On this date in ...

1918: Albany Mayor James R. Watt was determined that long trains of Army trucks would no longer interfere with the city’s regular traffic when passing through, after a convoy of 300 trucks made its way through Albany the day before, tying up the roads for nearly two hours. Watt himself was a witness to some of the tactics of the truck drivers to prevent other drivers from crossing their path, including in one instance ramming an automobile. The mayor took matters into his own hands when he saw an ice wagon waiting more than 20 minutes to cross State Street to deliver its now-melting cargo to Keeler’s Restaurant on the other side. Watt stepped in front of one of the Army trucks and forced the driver to back up and let the wagon pass.

1968: State Education Commissioner James E. Allen proposed appointing Herbert F. Johnson of Delmar as a trustee for an experimental Brooklyn school district, the focal point of a citywide teachers strike affecting 1.1 million public school students. Johnson, an associate commissioner of education, would be stationed in the Negro and Puerto Rican Ocean Hill-brownsville area until orderly operations could be resumed there. There were indications the striking AFL-CIO United Federation of Teachers might not accept the proposal.

1993: With Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye in control of New York’s highest court, the panel was now far more likely than it had been to rule in favor of individual rights instead of the government power structure, according to a new study by Vincent M. Bonventre, an associate professor at Albany Law School. The study indicated that the Court of Appeals under Kaye was rejecting the conservatism of former Chief Judge Sol Wachtler and taking on the moderate-to-liberal convictions of its new leader. Kaye took over seven months before, following Wachtler’s November arrest for harassing an ex-mistress and her daughter.