On this date in ...

1919: Young Albany residents hoping to use the promised swimming pools in Lincoln Park during the upcoming summer were dismayed to hear Common Council members say that work on completing the pools would not begin until later in the spring, if at all, and they would not be ready for use until summer 1920. Many years before, $20,000 was appropriated for excavation and a Troy contractor dug out the holes where pools would be built, but then war broke out in Europe and municipalities throughout the country began donating money to the Allies, and Albany’s Common Council postponed further work on the project.

1969: The Irish marched by the thousands through the streets of Albany and thousands more — both Irish and honorary Irish for the day — applauded them on the 19th annual St. Patrick’s Day parade featuring 12 divisions, marching bands and pipers stepped out at 2:30 p.m. from Quail Street and Central Avenue. The last division, an Ancient Order of Hibernians contingent from Saratoga Springs, passed before the reviewing stand at North Pearl Street and Maiden Lane at 4:05 p.m. Immediately following the parade, about 130 marchers boarded buses for Kennedy Airport, where they were to board a plane for Ireland to march in the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin.

1994: On the eve of New York’s hottest abortion battle, anti-abortion forces brought their campaign straight to the battleground — the Court of Appeals — in a warm-up for today’s legal fight. Lawyers in the courtroom, rather than the pickets outside, would be spotlighted as New York’s top court entertained oral arguments on whether the state constitution guaranteed women the right to an abortion. The case, Hope vs. Perales, was the most important abortion-related case ever to reach the state’s highest court. At issue was whether the state constitution protected reproductive freedom, and the implications were enormous, both politically and pragmatically.

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