ON THIS DAY IN 1909, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “An Eskimo just in from a journey of nearly 400 miles appeared at Etah, a bleak native settlement far up on the west coast of Greenland, on May 7 of last year, bearing a letter. The message was written by Dr. Frederick A. Cook of Brooklyn. It was dated March 17, 1908. It came from the Arctic Ocean and contained the news that Dr. Cook was on his way to the North Pole. When the Eskimo got the letter from Dr. Cook, the explorer was forty miles from land on the polar ice pack, almost due north of Cape Thomas Hubbard, which is the extreme western point of that great island which lies to the west of Greenland, and which is divided, like so many counties, into Ellesmere Land, Grinnell Land, Great Land and King Oscar Land. That is the last that the civilized world has heard from Dr. Cook. With this letter as a clew, Dillon Wallace will start this summer to find Dr. Cook.”
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ON THIS DAY IN 1926, the Eagle reported, “Mayor James J. Walker has accepted the honorary chairmanship of the New York Sesquicentennial Committee, it was announced yesterday by Oscar S. Straus, chairman of the committee, according to the Associated Press. Chairmen of other committees announced by Mr. Straus included Owen D. Young as head of the committee on the official participation of the City of New York, and George Gordon Battle as chairman of the committee on the official participation of New York State.”…