open to all those speaking
the language.
David Minor
Eagles Byte Historical Research
Rochester, New York
716 264-0423
http://home.eznet.net/~dminor