The one millionth run in Major League Baseball history was scored by Bob Watson of the Houston Astros.
The Khmer Rouge seized control of South Vietnam's Phú Quốc Island.
Last edition:
Showing posts with label baseball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baseball. Show all posts
Sunday, May 4, 2025
Thursday, May 1, 2025
Thứ Năm, ngày 1 tháng 5 năm 1975. Chiến tranh Việt Nam kết thúc.* Thursday, May 1, 1975. The conclusion of the Vietnam War. Jeudi 1er mai 1975. Fin de la guerre du Vietnam.
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ARVN troops in Cần Thơ surrendered to the VC following the suicide of Gen. Nguyễn Khoa Nam, age 48, Major General of IV Corps in Cần Thơ. This effectively brought organized resistance to the VC and NVA almost to an end after twenty years of combat. The country remains, of course, under the regime that won the war.
Quân VNCH ở Cần Thơ đầu hàng VC sau cái chết của Tướng Nguyễn Khoa Nam, 48 tuổi, Thiếu tướng Quân đoàn IV ở Cần Thơ. Điều này đã khiến cho sự kháng cự có tổ chức chống lại VC và Bắc Việt gần như chấm dứt một cách hiệu quả sau hai mươi năm chiến đấu. Tất nhiên, đất nước vẫn nằm dưới chế độ đã thắng trong chiến tranh.
Les troupes de l'ARVN à Cần Thơ se sont rendues au VC suite au suicide du général Nguyễn Khoa Nam, 48 ans, major général du IVe Corps à Cần Thơ. Cela a effectivement mis fin à la résistance organisée au VC et à la NVA après vingt ans de combat. Le pays reste bien entendu sous le régime qui a gagné la guerre.
By this point, I'd quit tracking the war on my National Geographic map of Vietnam. There came to be no point.
Khmer Rouge forces landed on Phú Quốc which was claimed by Cambodia but controlled by South Vietnam. It was also the location of a large South Vietnamese POW camp.
Hank Aaron broke the career record for RBIs.
Thursday, May 1, 2025
The New York Stock Exchange dropped the requirement of a fixed commission for stock transactions following pressure to do so from the SEC.
Footnotes:
*Google Translate text. I don't speak Vietnamese.
Last edition:
Wednesday, April 30, 1975. The Fall of Saigon.
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Tuesday, April 17, 1945. Flak Bait.
The B-26 Marauder Flak Bait, which completed 200 missions on this day.
Winston Churchill eulogized the late Franklin Roosevelt in Parliament.
I beg to move:
"That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty to convey to His Majesty the deep sorrow with which this House has learned of the death of the President of the United States of America and to pray His Majesty that in communicating his own sentiments of grief to the United States Government, he will also be graciously pleased to express on the part of this House their sense of the loss which the British Commonwealth and Empire and the cause of the Allied Nations have sustained, and their profound sympathy with Mrs. Roosevelt and the late President's family and with the Government and people of the United States of America."
My friendship with the great man to whose work and fame we pay our tribute to-day began and ripened during this war. I had met him, but only for a few minutes, after the close of the last war and as soon as I went to the Admiralty in September, 1939, he telegraphed, inviting me to correspond with him direct on naval or other matters if at any time I felt inclined. Having obtained the permission of the Prime Minister, I did so. Knowing President Roosevelt's keen interest in sea warfare, I furnished him with a stream of information about our naval affairs and about the various actions, including especially the action of the Plate River, which lighted the first gloomy winter of the war.
When I became Prime Minister, and the war broke out in all its hideous fury, when our own life and survival hung in the balance, I was already in a position to telegraph to the President on terms of an association which had become most intimate and, to me, most agreeable. This continued through all the ups and downs of the world struggle until Thursday last, when I received my last messages from him. These messages showed no falling off in his accustomed clear vision and vigour upon perplexing and complicated matters. I may mention that this correspondence which, of course, was greatly increased after the United States entry into the war, comprises, to and fro between us, over 1,700 messages. Many of these were lengthy messages and the majority dealt with those more difficult points which come to be discussed upon the level of heads of Governments only after official solutions had not been reached at other stages. To this correspondence there must be added our nine meetings at Argentia, three in Washington, at Casablanca, at Teheran, two at Quebec and, last of all, at Yalta, comprising in all about 120 days of close personal contact, during a great part of which I stayed with him at the White House or at his home at Hyde Park or in his retreat in the Blue Mountains, which he called Shangri-La.
