Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport. After batters hit a thrown ball, they and any teammates who are on a base can try to advance to another base, scoring a run when they return to the home plate. The batting team hits against the pitcher of the fielding team, which tries to get players out (off the field), usually by striking them out, catching a hit ball, throwing to a base that players have to run to, or tagging them with the ball between bases. After three outs, the teams trade places, and after three more, the next inning begins. Professional games last at least into the ninth inning. Evolving from older bat-and-ball games, an early form of baseball was being played in England by the mid-eighteenth century. This game and the related rounders were brought by British and Irish immigrants to North America, where the modern version of baseball developed. By the late nineteenth century, baseball was widely recognized as the national sport of the United States. Baseball has become popular in North America and parts of Central and South America, the Caribbean, and East Asia, particularly Japan.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
414:
Aelia Pulcheria proclaimed herself regent over her brother Theodosius II and made herself Augusta and Empress of the Eastern Roman Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulcheria
1837:
The Grand Junction Railway, the world's first long-distance railway, opened between Birmingham and Liverpool. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Junction_Railway
1950:
The United States' anti-communist propaganda source Radio Free Europe made its first broadcast aimed at Czechoslovakia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Liberty
1982:
Four Iranian diplomats were kidnapped after they were stopped at a checkpoint in northern Lebanon by Lebanese Phalange forces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Iranian_diplomats_kidnapping
2005:
The NASA space probe Deep Impact impacted the nucleus of the comet Tempel 1 (impact pictured), excavating debris from its interior so that its composition could be studied. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Impact_(spacecraft)
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
vegetable lamb: (mythology) A legendary plant believed to grow sheep from its branches. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vegetable_lamb
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. --The US Declaration of Independence https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence