Brooklyn

Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims is a church in Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn, New York City. It was a station of the Underground Railroad, and the... pulpit of Henry Ward Beecher, its first pastor. There is a fragment of Plymouth Rock in the church. The church was named a National Historic Landmark in 1966., Today the church is a member of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. On the grounds of the church, located at 75 Hicks Street, there is a statue of Beecher by sculptor Gutzon Borglum.
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Wyckoff-Bennett Homestead, located at 1669 E. 22nd Street in Brooklyn, New York, is a National Historic Landmark. It is believed to have been built... before 1766. During the American Revolution, it housed Hessian soldiers, two of whom, Captain Toepfer of the Ditfourth regiment and Lieut. M. Bach of the Hessen-Hanau Artillerie, scratched their names and units into windowpanes. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976. According to an embroidered needlepoint artwork currently on display in the main home building, it was owned and occupied by the Wyckoff Family from 1776 to 1835. The Bennett family owned and occupied it from 1835 to 1983, and the Mont family has owned and occupied it since 1983. The property is one of the last privately owned Dutch Colonial houses in New York City. Starting sometime around the year 2000 the City of New York planned to buy the house and land from its present owners, Annette and Stuart Mont, who would have remained on the property rent-free but those plans have since fallen through.
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The Williamsburgh Savings Bank was an important institution in Brooklyn, New York, from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. A series of bank... mergers brought it into the HSBC group late in the 20th century. It is best remembered for two imposing headquarters buildings still standing, the domed original at 175 Broadway in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, designed by George B. Post, and the later Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower. The building at 175 Broadway is listed by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, and on the National Register of Historic Places.
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The Barclays Center is a sports arena currently under construction in Brooklyn, New York. The arena is being built partly on a platform over the... Metropolitan Transportation Authority-owned Vanderbilt Yards at Atlantic Avenue. It is part of a proposed $4.9 billion sports arena, business and residential complex. The arena is intended to serve as a new home for the National Basketball Association's New Jersey Nets, currently based at Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. The team will be renamed the Brooklyn Nets starting with the arena's expected opening season of 2012–13. The project is being developed by developer Forest City Ratner, who acquired the Nets in 2004, with the purpose of moving them from New Jersey to this site near the Atlantic Avenue – Pacific Street subway station and the Long Island Rail Road's Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, one of the most transit-accessible locations in the city.
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Founded in 1863, the Brooklyn Historical Society is a museum, library, and educational center preserving and encouraging the study of Brooklyn's... rich 400-year past. The Brooklyn Historical Society houses materials relating to the history of Brooklyn and its people. These holdings supply exhibitions illuminating the past and informing the future. BHS hosts over 9,000 members of the general public at its exhibitions each year. In addition to general programming, BHS serves over 70,000 public school students and teachers annually by providing exhibit tours, educational programs and curricula, and making its professional staff available for instruction and consultation. Exhibits at BHS are designed for audiences of all ages. The Brooklyn Historical Society was founded in 1863 as the Long Island Historical Society. At that time, the city of Brooklyn was the commercial and cultural center of Long Island. During World War I, LIHS transformed its 600-seat auditorium into a Red Cross headquarters by removing the seats and building a flat floor over the original sloping floor.
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Michael Gerard "Mike" Tyson is a retired American boxer. Tyson is a former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world and holds the record as the... youngest boxer to win the WBC, WBA and IBF heavyweight titles, he was 20 years, 4 months and 22 days old. Tyson won his first 19 professional bouts by knockout, with 12 of them occurring in the first round. He won the WBC title in 1986 after defeating Trevor Berbick by a TKO in the second round. In 1987, Tyson added the WBA and IBF titles after defeating James Smith and Tony Tucker. He was the first heavyweight boxer to simultaneously hold and only Heavyweight to individually unify the WBA, WBC and IBF titles. In 1988, Tyson became the lineal champion when he knocked out Michael Spinks in the first 91 seconds of the fight. Tyson successfully defended the world heavyweight championship nine times, including victories over Larry Holmes and Frank Bruno. Tyson lost his titles to 42-to-1 underdog James "Buster" Douglas on February 11, 1990, in Tokyo, Japan, by a knockout in round 10. Tyson continued in his quest to regain the titles, defeating Donovan Ruddock twice in 1991.
