Martin Stezano

On September 1, 1964, San Francisco Giants pitcher Masanori “Mashi” Murakami became the first Japanese-born player to play in a Major League Baseball game. But a dispute between the trailblazer's Japanese team and the Giants following his historic season effectively shut the door ...read more

Jackie Robinson wasn’t the only Black baseball player to suit up in the big leagues in 1947. After he broke the color line and became the first Black baseball player to play in the American major leagues during the 20th century, four other players of color soon followed in his ...read more

World War I was unlike any conflict the world had ever seen. From 1914 to 1918, the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire were locked in a grueling battle against the Allied Powers—Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the ...read more

In the early morning hours of September 12, 1826, a Batavia, New York stoneworker named William Morgan went missing from the local jail. Morgan was not a man of importance. In fact, he was known as a bit of a drunk—a drifter who, according to historian and author of American ...read more

Grover Cleveland’s Secret Son Just days after Grover Cleveland won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1884, the Buffalo Evening Telegraph published a shocking expose. The paper revealed that, a decade earlier, Cleveland allegedly sexually assaulted Maria Halpin, a woman ...read more

Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play in the Major Leagues on April 15, 1947, when he took the field in the top of the first inning against the Boston Braves. When Robinson took his spot at first base, he broke baseball’s six-decade-long color barrier, which ...read more

Chess is one of the oldest, and most revered games of strategy and analysis in the world. It’s a game so intricate that some spend their entire lives trying to master it. Nearly 60 years ago, a new player entered the game–one powered not by human intelligence and dedication, but ...read more

June of 2017 marked the 10-year anniversary of the release of Apple’s iPhone, a device that not only revolutionized the way the world communicates, but also helped catapult Apple into a global economic and technological powerhouse. At a time when an estimated 700 million users ...read more

On May 21, 1979, thousands of members of San Francisco’s predominantly gay Castro District community took to the streets to protest the lenient sentence received by Dan White for the murders of local politician and gay rights activist Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. Their ...read more

To most Massachusetts residents—and long distance running enthusiasts—the third Monday in April is “Marathon Monday.” The Boston Marathon has shared the limelight in the Bay State with another celebration for the last 120 years: Patriots’ Day. So what is Patriots’ Day, and what ...read more

In 2014, amateur military historian Dan Mackay of Extreme Relic Hunters (ERH) was on the hunt for artifacts in a field near London, England, when he made a remarkable find. Buried next to a World War II-era anti-artillery gun were more than 14,000 individually inscribed, British ...read more

History of the Tomahawk cruise missile The Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) is an American-developed weapon classified as a cruise missile, which is an unmanned jet-propelled aircraft that uses guidance systems to seek and destroy targets. The missiles are approximately 21 ...read more

Although the ceremonies surrounding baseball’s Opening Day have been around since at least 1890, it took 20 years for the commander in chief to become part of the tradition. The first sitting president to throw a pitch was William Howard Taft. The corpulent commander in chief ...read more

You haven’t heard of him because his improbable rise wasn’t possible in America. Richmond was born into slavery on what’s today the New York borough of Staten Island on August 5, 1763. When the British landed there in 1776, at the start of the American Revolution, Richmond did ...read more

1. Linda the Librarian Teaches Sign Language. (1972) Many people gained their first exposure to sign language—and deafness itself—from Linda, a human character Sesame Street introduced in 1972. Played by Linda Bove, who is hearing impaired in real life, Linda was Sesame’s ...read more

1. Janet Guthrie—Racing Through the Glass Ceiling Janet Guthrie wasn’t the first woman to get behind the wheel of a race car, but she became the first woman to compete in NASCAR’s Winston Cup Series (known today as the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series), in the 1976 World 600 ...read more

You've probably heard the soothsayer’s warning to Julius Caesar in William Shakespeare's play of the same name: “Beware the Ides of March.” Not only did Shakespeare’s words stick, they branded the phrase—and the date, March 15—with a dark and gloomy connotation. It’s likely that ...read more

1. The first spring training was a spa compared to today’s version. In one form or another, spring training has always been a part of organized baseball. In the early days of the National League, which formed in 1876, spring training was quite different than today. Teams ...read more