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The guest mentioned the 1945 bomber crash
into the Empire State building. I was a
college student at that time and had a summer
job in Greenwicj Village that required a half
day on Saturday. I remember it was a very
foggy morning and I heard a crash but didn't
see anything until I was on my way to the subway and saw the side of the building.

I am descended from a particularly notorious character named Cornelius von Tinhoven. He worked as the general secretary and translator for the Dutch West India Company which pretty much ran New Amsterdam at the time. He spoke many of the Native languages as well as most of the European languages. He was a womanizer despite being really fat and having a big boil on his face. He absconded with a lot of money from the company and also with a young woman who was not his wife and was never seen again. He was a corrupt, scheming, Native-killing official who profited enormously from the commercial climate that the Dutch fostered in the colony.

Here are two interesting stories for Mr. Barron's next edition of his book:

(1) The NRA started in NY (c. 1871) and was initially funded by the State of NY. It was HQ'd at Creedmoor, in Queens where street names like Range Street and Winchester Ave. still exist. The NRA was formed by Union officers to improve the marksmanship of northern citizens so that when they were called up by the state militias they would know how to shoot, like the rural confederates, who were much better shots.

(2) America's first gun control law against "white" people was also in NYC. There were many such laws before the Civil War against black people. It was called the Sullivan Act (c.1911); named after a corrupt Democrat Tammany Hall state legislator. Tammany and the Dems were linked to many criminal gangs and they were upset at ship owners and warehouse owners arming their crews so that the criminal gangs couldn't rob them. Since few things are cut and dry, people who have written of the history have also added that this Act was anti-immigrant (new Italian and Jewish gangs were fighting the older Irish, English & Germans) and during this period the Mayor of NY was shot and later died. This gave Tammany a needed push to pass its desired law to help its own criminals. PS - My Great uncle was a cop in Brooklyn starting in 1905 and knew the "wise guys" and pols of that era. We grew up knowing the criminal and racist underpinnings of gun control law, though any review of history going back to the Greeks and Romans, will show that all weapons control is created for racial and religious oppression.

PS - Please see the WPA Guide to NYC for many additional great stories and background for NYC.

Kudos to James Barron for mining great NY stories. I hope ypu cover the Sacco and Vanzetti case.

Thanks to the Times' archive, I found out that a piano thief(!) hid out in my building in 1882, which is now my favorite weird story about my apartment.