Thurman Tucker (1917–93) was an American center fielder in Major League Baseball who played for nine seasons in the American League with the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians. In 701 career games, Tucker recorded a batting average of .255 and accumulated 24 triples, 9 home runs, and 179 runs batted in. He was nicknamed "Joe E." Tucker because of his resemblance to comedian Joe E. Brown. Born and raised in Gordon, Texas, he was a three-sport athlete at high school, playing baseball (where he was a second baseman), basketball, and track and field. Tucker first played baseball professionally with the Siloam Springs Travelers. After playing in minor league baseball, he was signed by the Chicago White Sox before the 1941 season. His major league debut came the following year and he spent two years as the White Sox's starting center fielder until he enlisted in the armed forces during World War II. Upon his return, Tucker played two more seasons for the White Sox. Subsequently, he was traded to the Cleveland Indians, for whom he played four years, and continued to play minor league baseball throughout the 1950s. After his retirement, he became a major league scout and insurance agent.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurman_Tucker
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1865:
Actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth fatally shot U.S. President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Abraham_Lincoln
1906:
The Azusa Street Revival, the primary catalyst for the spread of Pentecostalism in the 20th century, opened in Los Angeles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azusa_Street_Revival
1931:
After King Alfonso XIII left Spain, the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed by a provisional government led by Niceto Alcalá-Zamora (pictured). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Spanish_Republic
1978:
Thousands of Georgians demonstrated in Tbilisi against an attempt by the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian SSR to change the constitutional status of the Georgian language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Georgian_demonstrations
1999:
A storm dropped an estimated 500,000 tonnes of hailstones in Sydney and along the east coast of New South Wales, causing about A$2.3 billion in damages, the costliest natural disaster in Australian insurance history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Sydney_hailstorm
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
hapax legomenon: A word occurring only once in a given corpus. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hapax_legomenon
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Criticism, whatever may be its pretensions, never does more than to define the impression which is made upon it at a certain moment by a work wherein the writer himself noted the impression of the world which he received at a certain hour. --James Branch Cabell https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Branch_Cabell