I conceived an admiration for him as a statesman, a man of affairs, and a war leader. I felt the utmost confidence in his upright, inspiring character and outlook and a personal regard-affection I must say-for him beyond my power to express to-day. His love of his own country, his respect for its constitution, his power of gauging the tides and currents of its mobile public opinion, were always evident, but, added to these, were the beatings of that generous heart which was always stirred to anger and to action by spectacles of aggression and oppression by the strong against the weak. It is, indeed, a loss, a bitter loss to humanity that those heart-beats are stilled for ever. President Roosevelt's physical affliction lay heavily upon him. It was a marvel that he bore up against it through all the many years of tumult-and storm. Not one man in ten millions, stricken and crippled as he was, would have attempted to plunge into a life of physical and mental exertion and of hard, ceaseless political controversy. Not one in ten millions would have tried, not one in a generation would have succeeded, not only in entering this sphere, not only in acting vehemently in it, but in becoming indisputable master of the scene. In this extraordinary effort of the spirit over the flesh, the will-power over physical infirmity, he was inspired and sustained by that noble woman his devoted wife, whose high ideals marched with his own, and to whom the deep and respectful sympathy of the House of Commons flows out to-day in all fullness. There is no doubt that the President foresaw the great dangers closing in upon the pre-war world with far more prescience than most well-informed people on either side of the Atlantic, and that he urged forward with all his power such precautionary military preparations as peace-time opinion in the United States could be brought to accept. There never was a moment's doubt, as the quarrel opened, upon which side his sympathies lay.
The fall of France, and what seemed to most people outside this Island, the impending destruction of Great Britain, were to him an agony, although he never lost faith in us. They were an agony to him not only on account of Europe, but because of the serious perils to which the United States herself would have been exposed had we been overwhelmed or the survivors cast down under the German yoke. The bearing of the British nation at that time of stress, when we were all alone, filled him and vast numbers of his countrymen with the warmest sentiments towards our people. He and they felt the blitz of the stern winter of 1940~1, when Hitler set himself to rub out the cities of our country, as much as any of us did, and perhaps more indeed, for imagination is often more torturing than reality. There is no doubt that the bearing of the British and, above all, of the Londoners kindled fires in American bosoms far harder to quench than the conflagrations from which we were suffering. There was also at that time, in spite of General Wavell's victories-all the more, indeed, because of the reinforcements which were sent from this country to him-the apprehension widespread in the United States that we should be invaded by Germany after the fullest preparation in the spring of 1941. It was in February that the President sent to England the late Mr. Wendell Willkie, who, although a political rival and an opposing candidate, felt, as he did on many important points. Mr. Willkie brought a letter from Mr. Roosevelt, which the President had written in his own hand, and this letter contained the famous lines of Longfellow:
". . . Sail on, O ship of State!
Sail on O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!"
At about that same time he devised the extraordinary measure of assistance called Lend-Lease, which will stand forth as the most unselfish and unsordid financial act of any country in all history. The effect of this was greatly to increase British fighting power and for all the purposes of the war effort to make us, as it were, a much more numerous community. In that autumn I met the President for the first time during the war at Argentia in Newfoundland and together we drew up the Declaration which has since been called the Atlantic Charter and which will, I trust, long remain a guide for both our peoples and for other peoples of the world.
All this time, in deep and dark and deadly secrecy, the Japanese were preparing their act of treachery and greed. When next we met in Washington Japan, Germany and Italy had declared war upon the United States and both our countries were in arms, shoulder to shoulder. Since then we have advanced over the land and over the sea through many difficulties and disappointments, but always with a broadening measure of success. I need not dwell upon the series of great operations which have taken place in the Western Hemisphere, to say nothing of that other immense war proceeding at the other side of the world. Nor need I speak of the plans which we made with our great Ally, Russia, at Teheran, for these have now been carried out for all the world to see.
