Scores On This Historic Day

April 1, 1923: Safety Last! premieres, starring one of the top comedians of the silent film era, Harold Lloyd. Harold Clayton Lloyd was born on April 20, 1893 in Burchard, Nebraska, and grew up in San Diego. Moving to Los Angeles, he became friends with film producer Hal Roach, and created Lonesome Luke, a character patterned after Charlie Chaplin's "Little Tramp." In 1917, he replaced this character with, as he put it, " an everyday young man in street clothes who faced comic situations with resourcefulness." The look, complete with glasses, is said to have inspired artist Joe Shuster to create the appearance of Clark Kent, alter ego of Superman. But, unlike Superman, he was not invulnerable. On August 24, 1919, while posing for some promotional still photographs in the Los Angeles Witzel Photography Studio, he picked up what he thought was a prop bomb and lit it with a cigarette.  It exploded and mangled his right hand, causing him to lose a thumb and forefi...

April 1, 1914: Rube Waddell dies. It was a tragedy. But it was not really a surprise. Indeed, it was appropriate that it occurred on April Fool's Day. It's hard to describe him , as he was one of a kind. That's probably a good thing. George Edward Waddell was born on October 13, 1876 in Bradford, Pennsylvania.  At the age of 3, he wandered over to a local fire station, and stayed there for several days. He did not attend school very often. He was lefthanded, and strengthened his arm as a child by throwing rocks at birds he encountered while working on his family's land. He also worked on mining and drilling sites as a youngster, which helped his conditioning. He reached the major leagues in 1897, with the Louisville Colonels. That team was absorbed by the Pittsburgh Pirates, the closest major league team to his home, in 1900, but they couldn't handle his shenanigans, and released him in 1901. The Chicago Cubs quickly signed him, and nearly as quickly released him. ...

Quinn, suited up for the Republic of Ireland's game with Portugal, Lisbon, October 7, 2000. The game ended in a 1-1 draw. This was also the day Germany beat England in the last event at the 1923 version of Wembley Stadium. March 31, 2007: Fans of English soccer team Sunderland Association Football Club are stranded, about as far from home as you can get and still be in England. The team's owner gets them home on his own dime. Or, should I say, his own tuppence. Niall John Quinn was born in 1966 in what is now administered as South Dublin, Ireland. He was a forward, and, with his height and skill, was thought of as the next chapter in the "Irish Connection," a successor to several players from Dublin, and also from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who had helped North London team Arsenal win the 1979 FA Cup. He played on Arsenal’s 1987 League Cup-winning team. But he wasn't ready, and when Alan Smith was brought in from Leicester City shortly thereafter, he became an af...

March 31, 2001: David Rocastle dies of lymphoma. He was just 33 years old, and was one of the best English soccer players of his generation. He was born on May 2, 1967 in Lewisham, South-East London, the son of Caribbean immigrants. He was 5 when his father died of pneumonia, and his mother remarried and had 2 more children. He became an expert schoolboy midfielder, to the point where Terry Murphy, a scout for North London team Arsenal Football Club, told team owner Peter Hill-Wood, "I think I saw a Brazilian today." Murphy also discovered centrebacks Tony Adams and Martin Keown, and midfielder Michael Thomas. Rocastle, nicknamed "Rocky," and Thomas joined midfielder Paul Davis and forward Kevin Campbell to give Arsenal one of the earliest groups of talented young black players in England. He made his debut early in the 1985-86 season, and a replay of the 1987 League Cup Semifinal, away to Arsenal's North London arch-rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, he scored the win...

