On February 2, 1876, the National League of Professional
Baseball Clubs, which came to be more commonly known
as the National League (NL), was formed. The American
League (AL) was established in 1901 and in 1903, the first
World Series was held.
The first official game of baseball in the United States took
place in June 1846 in Hoboken, New Jersey.
February 1, 1978: Antislavery crusader and Civil War veteran
Harriet Tubman became the first African American woman to
appear on a U.S. postage stamp, the first in the Post Office’s
Black Heritage Series. Tubman’s appearance on stamps was
emblematic both of the progress made in recognizing African
Americans’ contributions to American history and the ongoing
effort to put abolitionists on equal footing with slaveowners in
the nation’s historical canon.
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross)
(c. March 1822– March 10, 1913)
On this day in 1936, the U.S. Baseball Hall of Fame elected its first members in Cooperstown, New York: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Matthewson and Walter Johnson.
Today, with approximately 350,000 visitors per year, the Hall of
Fame continues to be the hub of all things baseball. It has elected
278 individuals, in all, including 225 players, 17 managers, 8
umpires and 28 executives and pioneers.
On January 26, 1926, John Logie Baird (1888 – 1946) a Scottish
inventor, gave the first public demonstration of a true television
system in London (above), which launched a revolution in the
communication and entertainment fields.
Baird’s invention, a pictorial-transmission machine he called
a “televisor,” used mechanical rotating disks to scan moving
images into electronic impulses. This information was then
transmitted by cable to a screen where it showed up as a low-
resolution pattern of light and dark.
Baird’s first television program showed the heads of two
ventriloquist dummies, which he operated in front of the
camera apparatus out of view of the audience (below).
The original television model, invented by the Scottish
television pioneer John Logie Baird.
This image is the first recorded picture taken from a TV
screen.
First Emmy Awards Marker outside the Hollywood Athletic
Club.
The first Emmy Awards ceremony, which was televised, was held
on January 25, 1949 at the Hollywood Athletic Club (below). The a
wards recognize excellence in television, which in the 1940s was
a novel medium and only 4,000 homes in Los Angeles had televisions.
The awards were hosted by Walter O’Keefe who substituted for
Rudy Vallée when he had to leave town at the last minute.
Most Outstanding Television Personality: Twenty-year-old Shirley Dinsdale and her puppet sidekick “Judy Splinters” (below) for
‘The Judy Splinters Show.’