But at Yalta I noticed that the President was ailing. His captivating smile, his gay and charming manner, had not deserted him but his face had a transparency, an air of purification, and often there was a faraway look in his eyes. When I took my leave of him in Alexandria harbour I must confess that I had an indefinable sense of fear that his health and his strength were on the ebb. But nothing altered his inflexible sense of duty. To the end he faced his innumerable tasks unflinching. One of the tasks of the President is to sign maybe a hundred or two hundred State papers with his own hand every day, commissions and so forth. All this he continued to carry out with the utmost strictness. When death came suddenly upon him "he had finished his mail." That portion of his day's work was done. As the saying goes, he died in harness and we may well say in battle harness, like his soldiers, sailors and airmen, who side by side with ours, are carrying on their task to the end all over the world. What an enviable death was his. He had brought his country through the worst of its perils and the heaviest of its toils. Victory had cast its sure and steady beam upon him. He had broadened and stabilised in the days of peace the foundations of American life and union.
In war he had raised the strength, might and glory of the great Republic to a height never attained by any nation in history. With her left hand she was leading the advance of the conquering Allied Armies into the heart of Germany and with her right, on the other side of the globe, she was irresistibly and swiftly breaking up the power of Japan. And all the time ships, munitions, supplies, and food of every kind were aiding on a gigantic scale her Allies, great and small, in the course of the long struggle.
But all this was no more than worldly power and grandeur, had it not been that the causes of human freedom and of social justice to which so much of his life had been given, added a lustre to all this power and pomp and warlike might, a lustre which will long be discernible among men. He has left behind him a band of resolute and able men handling the numerous interrelated parts of the vast American war machine. He has left a successor who comes forward with firm step and sure conviction to carry on the task to its appointed end. For us. it remains only to say that in Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the new world to the old.
Question put, and agreed to, nemine contradicente.
Resolved:
"That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty to convey to His Majesty the deep sorrow with which this House has learned of the death of the President of the United States of America and to pray His Majesty that in communicating his own sentiments of grief to the United States Government, he will also be graciously pleased to express on the part of this House their sense of the loss which the British Commonwealth and Empire and the cause of the Allied Nations have sustained, and their profound sympathy with Mrs. Roosevelt and the late President's family and with the Government and people of the United States of America."
German troops flooded the Wieringermeerpolder to aid in their retreat. However, on the same day, German units in the Ruhr began mass surrenders.
US troops landed in the Moro Gulf at Cotabatu.
The Battle of the Hongorai River began in New Guinea.
Historian Tran Trong Kim was appointed the Prime Minister of the Empire of Vietnam, the short lived Japanese supported Vietnamese monarchy.
One armed baseball Peter Gray made his major league debut.
Berlin: Sprint To The Finish Line – Dawn Of The Truman Era – April 17, 1945
Last edition:
Monday, April 16, 1945. The final battle in the West.
Monday, April 14, 2025
Thursday, April 14, 1910. Taft throws out the first pitch.
William Howard Taft threw the first pitch of the 1910 Washington Senators game, the first "first pitch" to be thrown by a U.S. President.
The Senators played the Philadelphia Athletics and won 3 to 0.
The Sperry Gyroscope Company was founded.
Last edition:
Saturday, April 9, 1910. Transfer of Lourdes.
Labels: 1910, 1910s, Catholic, Christianity, Communism, France, France (Lourdes), Indochina, Laos, Laotian Civil War, Pathet Lao, religion, Thailand
Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Tuesday, April 8, 1975. "Over in a month".
U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater claimed that the Vietnam War "would have been over in a month" had he been elected President in 1964.
1964 Goldwater bumper sticker.
Seems doubtful.
Goldwater was the most right wing truly conservative Republican candidate to have ever been nominated, far more conservative than Ronald Reagan, and a true conservative, unlike the current occupant of the Oval Office.
A South Vietnamese pilot, Nguyễn Thành Trung, dropped bombs on the Presidential Place and then defected.
This is an event that I can recall occuring.
He want on to serve in the North Vietnamese air force and then worked as a commercial pilot for Vietnam Airlines.
