#nov. 16

Children at the Lenox Hill Neighborhood Association at their new playground on the roof of the Association's new building, 331 East 79th St., November 16, 1928. The new settlement house opened the week of Nov. 12th, and was said to be one of the largest in the world.

The aircraft carrier Monterey passing under the Brooklyn Bridge on November 16, 1945.

A woman who emigrated to the U.S. eats dinner at Ellis Island, November 16, 1920. It cost 25 cents and consisted of soup, bread, meat, potatoes, vegetables, pie, butter, pudding, and coffee. The same meal with a less expensive cut of meat could be bought for 17 cents.

They're called autogiros, gyroplanes, gyrocopters, and rotaplanes. But when a NY Times reporter saw them for the first time, he described them as "airships resembling dragonflies" and "windmill planes." In this photo, the airships fly, flit and hover over the Battery.

"No stranger craft are ever seen in the sky," The Times wrote on November 16, 1930. "They are neither helicopters nor airplanes, but some of the merits of both. They can fly slow or fast, they can almost stop in the air, and they can rise from a small space and land in it."

Juan de la Cierva of Spain invented the autogiro in 1923. Seven years later, when this photo was taken, the whirlybirds were in the news often. Amelia Earhart took a passenger up in an autogiro in Willow Grove, Pa., and an autogiro flew across the English Channel. One inventor in 1930 predicted that most airplanes of the future "would be autogiros or something better," and would travel 200 miles per hour and carry seven tons.

Spectators look on in amazement as Beth Pitt takes her pet fawn, Star Message, for a walk in midtown on November 16, 1942. Earlier in the day Miss Pitt paid a fine of $2 in court for letting her pet roam free in Central Park.