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Christopher Julius Rock III is a comedian, actor, writer, director and producer best known for his television work in Saturday Night Live and... Everybody Hates Chris.  Comedy Central named him the 5th greatest stand-up comedian of all time in 2006.
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Shawn Corey Carter , better known by his stage name Jay-Z, is an American rapper, record producer, entrepreneur, and occasional actor. He is one of... the most financially successful hip hop artists and entrepreneurs in America, having a net worth of over $450 million as of 2010. He has sold approximately 50 million albums worldwide, while receiving thirteen Grammy Awards for his musical work, and numerous additional nominations. He is consistently ranked as one of the greatest rappers of all-time. He was ranked so by MTV in their list of The Greatest MCs of All-Time in 2006. Two of his albums, Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint are considered landmarks in the genre with both of them being ranked in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Blender included the former on their 500 CDs You Must Own Before You Die. Jay-Z co-owns the 40/40 Club, is part-owner of the NBA's New Jersey Nets and is also the creator of the line Rocawear. He is the former CEO of Def Jam Recordings, one of the three founders of Roc-A-Fella Records, and the founder of Roc Nation.
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Judith Sheindlin, better known as Judge Judy , is an American lawyer, judge, television personality, and author. Since 1996, Sheindlin has presided... over her own syndicated courtroom show, Judge Judy, and is well known for her no-nonsense legal style and powerful personality, sharpness, and quick wit. Sheindlin passed the New York Bar examination in 1965, and became a prosecutor in the family court system. In 1982 Mayor Ed Koch appointed her a judge, first in criminal court, then later as Manhattan's supervising family court judge in 1986. Sheindlin was born Judith Susan Blum on October 21, 1942 to German-Jewish parents, Murray, a dentist, and Ethel Blum. She described her father as "the greatest thing since sliced bread", and her mother as "a meat and potatoes kind of gal." Sheindlin attended James Madison High School in Brooklyn before going on to American University in Washington, D.C., where she majored in government. She then enrolled at the Washington College of Law at American University where she was the only woman in a class of 126 students. She finished her law school education at New York Law School, where she graduated in 1965.
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Wyclef Jean is a Haitian musician, record producer, and politician. At age nine, Jean moved to the United States with his family and has spent much... of his life in the country. He first received fame as a member of the acclaimed New Jersey hip hop group the Fugees. On August 5, 2010, Jean filed for candidacy in the 2010 Haitian presidential election, although the Electoral Commission subsequently ruled him ineligible to stand as he had not met the requirement to have been resident in Haiti for five years. Although his birth date was widely given as October 17, 1972, papers filed for his run as a candidate for the presidency of Haiti, disclosed that he was, in fact, born in 1969. Born in Haiti, the son of a Nazarene pastor, Wyclef moved with his family to Brooklyn, New York, when he was nine before moving again to northern New Jersey. Jean has cited reggae artist Bigga Haitian as one of his early influences.
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Gabrielle Tuite is an American model and actress. She was formerly one of the models on the game show, The Price Is Right. Tuite was born in... Brooklyn, New York. She started in the field of acting and modeling at the age of 11. She was in TV commercials, and magazine ads at first, and went on to act in TV and movie roles. She appeared with actor Sebastian Siegel on the December 2004 cover of Iron Man. She is perhaps most well known as one of the former rotating prize models on the long-running U.S. game show The Price Is Right.
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Mickey Rooney is an American film actor and entertainer whose film, television, and stage appearances span nearly his entire lifetime. He has... received multiple awards, including a Juvenile Academy Award, an Honorary Academy Award, two Golden Globes and an Emmy Award. Working as a performer since he was a child, he was a superstar as a teenager for the films in which he played Andy Hardy, and he has had one of the longest careers of any actor, to date spanning almost 90 years actively making films in ten decades, from 1920s to 2010s. He is the last surviving male star from 1930s Hollywood. For a younger generation of fans, he gained international fame for his leading role as Henry Dailey in The Family Channel's The Adventures of the Black Stallion, as well as the film itself. Rooney was born Joseph Yule, Jr. in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Joseph Yule, was from Scotland, and his mother, Nellie W. , was from Kansas City, Missouri. Both of his parents were in vaudeville, appearing in a Brooklyn production of A Gaiety Girl when Joseph, Jr. was born.