South Vietnamese Major General Nguyễn Văn Hiếu was found shot dead in his command post.at the Biên Hòa airbase,
The Godfather Part II won an Academy Award for best picture, the first sequel to do so.
Frank Robinson became the first black manager in Major League. More on Robinson:
April 8, 1975: Frank Robinson Becomes Baseball's 1st Black Manager
Last edition:
Monday, April 7, 1975. A meeting in Thailand.
Labels: 1970s, 1975, Cambodia, Cambodian Civil War, Indochina, Japan, Khemr Rouge, Operation Babylift, Thailand, U.S. Air Force, Vietnam War, Women
Thursday, April 3, 2025
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. 80th Edition. The Tetas, Milk (but not from a cow), Coffee and Whiskey edition.
Okay, I don't know if this blog is "family friendly". After all, it covers all sorts of topics including some that are pretty adult, if we take the word "adult" to mean what it is supposed to mean, rather than x-rated. Normally it's fairly serious.
This Zeitgeist addition might not be.
But it is a bit off color. So, off color warning.
As I think I posted awhile back, the Texas Rangers made a goof on this years special baseball hat edition, in which the first letter of the team's city is appears over the logo, so that the hat spelled out "TETAS", or, in Spanish "tits".
Oops.
They quickly clawed it out, but not before some quick fans ordered them. So, this year, at Texas Rangers games, some bold, probably all men (my wife actually stated to me that she wished she'd ordered one) Rangers fans will go to the game wearing "TITS" hats.
Now, I get some feeds on the first page that comes up when I log on that are food related. This is probably as I'll look up wild game recopies. Anyhow, yesterday, there was a story that came up on the front page of Google or Bing or whatever that somebody had introduced breast milk ice-cream. That was so weird that I hit on the news to be confronted with an ice-cream tub depicting a cartoon lactating breast dropping milk and, yes, it's human milk ice-cream.
That's really weird.
I'm not even quite sure how that would be legal. Milk is normally inspected by the USDA if its sold in stores, save for "raw milk" that some people like as they apparently want to risk deadly infections. Added to that, given that I have a somewhat agricultural mind, my immediate thought was "how do you get a sufficient number of lactating women to . . . " at which point you need to quit thinking about such t hings. Still, being familiar with production agriculture, you need a lot of cows . . . and then again, you need to stop thinking about it.
Maybe this is what Trump meant by making America great again. 2025 in the weird Trumpverse is the year of the boob or something.
Or the year of tariffs.
On food:
Trump’s Reciprocal Trade Act spells bad news for coffee
Coffee was already getting pretty expensive.
Trump, of course, doesn't drink coffee.
Trump is apparently a huge Diet Coke fan. He has a real affinity for junk food, particularly Big Macs. He apparently also likes steaks, but according to one of his cooks, extremely well done, which is an infamnia.
Scotland is apparently pretty concerned on the 10% tariff dumped on the UK as it might impact whiskey consumption.
Scotch is, in my view (I don't like Scotch) expensive anyway. I'm more concerned about Irish whiskey, which will be hit with a 20% tariff by the Mango Mussolini's misguided economic policy.
Last edition:
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. 79th Edition. The Move along, nothing to see here addition.
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Thursday, March 27, 2025 It's Opening Day, and I'm Not Feeling It
A post I really sympathize with:
Thursday, March 27, 2025
I'm not feeling it either, and for a lot of reasons.
Tuesday, December 31, 2024
Tuesday, December 31, 1974. Americans get to own gold again.
Depression era restrictions on the private ownership of gold in the US were removed.
The prohibition, as well as government price setting of Gold, had come into effect in 1933.
South African Kugerrands and Canadian gold coins immediately became very popular as a hedge against inflation.
France ended its state monopoly on television.
Catfish Hunter signed with the Yankees, becoming baseball's highest paid player at that point.
Last edition:
Monday, December 16, 1974. Safe Drinking Water.
Tuesday, December 17, 2024
Wednesday, December 17, 1924. An election and a promise.
Constantine VI, the Metropolitan of Derkoi, was elected as the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.
Prior to his election, Turkey had warned that they regarded him as subject to deportation as he was an immigrant to what was now Turkey.
