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June 19, 2007
Today in History: June 19th
The following information can be found at: Those Were the Days:Today in History:
1846 - The first organized baseball game was played on this day. The location was Hoboken, New Jersey. The New York Baseball Club defeated the Knickerbocker Club, 23 to 1. This first game was only four innings long. The New York Nine, as the winners were known, must have really studied the rules to have twenty-three runs batted in. The rules had been formulated just one year earlier by a Mr. Alexander Cartwright, Jr.
1911 - The first motion-picture censorship board was established -- in Pennsylvania.
1912 - The United States government adopted a new rule for all working folks. It established an 8-hour work day. Watch that lunch break, though. You never know if someone from the government might be clocking you...
1936 - Max Schmeling knocked out Joe Louis in the 12th round of their heavyweight boxing match. The German boxer earned his victory at Yankee Stadium in New York.
1943 - The National Football League approved the merger of the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers (the Steagles), a team that lasted one 5-4-1 season; but turned down approval of a similar merger of the Chicago Cardinals and the Bears. The following year the Steelers merged with the Cardinals, another one season combo. The reason teams were merging in the 1940s: so many men were in the armed forces due to WWII, football players were at a premium.
1946 - The first championship prizefight to be televised was seen by boxing fans. Joe Louis tangled with Billy Conn in New York City. To see the fight in person, incidentally, would have cost you $100.
1978 - Whether you're a cat lover or not has nothing to do with whether you chuckle at the antics of the famous, fat, lazy, lasagna-eating, snide cat named Garfield. Garfield came into the world on this day by way of the talented pen of cartoonist Jim Davis. Readers of 41 newspapers throughout the U.S. were the lucky first-time readers of the Garfield strip. There are now over 220-million folks who read Garfield every day in over 2500 newspapers worldwide.
1981 - "Superman II" set the all-time, one-day record for theatre box-office receipts. Moviegoers forked over $5.5 million to see Christopher Reeve as the caped crusader. The three-day record was also shattered on June 21st, 1981, when a total gross of $14 million was collected.
1999 - Horror king/author Stephen King was was run down from behind by a van while walking on the shoulder of a road near his house in Maine. Motorist Brian Smith apparently lost control of his Dodge Caravan (he said his dog distracted him). King suffered a collapsed lung, 2 fractures of his right leg below the knee, a broken right hip, a fractured pelvis, 2 broken ribs and a scalp laceration. Now, that's a horror story!
Posted by d-nadler at June 19, 2007 05:41 PM