As we mark a sad anniversary today and celebrate our nation's strength, tomorrow we New Yorkers celebrate a happy anniversary: our city's discovery.
On September 12, 1609, Henry Hudson and his crew of Dutch and English sailors, employed by the Dutch East India company, sailed into what is today New York harbor. Their ship, the Half Moon, then cruised up what is now known as the Hudson River -- and the rest is American history.
They were just a bunch of men doing their job. When Hudson and his crew laid their sights on this bunch of islands, they thought they'd found a passage to the Orient.Little did they know they were making history.
So, in a nutshell, our city turns 400 years old tomorrow.
It must have been an amazing feeling for those sailors to have discovered this place. Especially since it turned out not to be a shortcut to Asia but instead a whole, wild New World. Not until men walked on the moon (another momentous event we celebrated this year) did mankind make such a reality-altering discovery.
And in homage to this great anniversary, let me quote what the great writer F. Scott Fitzgerald had to say about at the end of his masterpiece The Great Gatsby. His beautiful words perfectly express what must have been the thrill of a lifetime:
"... as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."
Let's never lose that capacity.
On September 12, 1609, Henry Hudson and his crew of Dutch and English sailors, employed by the Dutch East India company, sailed into what is today New York harbor. Their ship, the Half Moon, then cruised up what is now known as the Hudson River -- and the rest is American history.
They were just a bunch of men doing their job. When Hudson and his crew laid their sights on this bunch of islands, they thought they'd found a passage to the Orient.Little did they know they were making history.
So, in a nutshell, our city turns 400 years old tomorrow.
It must have been an amazing feeling for those sailors to have discovered this place. Especially since it turned out not to be a shortcut to Asia but instead a whole, wild New World. Not until men walked on the moon (another momentous event we celebrated this year) did mankind make such a reality-altering discovery.
And in homage to this great anniversary, let me quote what the great writer F. Scott Fitzgerald had to say about at the end of his masterpiece The Great Gatsby. His beautiful words perfectly express what must have been the thrill of a lifetime:
"... as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."
Let's never lose that capacity.
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