John Cusack (left) and Jack Black March 31, 2000: The film High Fidelity premieres, based on the novel by Nick Hornby. Previously the author of Fever Pitch , Hornby showed that he could be as obsessive about music as he could about soccer. The film moves the action from Hornby's London to Chicago, hometown of the lead actor, John Cusack. He plays Rob Gordon, the manager of a record store, at a time when compact discs had pretty much replaced records, and downloads and YouTube were on their way. Rob and his employees, Barry (Jack Black) and Dick (Todd Louiso) like to make Top 5 lists of various things, mostly kinds of songs. Having just been dumped by Laura, his live-in girlfriend of 2 years (Danish actress Iben Hjejle ), Rob makes a list of his 5 most memorable breakups. In order to make sense of his romantic failures, he decides to look the 5 up. Number 1 is Allison, who is not shown, and this is resolved quickly, to the point where he decides things worked out for the best, at ...

Carrie-Anne Moss (left) and Keanu Reeves March 31, 1999: The Matrix premieres, turning Keanu Reeves from "the guy from Speed ," or "Ted from Bill & Ted," into an all-time legend. The film was directed by The Wachowskis, who then presented as brothers named Larry and Andy. In 2008, Larry made her first public appearance as Lana, making her the 1st major film director to come out as transgender. In 2016, Andy made her first public appearance as Lilly. The Matrix depicts a dystopian  future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside the Matrix, a simulated reality created by intelligent machines.  The plot follows the computer hacker Thomas Anderson (Reeves),  who is recruited by rebellion leader Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne)  into a rebellion against the machines, due to the belief that Anderson is "The One," known as Neo (an anagram of "One"). Carrie-Anne Moss, who played Trinity, another rebellion leader and eventually Neo's girlfr...

March 31, 1998: Major League Baseball's 2 newest expansion franchises, both based in places that had been used to Spring Training, but not the regular season, make their regular-season debuts. Neither wins. Just as Florida had been home to many teams' Spring Training, known as the "Grapefruit League," Arizona, in particular Phoenix and environs, had been the "Cactus League." The Phoenix Giants, later renamed the Phoenix Firebirds, were the top farm team of the San Francisco Giants, and won Pacific Coast League Pennants in 1959 and 1977. Phoenix got an NBA team in 1968, and an NFL team in 1988. In 1995, MLB awarded Phoenix an expansion team for the 1998 season. At Bank One Ballpark (now Chase Field) in Phoenix, the Arizona Diamondbacks lose to the Colorado Rockies 9-2. Andy Benes is their 1st pitcher, and he lasts into the 7th inning. Their 1st batter is Devon White, and he strikes out. Mike Lansing of the Rockies has the stadium's 1st hit, Travis Lee t...

Sign that you're old: You hear "Selena," and you think "Quintanilla" before you think "Gomez"; "Demi," and you think "Moore" before you think "Lovato"; and "Kylie," and you think "Minogue" before you think "Jenner." March 31, 1995: Selena Quintanilla-P é rez, the biggest star of "Tejano" music, is killed in her hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas -- by the president of her fan club. She was not quite 24 years old, and had just released her first all-English album. Like most Anglophone Americans, I never knew Selena was alive, until I knew she was dead. This would later be true of singer and plane crash victim Jenni Rivera -- although, having lived on the edge of a Mexican neighborhood in New Brunswick for a time, I had considerably less excuse for not knowing about her. But People magazine reported that, for the first time in their 21-year history, an entire press run of an issue so...

March 31, 1989: The film Heathers premieres. It is called a "black comedy," but its undertones got darker in hindsight. In 2019, for a 30th Anniversary column , Ben Schwartz wrote that it doesn't hold up well, through little more than divulging the plot: With archly funny emotional detachment, it depicts the school shootings, date rapes, self-loathing, eating disorders, and petty viciousness that made up high school in the 1980s. Intelligent, cynical Veronica (Winona Ryder ) has sold herself out to a popular but horrible high school clique, the Heathers. She reluctantly helps demean and trash other kids and even regularly assists one Heather (Shannen Doherty) by putting a finger down her throat to help with her bulimia. Then JD (Christian Slater), a dark, charismatic new kid, shows up at school. He attracts Veronica by pushing back violently on their cruel little bullying world with guns, poison, and, finally, a bomb. Having been in high school from September 1984 to Ju...