Archive for December, 2013

In previous posts, I wrote about the reindeer on display at the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in 1944, and about the horses that delivered the first public Christmas tree to Madison Square Park in 1912. In this story, I’m going to tell you about Paddy Reilly and the annual Christmas tree and party for New […]

During World War I and World War II, hundreds of cats from all over the world were left stranded on the Chelsea Piers in New York when the troopships they had stowed away on left the harbor without them. The news media called them the “Chelsea Pirate Cats.”

Prior to May 1898, 60-year old Commodore George Dewey was a little-known leader of the U.S. Navy’s Asiatic Fleet. All that changed during the Spanish-American War, when Dewey was wired from Washington to attack the Spanish navy in retaliation for Spain’s assail on the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor. In honor of his success, New […]

I once wrote about the very first public tree lighting ceremony that took place on Christmas Eve in 1912. What I neglected to mention in that story was that Madison Square Park was covered in snow, thanks to a large storm on Christmas Eve that dumped almost a foot of snow on New York City. […]

I previously wrote about four reindeer on display at the iconic Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, which made its debut in 1931. Although the Rockefeller Center tree in New York always gets all of the media’s attention, the “Tree of Light” at Madison Square Park was in fact America’s first community Christmas tree. This tree […]