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Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Brooklyn Daily Eagle


     I recently discovered an interesting site that allows you to research the Brooklyn Daily Eagle for any subject, including chess. For example, when I typed in “Reshevsky” there were 469 matches.


     “Pillsbury” turned up 3,923 matches and “Frank Marshall” yielded almost 58,000! It should be pointed out that by “match” they mean how times the person's name appears. e.g. if it appears six times in an article, that's six “matches.” 
     The Brooklyn Eagle was a daily newspaper published in Brooklyn, New York and later in New York City for 114 years from 1841 to 1955. At one point it was the most popular afternoon paper (with the largest daily circulation in the nation) in the United States. Walt Whitman, the 19th Century poet, was its editor for two years. 
     The paper, renamed The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Kings County Democrat on June 1, 1846, was again renamed, on May 14, 1849, the name being shortened to The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. On September 5, 1938, the name was further shortened, to Brooklyn Eagle.
     The paper ceased publication in 1955 due to a prolonged strike and was briefly revived from the bankrupt estate between 1960 and 1963, and later, with its former name now in the public domain, in the late 1990s in association with another local newspaper in the borough. A new version of the Brooklyn Eagle as a revival of the old newspaper's traditions began publishing in 1996. It has no business relation to the original Eagle, although it publishes a daily historical/nostalgia feature called "On This Day in History," made up of much material from the pages of the old original Eagle. 
     The Brooklyn Public Library maintains an online archive of the original Brooklyn Daily Eagle issues encompassing the years 1841 through 1955, a virtual encyclopedic survey of the history of the City and the later Borough of Brooklyn for more than a century...and, more importantly for all of us chess aficionados, the chess columns.  Have fun browsing!

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