The Houston Buffaloes were the first minor league team to be affiliated with a Major League franchise, which was the St. Louis Cardinals.
Phillies manager Ben Chapman, born in Nashville, Tenn., was among the most virulently racist Major Leaguers to openly insult and mock Jackie Robinson on the field in his rookie season with the Dodgers.
On December 13, 1956 Jackie Robinson was traded by the Brooklyn Dodgers to the New York Giants for Dick Littlefield and $30,000. Robinson refused to report to his new team, and the trade was voided and players returned on that same day.
Pietro Angelerio was born in 1215 and become a hermit monk, known as Peter “of Morrone,” after the mountaintop where he lived in solitude. Even after founding an order of such monks he continued to live in solitude.
After the death of Pope Nicholas IV, Cardinals were unable to agree on a new Pope for more than two years and finally selected Peter of Morrone to serve as Pope Celestine V. He didn’t want the job, became a political pawn of the King of Naples, and finally abdicated on December 13, 1294. He hoped to return to his hermit life, but was instead imprisoned by his successor, Pope Boniface VIII, and died in captivity. In 1313 he was canonized by the Roman Church.
Well, Robinson already intended to leave the MLB: Jackie Robinson - Wikipedia
In play:
Peter Baker, White House correspondent for The New York Times and a bestselling author, is a graduate of Oberlin College, where he worked as a reporter for the student paper, The Oberlin Review (as did I).
Oberlin’s Motto is “Learning and Labor”; and its Mascot: Yeomen and Yeowomen.
Yo.
“Learning and Labor” is also the motto of the Univesity of Illinois. There aren’t enough mottoes to go around.
The motto of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the similar Mens et Manus (Mind and Hand). Its seal depicts a blacksmith and a guy in academic robes with a book, on opposite sides of a pedestal holding the Lamp of Learning. The inscription over the most-used entrance, at 77 Massachusetts Avenue, reads “WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS FOVNDER”.
The Marine Corps motto, Semper Fidelis, and often shortened to Semper Fi, was adopted in 1883. It means Always Faithful.
Semper Fi, Do or Die.
U.S. Marines provided shipboard security, landing parties and gunnery crews aboard U.S. Navy warships during the Civil War, including in the celebrated defeat by the steam sloop USS Kearsarge of the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama off the coast of Cherbourg, France in 1864.
The two highest U.S. waterfalls are both in Hawaii. They rank among the eight highest in the world. There are 750 waterfalls in North America that are higher than Niagara Falls, including three higher ones in New York state, and an even higher falls named Niagara Falls in British Columbia, Canada. The famous Niagara Falls isn’t even the highest Niagara Falls.
British Columbia entered Confederation on July 1, 1871, the 6th province. One of the terms of entry was that the federal government would build a railway linking BC to eastern Canada. That promise was completed on November 7, 1885, when the Last Spike was driven at Craigellachie, British Columbia.
The Golden Spike National Historic Site is a 90 mile drive from Salt Lake City:
Google Maps.
You can drive some of the old transcontinental railway route - it’s a dirt road:
There have been two ships named USS Salt Lake City to serve in the U.S. Navy, the second of which was a Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine decommissioned in November 2006.
The SSN-773 Cheyenne is the last submarine to be named after a city. It was the last of the Los Angeles-class submarines.
HMS Hood was the only Admiral-class battlecruiser ever built; her motto was Ventis Secundis and she flew pennant number 51. With eight 15-inch guns and a top speed of 31 knots, she was the pride of the Royal Navy.
Twenty years after Hood was built, the Bismarck was built by Germany. On paper its specs were similar to that of Hood, but it had much thicker armor. Mighty Hood, accompanied by a battleship, and Bismarck, accompanied by a heavy cruiser, met on 24 May 1941 in the Denmark Strait. Partly due to geometry (the Germans “crossed the British T”), the Germans prevailed. The Mighty Hood went down with loss of over 1400 souls. But six days later Bismarck was put down by an armada of British ships.
Until the Bismarck was launched, for 20 years after the HMS Hood was commissioned in 1918, the Hood was the largest and heaviest battleship in the world. However the Japanese Yamato and her sister ship Musashi were the largest battleships ever built.
John Bell Hood was an important Confederate general in the Civil War. His wounds at Gettysburg and Chickamauga led to loss of use of his left arm and the amputation of his right leg, but he remained commanding until the end of the war.
Ulysses S. Grant died in 1885 at the age of 63. Grant’s Tomb’s design was selected in 1889. Ground was broken in 1891. Grant’s remains were transferred there in 1897. In 1939 the busts of William T. Sherman, Phillip H. Sheridan, George H. Thomas, James B. McPherson, and Edward Ord were added.
Fort Ord, California, was established as Camp Ord, near the end of World War II, as a line of defense on the Pacific Coast. It was soon renamed Fort Ord, but lasted only 53 years, and has now been converted to national monument status for conservation and recreation, under the Bureau of Land Mangement…