April 21, 1910: Halley's Comet & Mark Twain

April 21, 1910: Halley's Comet makes its closest approach to Earth on its 75 1/2-year trip around the Sun. It had last done so on November 30, 1835.

On that date, in Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi River, a boy was born. He was named Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He would go on to do a lot of things with his life, including work on riverboats, drive a wagon on a westward wagon train, and write for newspapers from coast to coast.

From his work on riverboats, he took the pen name Mark Twain. "Mark" meaning distance and "Twain" meaning "two," the combined meaning of "Mark Twain" was, roughly, the point at which water became safe to travel -- or unsafe. And he did often seem to live his life on the border between safe and unsafe -- but also on the border between America's slaveholding South and its abolitionist North, and on the border between its established East and its then-wide-open, freewheeling "Wild West."

William Faulkner called him "The Father of American Literature," based mainly on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, published in 1876, the 1st major American novel written on a typewriter; and its sort-of sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in 1884.

He became America's leading lecture-circuit figure, unafraid to mock the high and the mighty and point out that their foibles were much the same as those of the low and the powerless. As has been said of journalists since, he sought to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.

On June 2, 1897, the New York Journal, the hub of the journalism empire of William Randolph Hearst, ran a rebuttal to an article it had written, claiming that Twain had died, including Twain's own words:

I can understand perfectly how the report of my illness got about, I have even heard on good authority that I was dead. James Ross Clemens, a cousin of mine, was seriously ill two or three weeks ago in London, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness. The report of my death was an exaggeration.

This was one of many quotes of Twain that have either been gotten wrong, or incorrectly attributed to him. It is usually remembered as, "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." A friend of his, novelist Charles Dudley Warner, said, "Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." And Twain went out of his way to credit Warner for the line. But most people credit it to Twain.

One quote definitely correctly attributed to Twain came in 1909:

I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks, They came in together, they must go out together."

Twain's prediction was accurate: He died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, at Stormfield, his home in Redding, Connecticut. (The house burned down in 1923, and a replica was built on the site.) He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York. So were Hal Roach, producer of the Laurel & Hardy and Our Gang films; and Ernie Davis, the 1st black Heisman Trophy winner.

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April 21, 1910 was a Thursday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Highlanders beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 1-0 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Russ Ford -- that's Russ, pitching for the team that would officially become the Yankees in 1913, not Whitey -- outpitched Cy Morgan. Despite this game, while the Highlanders did finish 2nd, they would be 14 1/2 games behind the Pennant-winning A's.

* The New York Giants beat the Boston Doves, 3-2 at the Polo Grounds. Rube Marquard was the winning pitcher, and Larry Doyle hit a home run, once again proving his quote: "It's great to be young and a Giant." The Doves, named for their owners, the Dovey brothers, became the Boston Braves in 1912.

* The Brooklyn Superbas lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 1-0 at Washington Park in Brooklyn. Lew Moren pitched a 2-hit shutout, outpitching Irvin Wilhelm, already known as "Kaiser" in those pre-World War I years. The Superbas officially renamed themselves the Dodgers the next season.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Washington Senators, 10-3 at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston. Tris Speaker went 2-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 9-4 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Honus Wagner went 1-for-3 with 2 walks.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Naps, 5-0. This was the 1st game played at the 2nd League Park in Cleveland, replacing the one that stood at the same location, East 66th Street & Lexington Avenue, since 1891. Ty Cobb went 0-for-4. Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie, Cleveland's 2nd baseman, manager and namesake, went 1-for-4.

The team was renamed the Cleveland Indians in 1915, and the Cleveland Guardians in 2022. They played all their games at League Park until 1932, then alternated between there and Municipal Stadium until 1946, then only at Municipal Stadium until 1993, and then moved into Jacobs Field in 1994, renaming it Progressive Field in 2008.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds, 6-1 at the West Side Grounds in Chicago.

* And the St. Louis Browns beat the Chicago White Sox, 4-1 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.