Capitol Hill Blue Forums Hot Topics & Breaking News The RoundTable Round Table For Thursday, August 6th, 2009

Denton ‘Cy’ Young pitched his first major-league baseball game on this day in 1890. He led the Cleveland Spiders past the Chicago White Sox. Young went on to enjoy a great baseball career, winning a total of 511 games (95 more than second place Walter Johnson) ... averaging more than 23 victories over 22 seasons, playing for Cleveland, St. Louis, and Boston (where he played in the first World Series, and won).

The Cy Young Award was established in 1956, when the Baseball Writer’s Association of America bestowed the honor on the best pitcher in major-league baseball for that year. The award has been presented every year since. In fact, from 1967 on, two Cy Young awards have been presented annually to the best pitcher in each major league.

Where did Denton get the nickname, Cy? It seems that Denton Young, a six-foot, two-inch, 210-pound player, could throw a re-e-e-ally fast curve ball, kind of like a cyclone spinning through the air. A story told about the Baseball Hall of Famer says that one time, before a game, he was warming up by throwing balls at a wooden fence. Afterwards, a remark was made that the fence looked like a cyclone had hit it. Yeah! A cyclone named Denton Young aka Cy Young.





Today In History~

1926 - Nineteen-year-old Gertrude Ederle from New York became the first woman to swim the English Channel and she picked this day to do it. She accomplished the feat in 14 hours and 31 minutes, breaking the men’s record by two hours.

1926 - You would have paid $10 a seat to see the first talking picture, Don Juan, starring John Barrymore. The movie was shown at New York’s Warners’ Theatre in glorious black and white. Bear in mind that $10.00 in 1926 would have almost bought a small theatre.

1928 - One of radio’s first serials was heard as Real Folks debuted on NBC.

1930 - Joseph Crater, 41 years old and a New York Supreme Court Justice, mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. His wife, Estelle, declared Judge Crater to be legally dead in 1937.

1939 - After becoming a success with Ben Bernie on network radio, Dinah Shore started her own show on the NBC Blue radio network. Dinah sang every Sunday evening. Dinah also had a successful TV career spanning over two decades.

1940 - Columbia Records cut the prices of its 12-inch classical records. The records were priced to sell at $1. Within two weeks, RCA Victor did the same and ended a record-buying slump brought on by disinterested consumers.

1945 - More than 200,000 civilians died from the explosion and/or radiation when an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped an atomic bomb over the center of Hiroshima, Japan. It was the first time an atomic bomb had been dropped over a populated place; and the first time a nuclear weapon had been used in warfare. The aftereffects of this WWII event are still felt today.

1948 - Seventeen-year-old Bob Mathias won the decathlon competition at the Olympic Games being held in London, England.

1949 - Chicago White Sox baseball star Luke Appling played in the 2,154th game of his 19-year, major-league career.

1952 - Satchel Paige, at age 46, became the oldest pitcher to complete a major-league baseball game. Paige shutout the Detroit Tigers 1-0 in a 12-inning game.

1967 - Dean Chance of the Minnesota Twins pitched five innings of perfect baseball, leading his team to victory over the Boston Red Sox. Chance was only the third player to pitch a shortened, perfect game.

1969 - Willie ‘Pops’ Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates hit the first fair ball to sail completely out of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Stargell’s blast measured 506 feet from home plate.

1973 - After one of the biggest promotional blitzes in TV history, writer/reporter Sally Quinn joined Hughes Rudd as co-host of the CBS Morning News. Not long after her TV debut, Quinn found that she wasn’t suited so much for TV and went back to writing for The Washington Post.

1973 - Stevie Wonder came close to losing his life, following a freak auto accident. Wonder, one of Motown’s most popular recording artists, was in a coma for 10 days. Miraculously, he recovered and was back in the recording studio in less than eight weeks.

1981 - Stevie Nicks’ first solo album, Bella Donna, was released. The lead singer for Fleetwood Mac scored a top-three hit with Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around (9/05/81) from the album. Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers were featured on the track. Nicks went on to record a total of 11 hits for the pop-rock charts through 1988.

1981 - Golfing legend Lee Trevino was disqualified from the PGA Championship in Duluth, GA when the ‘Super Mex’ had his scorecard signed by Tom Weiskopf instead of himself. Ouch!

1986 - Timothy Dalton became the fourth actor to be named “Bond ... James Bond.” Dalton, 38, and his studio, United Artists, ended months of speculation as to who would star as Agent 007 in the 15th James Bond film. The character of Bond was created by writer Ian Fleming. Other stars to play the role of the suave, debonair and deadly double agent include: Roger Moore, Sean Connery and George Lazenby, with Pierce Brosnan as the James Bond for the 1990s.

1996 - NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin announced the possibility that a primitive form of microscopic life may have existed on Mars more than three billion years ago. The evidence came from a fossil found on a meteorite in Antarctica believed to have come from Mars billions of years ago.

1997 - A Korean Air Boeing 747, Flight 801, plowed into a hillside short of the Guam International Airport, killing 226 of the 254 aboard. “There was a big ball of fire just before the crash,” said Rudy Delos-Santos, a reporter at radio station KOKU who lives near the crash site. The South Korean plane “plowed through the jungle for a minute or so before it came to a rest.” The impact broke the fuselage into six pieces. The tail, with its distinctive Korean Air logo, was the only part of the plane still recognizable.

1999 - Two memorable movies opened in U.S. theatres. The Sixth Sense, with Bruce Willis starring as a child psychologist and Haley Joel Osment, who plays an 8-year-old who is visited by ghosts. As of July 24, 2001, it had rung up $293,501,675 at the box office. Not nearly so successful, but great fun just the same, was The Thomas Crown Affair. Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo starred in this redo of the 1968 Steve McQueen/Faye Dunaway flick. As of June 30, 2001, it had grossed $69,304,264.


Music For The Day~



Seals and Crofts-Diamond Girl


Quote For The Day~


W. Somerset Maugham





Chuckle For The Day~






Picture For The Day~



Bottle-nosed dolphins jumping in the surf in the Transkei, South Africa

That is an amazing picture of the dolphins! I didn't know they body surfed!

Buh Bye fox news - at least on the web


he he, way to squeeze the teabaggers

Good morning,

Can a pdf file be loaded into this web site? I'd love to share the amazing pictures of the plaza my son designed in Houston which is now complete.

Dolphin often get behind the wake of a boat just to surf. Dolphins are very playful.

I'm off to try to get on the arsenal army base - no easy task - because of security since 9-11. The astronauts of STS-125 are giving a presentation on how they repaired the Hubble. My friend has invited me and put me on the guest list. Now if I can just find her in that huge expanse of roads and buildings. If I make it, there will be a time for autograph signing.

Have a great day everyone!

Kathy

I won't be spending any of my money there!

Recently I've been musing on the phenomenon of people readily and all too willingly believing outright falsehoods, with little or no valid proof or cogent argument, while adamantly refusing to accept obvious and irrefutable facts. This cartoon will serve as a worthy icon at the altar of those musings.

Like model railways?

So, has the Martian microscopic life been declared legally dead?

I wanna come back as a dolphin!

I just posted a new thread about password security that I highly recommend for all computer users, especially those of us who do e-commerce or banking on the 'net.