In April of 1931, eight slot machines were seized by Troopers in raids on a number of hotels in the Catskills town of Fallsburg, including the Elm Shade, the Ambassador, and the Flagler. The machines were destroyed “in the public square” before more than 150 onlookers and the $130 found inside them was turned over to the Town’s poor fund. [Read more…] about The Catskills Slot Machine Racket
Crime and Justice
Saratoga’s Spencer Trask Memorial Being Restored After Vandalism
The Saratoga Springs City Council has accepted a donation by the Saratoga Springs Preservation Foundation to make a repair to the architectural surround of the Spirit of Life and Spencer Trask Memorial in Congress Park, a National Historic Landmark. In 2019 a baluster of the surround was stolen. [Read more…] about Saratoga’s Spencer Trask Memorial Being Restored After Vandalism
Sting Nets Illegal Pesticide Sellers in Manhattan
According to a press release issued by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), on June 2nd, Department investigators and investigators from the Office of the Attorney General Letitia James executed a search warrant and a covert street sweep in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan to confiscate unregistered pesticides being sold to the public. [Read more…] about Sting Nets Illegal Pesticide Sellers in Manhattan
Operation Low Tide Nabs Crab, Turtle Poachers
According to a press release issued by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), on June 10th, after receiving multiple complaints of people keeping undersized marine species, shellfish from uncertified waters, and protected terrapins (commonly called turtles) during low tide, Environmental Conservation Officers (ECOs) Veloski and Currey participated in Operation Low Tide, an enforcement initiative to combat the illegal taking of wildlife and shellfish in New York City. [Read more…] about Operation Low Tide Nabs Crab, Turtle Poachers
Repeat Saratoga County Poacher Gets Jail Time
According to a press release issued by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), a hunter who previously had his license to hunt revoked for poaching recently received jail time for illegally taking a deer in Saratoga County.
Environmental Conservation Officer (ECO) Shaw reported that in January 2021, they received an anonymous tip regarding large deer antlers brought into a local taxidermist in November 2020 by a revoked hunter using another hunter’s tag. [Read more…] about Repeat Saratoga County Poacher Gets Jail Time
The Truth About Lies: A History of Deceit
This week on The Historians Podcast, Aja Raden is author of The Truth About Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit (St. Martin’s Press, 2021), a history of con artistry and deception. [Read more…] about The Truth About Lies: A History of Deceit
Saratoga’s Courthouse Bell Was Saved By Preservationists
Hundreds of cars drive down McMaster Street in Ballston Spa on a daily basis, but few may notice the beautiful old bell that sits silently on display in front of Building 1 of the Saratoga County Complex. [Read more…] about Saratoga’s Courthouse Bell Was Saved By Preservationists
John Hersey and the Hiroshima Cover-up
In Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World (Simon & Schuster, 2020), a crisply-written, well-researched book, Lesley Blume, a journalist and biographer, tells the fascinating story of the background to John Hersey’s path-breaking article “Hiroshima” and of its extraordinary impact upon the world.
In 1945, although only 30 years of age, Hersey was a very prominent war correspondent for Time magazine — a key part of publisher Henry Luce’s magazine empire — and living in the fast lane. That year, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel, A Bell for Adano, which had already been adapted into a movie and a Broadway play. Born the son of missionaries in China, Hersey had been educated at upper class, elite institutions, including the Hotchkiss School, Yale, and Cambridge. During the war, Hersey’s wife, Frances Ann, a former lover of young Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, arranged for the three of them to get together over dinner. Kennedy impressed Hersey with the story of how he saved his surviving crew members after a Japanese destroyer rammed his boat, PT-109. This led to a dramatic article by Hersey on the subject — one rejected by the Luce publications but published by the New Yorker. The article launched Kennedy on his political career and, as it turned out, provided Hersey with the bridge to a new employer – the one that sent him on his historic mission to Japan. [Read more…] about John Hersey and the Hiroshima Cover-up
New Book Considers The Last Slave Ships & New York
The city of New York was at the center of the illegal trans-Atlantic slave trade during the 1850s and early 1860 conveying kidnapped and enslaved Africans from the coast of West Africa primarily into Cuba where there was an expanding sugar industry.
In The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage (Yale Univ. Press, 2020), John Harris, a professor of history at Erskine College in South Carolina, estimates that between 1853 and 1867, 474 shipments carrying almost 200,000 men women and children were brought to Cuba. Most of this was brokered by transplanted Brazilians and Portuguese known as the Portuguese Company, who shifted their operation to New York because of the decline of the Angola to Brazil slave trade in the 1850s. Harris argues they were supported by the pro-slavery faction of the city’s Democratic Party and its chief financial institutions. [Read more…] about New Book Considers The Last Slave Ships & New York
Rangers Break Up Large Party on State Land
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Forest Ranger Thomes reported that while on patrol on Saturday night, May 29, at about 11:45 pm he overheard radio traffic detailing a large gathering underway at Perch River Wildlife Management Area, in the Pamelia, Jefferson County. [Read more…] about Rangers Break Up Large Party on State Land