All but one of the owners of the teams in the American League presented a statement to Commissioner Landis that actions would be taken to bring League President Ban Johnson's behavior to heel. He had been criticizing Landis, but ceased to do so.
Last edition:
Tuesday, December 16, 1924. Looking back.
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
Sunday, December 10, 1944. Hall of Fame.
The late Kenesaw Mountain Landis was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Noble Prizes for 1943 and1944 were awarded, in New York, to Isidor Isaac Rabi (United States), Chemistry to Otto Hahn (Germany), Physiology or Medicine to Joseph Erlanger and Herbert Spencer Gasser (United States), Literature to Johannes V. Jensen (Denmark) and the Peace Prize to the International Committee of the Red Cross, Otto Stern of the United States for Physics, George de Hevesy (Germany) for Chemistry and Carl Peter Henrik Dam (Denmark) and Edward Adelbert Doisy (United States) for Physiology or Medicine.
They had not been awarded since 1939.
"Maj. Gen. Joseph Collins, left, Commanding General, VII Corps, points out a German withdrawal movement, at a forward observation post near Duren, Germany. 10 December, 1944. Photographer: Pvt. H. M. Roberts, 165th Signal Photo Co." The general and another officer are wearing trench coats, which were an officer's winter item in OD. The other officer is wearing an Army mackinaw.
The William S. Ladd was sunk by kamikazes off of Leyte.
On Leyte, the 77th Division took Ormoc.
The French and Soviet governments signed a twenty year treaty of cooperation in Moscow.
Last edition:
Saturday, December 9, 1944
Monday, December 2, 2024
Saturday, December 2, 1944. Advances in Europe, the Army Navy Game, Eiji Sawamura（沢村栄治).
The 7th Army reached the Rhine. The 3d Army reached Saarlautern. The 9th Army took Leiffarth and Roerdorf.
Army won the Army Navy Game. The crowed of 66,659 included 30,000 members of the general public who were admitted on the condition of living within 8.3 miles of the game in Baltimore and buying a $25.00 war bond.
Twenty Seven year old professional Japanese baseball player Eiji Sawamura（沢村栄治）was killed when a troopship he was on was sunk on this day in 1944. He'd been drafted into the Japanese Army in 1939, but released each season to play baseball.
Last edition:
Wednesday, November 29, 1944. Prisoner Exchange.
Monday, November 25, 2024
Saturday, November 25, 1944. Heavy resistance on Leyte, V2 attack in London.
Two V-2 rockets hit London, resulting in 174 deaths in a rocketry terror attack.
Much like what the Russians are doing to Ukraine now.
Destroyed German Panthers in France, November 25, 1944. Contrary to the common myth, armor attrition in World War Two was horrific, just like it is today.
Japanese defenses arrested US progress on Leyte. Japanese resistance had been consistently very stiff.
The British crossed the Cosina River in Italy.
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Soldiers of a reconstituted Dutch Army training, November 25, 1944. They're armed with US M1917 Enfield rifles, and wearing US M1 helmets. Their uniforms suggest obsolescent patterns of the US Army.
Kenesaw Mountain Landis died at age 78. He was the first Commissioner of Baseball, having been appointed to that position in 1920, and still occupied it at the time of his death.
Last edition:
Today in World War II History—November 24, 1939 & 1944 (Friday November 24, 1944). Terrace Mutiny,
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
Wednesday, October 22, 1924. Toast.
Ralph C. Smedley founded The Toastmasters International club in Santa Ana, California.
U.S.J. Dunbar presents Pres. Coolidge with statue of Walter Johnson, 10/22/24.
Last edition:
Thursday, October 10, 2024
A Manly Pastime - A Baseball History Blog : A Hundred Years Later - Remembering One of Basebal...
A Manly Pastime - A Baseball History Blog : A Hundred Years Later - Remembering One of Basebal...: My first World Series experience was the 1956 Fall Classic when my beloved Brooklyn Dodgers fell to the hated New York Yankees in seven game...
Friday, October 10, 1924. Senators take the series.
Big Train pitched four shutout innings as a relief pitcher in a game regarded as one of the greatest in baseball history.
Voting became compulsory in Australia.
Last edition:
Thursday, October 9, 1924. Senators 2, Giants 1.
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