May 4, 2007

100 Years Ago int the forward

New York City License Commissioner John Bogart is warning Lower East Siders to be on the lookout for a scam artist known to the police as “Davidovich.” The scammer has been placing advertisements in Yiddish papers, offering a percentage of his successful employment agency. He brings potential investors to a busy agency that is, in fact, not his, and explains to them how profitable it is. He accepts hundreds of dollars for the percentage he’s selling, and then manages to disappear completely.

75 Years Agoin the forward

Several Nazi Party candidates from a few small provinces have been appealing to local Jews to vote for them in the upcoming elections to the Prussian Senate. In these appeals they state that their leader, Adolf Hitler, has given up on antisemitism. The election, in which the Nazis have fielded 140 candidates, is expected to result in a power-sharing coalition between Christian Socialists and Social Democrats. Other than the extreme nationalist parties, there is no talk of any other party willing to share power with the Nazis.

50 Years Ago in the forward

Last week was doubly lucky for the “human encyclopedia,” Columbia University professor Charles Van Doren. Not only did he again win big on the quiz show “21,” but he also saw the publication of his brand-new book, “Lincoln’s Commando,” a biography of W.B. Cushing, one of the union’s most important generals. To top it off, Van Doren also took a trip to the Virgin Islands to marry his secretary, Geraldine Bernstein, a graduate of New York University who met Van Doren at a party in Greenwich Village. When Van Doren first started winning big on the quiz show, his mailbox was flooded with marriage proposals, but Bernstein had already swooped up the young genius.

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