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March 4: On this date in 1841, engineer David Bates Douglass‘s brilliant plan for the design of Green-Wood Cemetery was adopted by its board of trustees.

March 3: “Boss” Tweed, who in a long career made his name synonymous with corruption and theft from the public coffers on a massive scale, was born on this date in 1823.

March 2: John Eberhard Faber, pencil manufacturer in Greenpoint who put the eraser on the pencil, died on this date in 1879.

March 1: Civil War Colonel Leopold Von Gilsa, a Prussian soldier who came to America and fought for the Union, then sold pianos after the war, died on this date in 1870.

February 28: Simon Boerum, a Brooklyn farmer who represented New York in the Continental Congresses of 1774 and 1775, was born on February 29, 1724.

February 27: Notorious prisoner of war camp Andersonville, run by the Confederates, opened on this date in 1864; 18 soldiers who are interred at Green-Wood would be released alive from there; one, Michael Wallace, would die from disease in 1865, just months after his release. 

February 26: Born on this date in 1902 in Italy as Umberto Anastasio, he would come to America and become famous as Albert Anastasia, “The Lord High Executioner” of Organized Crime; in 1957, he would be murdered while getting his hair cut at the Park Sheraton Hotel.

February 25: Susan Rotolo, Bob Dylan’s girlfriend 1961-1964, who appeared on the cover of his “The Free Wheelin Bob Dylan” album and inspired him to write “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” as well as “Tomorrow is a Long Time,” died on this date in 2011.

February 24: Nativist gang leader “Bill the Butcher” Poole, whose life would form the basis for the Daniel Day-Lewis character of William Cutting in the movie “Gangs of New York,” was fatally shot by a rival-gang member at a bar on Broadway on this day in 1855.

February 23: “Southampton Diet Doctor” Stuart Berger died of obesity and a drug overdose on this date in 1994.