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>