Casey Stengel (1890–1975) was an American Major League Baseball (MLB)
right fielder, and a manager for the New York Yankees championship teams
of the 1950s and for the New York Mets in the early 1960s. He was an
outfielder for the 1912 Brooklyn Dodgers, and played on their 1916
National League championship team. After serving in the navy during
World War I, he played for the Philadelphia Phillies, the New York
Giants and the Boston Braves. In 1925 he began a career as a manager,
with mostly poor finishes for the next twenty years, especially with the
Dodgers (1934–1936) and Braves (1938–1943). In 1948 he was hired as
Yankee manager. In his twelve seasons, his teams garnered ten pennants,
winning seven World Series, including a record-setting streak of five in
a row (1949–1953). He was known for his humorous and sometimes
disjointed banter. His showmanship helped the Mets, an expansion team,
when they hired him in late 1961, but the team finished last for four
years in a row, and he retired in 1965. Remembered as one of the great
characters in baseball history, Stengel was elected to the Baseball Hall
of Fame in 1966.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Stengel>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1430:
Byzantine–Ottoman wars: After an eight-year siege, the
Ottoman Empire captured the Venetian city of Thessalonica.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Thessalonica_(1422%E2%80%931430)>
1800:
William Matthews was ordained as the first British America-born
Catholic priest.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Matthews_(priest)>
1871:
The Royal Albert Hall in Albertopolis, London, was officially
opened by Queen Victoria.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Albert_Hall>
1974:
A group of farmers in Shaanxi province, China, discovered a
vast collection of terracotta statues depicting the armies of the first
Emperor of China Qin Shi Huang.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_Army>
2010:
Islamist Chechen separatists set off two bombs on the Moscow
Metro, killing 40 and injuring 102 others.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Moscow_Metro_bombings>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
wrest:
1. (transitive) To pull or twist violently.
2. (transitive) To obtain by pulling or violent force.
3. (transitive, figuratively) To seize.
4. (transitive, figuratively) To distort, to pervert, to twist.
5. (transitive, music) To tune with a wrest, or key.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wrest>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The nearest we approach God … is as creative beings. The poet,
by echoing the primary imagination, recreates. Through his work he
forces those who read him to do the same, thus bringing them … nearer
to the actual being of God as displayed in action.
--R. S. Thomas
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/R._S._Thomas>