All’s Well That Mends Well

Bring Them Your Torn Jeans, Your Broken Jewelry, Your Malfunctioning Appliances Yearning to Work Again

December 7

43 BC – Marcus Tullius Cicero is assassinated. 1703 – The Great Storm of 1703, the greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, makes landfall. Winds gust up to 120 mph, and 9,000 people die. 1869 – American outlaw Jesse James commits his first confirmed bank robbery in Gallatin, Missouri. 1930...
The USS Cassin, a destroyer, has capsized against the USS Downes, another destroye, in a Pearl Harbor drydock. The USS Pennsylvania is astern, occupying the rest of the dry dock.

Valediction: Robert Serpico

“It’s a home run,” Robert Serpico, the retiring vice president and chief financial officer of the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) says, looking out the window of his office in Brookfield Place. “The mix of residential and retail and commercial development, with one-third of the land set aside for parks and public space, plus museums...
Battery Park City Authority vice president and chief financial officer Robert Serpico: "I always knew the community had a bright future, but I could not have dreamed that it would be this positive. I feel privileged to have had a seat at this table for 30 years and to have been able to help contribute to what's out there now."

December 6

963 – Leo VIII elected Pope 1060 – Béla I of Hungary is crowned king of Hungary 1631 – First predicted transit of Venus (Kepler) is observed 1790 – The U.S. Congress moves from New York City to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1825 – Pres John Adams suggests establishment of a US observatory 1862 – Pres Lincoln...
Gerald Ford

The Bad News Keeps on Coming

At the November 17 meeting of the School Overcrowding Task Force, Eric Greenleaf, a Tribeca parent who has served for almost a decade on the panel, sounded a dire demographic warning. Amid ongoing jubilation about plans (announced in earlier this year) to open a new public elementary school on Trinity Place, in the Financial District,...
School Overcrowding Task Force member Eric Greenleaf: Students who grow up in apartments now being built in Lower Manhattan, "will not be in the position of waiting for the new Trinity Place school to open. They will be in the position of having no school at all. No school for them has been funded, or is even currently planned."

December 5

771 – Charlemagne becomes the sole King of the Franks after the death of his brother Carloman. 1456 – Earthquake strikes Naples; about 35,000 die 1492 – Columbus discovers Hispaniola (El Espanola/Haiti) 1766 – London auctioneers Christie’s hold their first sale 1792 – George Washington re-elected  president 1876 – Fire at Brooklyn Theater kills 295,...
O. J. Simpson