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Marion Davies was an American film actress. Davies is best remembered for her relationship with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, as her... high-profile social life often obscured her professional career. Davies was born Marion Cecilia Douras on January 3, 1897 in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of five children born to Bernard J. Douras , a lawyer and judge in New York City; and Rose Reilly . Her father performed the civil marriage of Gloria Gould Bishop. Her elder siblings included Rose, Reine, and Ethel. A brother, Charles, drowned at the age of 15 in 1906. His name was subsequently given to Marion's favorite nephew, the screenwriter Charles Lederer, the son of Marion's sister Reine Davies. The Douras family lived near Prospect Park in Brooklyn. The sisters changed their surname to Davies, which one of them spotted on a real estate agent's sign in the neighborhood. Even at a time when New York was the melting pot for new immigrants, having a British surname greatly helped one's prospects – the name Davies has Welsh origins. She was educated in a convent.
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Sanford "Sandy" Koufax is a former left-handed baseball pitcher who played his entire 12-year Major League Baseball career for the Brooklyn/Los... Angeles Dodgers . He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972, the youngest former player to receive that honor. Koufax's career peaked with a run of six outstanding seasons from 1961 to 1966, before arthritis in his left elbow ended his career prematurely at age 30. He was named the National League's Most Valuable Player in 1963. He also won the 1963, 1965, and 1966 Cy Young Awards by unanimous votes, making him the first 3-time Cy Young winner in baseball history and the only one to win 3 times when the award was for all of baseball, not just one league. In each of his Cy Young seasons, Koufax won the pitcher's triple crown by leading the NL in wins, strikeouts, and earned run average. Koufax's totals would also have led the American League in those seasons. Koufax was the first major leaguer to pitch four no-hitters .
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Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and... natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He advocated scientifically skeptical inquiry and the scientific method, pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence . Sagan is known for his popular science books and for the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which he narrated and co-wrote. The book Cosmos was published to accompany the series. Sagan wrote the novel Contact, the basis for a 1997 film of the same name. Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Ukrainian Jewish family. His father, Sam Sagan, was an immigrant garment worker from Kamenets-Podolsk, Ukraine; his mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, a housewife. Carl was named in honor of Rachel's biological mother, Chaiya Clara, in Sagan's words, "the mother she never knew." Sagan graduated from Rahway High School in Rahway, New Jersey, in 1951.
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Harvey Keitel is an American actor. Some of his most notable starring roles were in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Ridley Scott's... The Duellists and Thelma and Louise, Ettore Scola's That Night in Varennes, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Jane Campion's The Piano, Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, James Mangold's Cop Land, Nicolas Roeg's Bad Timing, and Theo Angelopoulos's Ulysses' Gaze. He recently played Detective Lieutenant Gene Hunt on the American adaptation of Life on Mars. Keitel was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the son of Miriam and Harry Keitel, Jewish immigrants from Romania and Poland. His parents owned and ran a luncheonette and his father also worked as a hat maker. Keitel grew up in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, with his sister, Renee, and brother, Jerry. He attended Abraham Lincoln High School. At the age of sixteen, he decided to join the United States Marine Corps, a decision that took him to Lebanon, during Operation Blue Bat.
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Joseph Paul Torre is a former American professional baseball player and manager. A nine-time All-Star, he played in Major League Baseball as a... catcher, first baseman and a third baseman for the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves, New York Mets, and the St. Louis Cardinals. After his retirement as a player, he later managed all three teams. Torre managed the New York Yankees from 1996 to 2007. The Yankees reached the post season each year and won ten American League East Division titles, six American League pennants, four World Series titles, and compiled a .605 winning percentage overall. With 2,326 wins, he is currently ranked 5th on the list of Major League Baseball all-time managerial wins. Torre followed in his brother Frank's footsteps when he was signed by the Milwaukee Braves as an amateur free agent in 1960. In his first season in the minor leagues with the Class A Eau Claire Braves, he won the 1960 Northern League batting championship with a .344 batting average. Torre made his major league debut late in the season on September 21, 1960.
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