American Playwright Eugene O'Neill

In a city known for it’s talented musicians, authors and artists, few have had the success that NYC-born Eugene O’Neill had. This American playwright completed over 35 plays and won four Pulitzer Prizes during his 30-year career.

Not the greatest family guy – he disowned two out of his three children: his daughter Oona for marrying Charlie Chaplin and his son Shane for his addiction to heroin – O’Neill was a brilliant writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936, “for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy.”

Sadly, by the end of his career O’Neill developed a Parkinson’s-like tremor in his hands that kept him from writing for the last ten years of his life. Born in the Barrett Hotel in Longacre Square in Manhattan (now Times Square) on October 16, 1888, Eugene O’Neill died in Boston’s Sheraton Hotel on November 27, 1953, after uttering his last words, “I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room and died in a hotel room.”

The Dinner Table Bargain

On June 20, 1790 in New York City, US forefather Thomas Jefferson held one of the most significant and pivotal dinner parties of the century. In attendance were James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and then president, George Washington.

The discussion at hand involved both Hamilton’s longing to standardize the nation’s accounts including a federal assumption of all state debts, estimated at about $80 million, and James Madison’s concern over the potential final location of the nation’s capital. As a Virginian, Madison feared his state would lose influence if the capital were to be placed in the North.

Madison had openly fought Hamilton’s plan, so Jefferson offered to bring the men together to talk over the situation. Known as the Dinner Table Bargain, this meeting of the minds led to the Compromise of 1790. By the end of the evening, the men reached an agreement: Hamilton would support the Potomac site for the new capital and Madison would no longer block assumption in Congress.

Years later, Jefferson would claim that he had been tricked into the evening’s agreement by Hamilton. A blow that was surely softened when in 1801, he took office as the first president in the new city on the Potomac River known as Washington.

Broadway Festive as New Yorkers Celebrate Superbowl Champions NY Giants

  

It seems all of New York turned out yesterday for the ticker tape parade celebrating the New York Giants' Superbowl Championship. The crowd was thick with blue jerseys, and the kids threw toilet paper back and forth across Broadway as everybody waited for the parade to begin. Sidewalks on either side of Broadway were absolutely packed with Giants fans, starting south of the Wall Street Bull and headed north, all the way up the Canyon of Heroes to City Hall and Chambers Street.

Despite the huge turnout (reports say over one million people lined Broadway), the crowd was well-controlled. It seemed, for the most part, that everyone was happy to skip work for the morning and celebrate the hometown heroes. Eli Manning, Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Cuomo spent the morning riding on the same float headed uptown, hoisting the Vince Lombardi Trophy high for photos.

To see the rest of our images from the Giants ticker tape parade, click here.