100px|Kenesaw Mountain Landis

Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1866–1944) was an American jurist who served as a federal judge from 1905 to 1922 and as the first Commissioner of Baseball from 1920 until his death. He is remembered for his handling of the Black Sox scandal (in which members of the Chicago White Sox conspired to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series); he expelled eight players from organized baseball and repeatedly refused their reinstatement requests. His firm actions and iron rule over baseball in the near quarter-century of his commissionership are generally credited with restoring public confidence in the game. As a judge, Landis had received national attention in 1907 when he fined Standard Oil of Indiana more than $29 million. During and after World War I, Landis, an ardent patriot, presided over a number of high-profile trials of draft resisters and others whom he saw as opposing the war effort. He dealt out heavy sentences to the defendants, though some of the convictions were reversed on appeal; other sentences were commuted. Landis's decisions in the Black Sox matter remain controversial: advocates of Black Sox "Shoeless Joe" Jackson and Buck Weaver contend that he was overly harsh with them. (more...)

Recently featured: Egyptian temple – Parasaurolophus – Definition of planet

Archive – By email – More featured articles...

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenesaw_Mountain_Landis

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1929:

Jiddu Krishnamurti, tapped to be the messianic "World Teacher", shocked the Theosophy movement by dissolving the Order of the Star, the organisation established to support him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Star_in_the_East

1936:

African American athlete Jesse Owens won the first of his four gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Berlin, dashing Nazi leaders' hopes of Aryan domination. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens

1940:

World War II: Italy began their invasion of British Somaliland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_conquest_of_British_Somaliland

2005:

President of Mauritania Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya was overthrown in a military coup while he was attending the funeral of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maaouya_Ould_Sid%27Ahmed_Taya

2007:

Former Deputy Director of the Chilean secret police Raúl Iturriaga was captured after having been on the run following a conviction for kidnapping. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%BAl_Iturriaga

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

garçonnière (n): A bachelor pad http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gar%C3%A7onni%C3%A8re

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Perhaps there was no limit, there might, quite likely, be no such condition as the ultimate; there might be no time when any creature or any group of creatures could stop at any certain point and say, this is as far as we can go, there is no use of trying to go farther. For each new development produced, as side effects, so many other possibilities, so many other roads to travel, that with each step one took down any given road there were more paths to follow. There'd never be an end, he thought — no end to anything. --Clifford D. Simak http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clifford_D._Simak