On May 5, 1904, 37-year-old Cy Young pitches the first perfect game in modern Major League Baseball history as the Boston Americans defeat the Philadelphia Athletics, 3-0. Young strikes out eight of the 27 batters he faces and benefits from excellent defense in a game that is completed in only 83 minutes. “Unparalleled feat,” a newspaper calls the achievement. A perfect game is achieved when a pitcher retires all the batters he faces in order, with no one reaching base.
Two other pitchers—Lee Richmond and John Ward—recorded perfect games in 1880, but the rules then were significantly different from modern baseball rules, which were established in 1893. Before the modern rules, it took eight balls to walk a batter and the distance from the pitcher’s mound to home plate was 45 feet. (The distance is 60 feet, 6 inches today.)
In what is now known as Juneteenth, on June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrive in Galveston, Texas with news that the Civil War is over and slavery in the United States is abolished. A mix of June […]
One of the largest military conflicts in North American history begins on July 1, 1863, when Union and Confederate forces collide at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The epic battle lasted three days and resulted in a retreat […]
On March 17, 1969, 70-year-old Golda Meir makes history when she is elected as Israel’s first female prime minister. She was the country’s fourth prime minister and is still the only woman to have held […]
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