It's the Brian Lera Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Hope you had a great Fourth of July

weekend if you didn't have to work. And if you did have to work, I hope you got lots of tips or time

and a half or other compensation and all the love that you deserve if you're working so that

other people can be on vacation. Now, there's a weird convergence this morning between this being

a very special day for WNYC and the lead story right now in national politics.

Today, if you haven't heard yet, is WNYC's 100th birthday. We will have special programming to

celebrate the occasion later in this show and with an evening special tonight that will

recreate the first broadcast from July 8th,

1924.

Tonight's thing should be almost too much fun to bear, tune in if you're around.

But the birthday made me curious.

What was in the news on July 8th, 1924?

So I pulled up the front page of that day's New York Times, and are you ready for this

headline? Madoo below Smith on 86th ballot. Maddo below Smith on 86th ballot. What does that mean? Well,

the Democratic Party was having an open convention at Madison Square Garden to nominate their presidential candidate for the 1924 election.

And they had gone through 86 ballots so far, and no candidate had yet gotten a majority of the delegates.

Wow.

The two leaders at that point were those two names, the governor of New York,

Al Smith, and William Madoo, I don't even know if I'm saying the name right, who had been

Treasury Secretary under President Woodrow Wilson. As of July 8th, 1924, no nominee yet. That night,

as WNYC was signing on to the airwaves for the first time,

the first minute was 8.54 p.m. That night, there were even fights in the streets of New York

...