#sept. 1

Crowds outside Madison Square Garden (third incarnation*) at Eighth Ave. and 50th Street, September 1, 1938. There's a lot of detail in this picture if you enlarge it.

*The first two had actually been on Madison Square.

New York put on a show for visiting British servicemen, September 1, 1943. Gunner Leonard Senior laughs himself into tears as Gunner Edward Ellis almost drops his pie in listening to the gags of a comic. (Was this the Broadway Canteen? No info on this.)

British anti-aircraft men who fought at Malta, in the Middle and Far East, and in the Battle of Britain were entertained at a party in Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe night club, September 1, 1943. Amidst gales of laughter and wild applause, Mayor La Guardia strayed among the 350 lean, bronzed Tommies, picking out dishes for them and signing autographs. Tommies and chorines of the show are shown doing an impromptu Lambeth Walk.

When TV was in its infancy: a CBS newscast at the Grand Central Terminal studios, September 1, 1939.

Hairdressers attending the National Beauty Trades Show warm up under hair driers in an air-conditioned room at the Hotel Statler on September 1, 1953, while Erma Van Wort, in a sable cape, shows off her new coiffure. The hair driers' temperature is a mere 90 degrees, while the official thermometer outdoors measured 97. The new hairdo, achieved with free-flowing waves, is designed to direct eyes to the head. The hairdressers are members of the National Hairdressers and Cosmetologists Association.

The Ohio River was so low that a team of oxen was used to move the barge along. The artwork, Down the Ohio, is by Steve Ludeman. At first glance, the journal entry that Meriwether Lewis wrote for September 1, 1803, seems rather meager and insignificant, not of much substance. Of all things, he spends a considerable number of words contemplating fog. Of the 397 words he wrote in this day’s entry,…