December 10, 1884: Mark Twain Publishes "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"

December 10, 1884: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published by Samuel Langhorne Clemens, under his pen name, Mark Twain.

He had been born on November 30, 1835, in Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi River, while Halley's Comet was making its closest pass to Earth on its 75 1/2-year trip around the Sun. Sam Clemens 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.

Tom Sawyer was set in St. Petersburg, Missouri, based on Hannibal, in the 1840s, before the American Civil War. Slavery was still in effect. One day, Tom, about 12 years old at the time, skips school to go swimming, and is made to whitewash his mean old Aunt Polly's fence for the entirety of the next day, Saturday, as punishment. He cons the other neighborhood kids, who adore him, into doing it for him -- perhaps inspiring the late 20th Century character Ferris Bueller. And, just as Ferris faked having a terrible, if ill-defined, illness, Tom fakes his own death, and attends his own funeral, before he's discovered to be alive.

He meets Becky Thatcher, a girl who has just moved to town with her father, a circuit-riding judge. And his best friend is Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, whose father is the town drunk, but all the other boys in school seem to like him.

The narrator of Tom Sawyer is omniscient. Every subsequent work featuring Tom and Huck is narrated by Huck, including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which opens with this warning by the author: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

Then the story opens, with Huck saying, "You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. That book was made by a Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly."

In this 2nd novel, Huck is now 13 (as is Tom), and runs away from his abusive father, and rides a raft down the river, landing on an island where he finds Jim, a runaway slave. Huck has been told that helping a runaway slave means going to Hell, but when it looks like Jim will be captured, Huck says, "All right, then, I'll go to Hell," and rescues Jim.

They are found by Tom's relatives, and Tom tells them that Jim's owner has died and freed him in her will, and that Huck's father has also died, so Huck is "free" as well. Tom's relatives offer to adopt Huck, but he runs away, saying he's going to "light out for the Indian Territory," present-day Oklahoma.

Huckleberry Finn remains one of the most beloved American novels. Ernest Hemingway declared that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." T. S. Eliot, Twain's fellow Missourian, called it a "masterpiece."

But it also remains one of the most controversial. Liberals criticize it for Twain's use of local speech, including racial slurs. Conservatives criticize it for being anti-racism.

Less-remembered are 2 more sequels, both narrated by Huck. In 1894, Twain published Tom Sawyer Abroad, a parody of Jules Verne's "scientific novels," with Tom and Huck traveling to Africa in a hot air balloon, and having adventures in Egypt and the jungle. In 1896, Twain published Tom Sawyer, Detective, in which Tom, now a teenager, solves a murder. 

Twain 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.

Twain 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.) It was the day after Halley's Comet had made its closest approach to Earth. A year before, knowing the comet was coming, Twain predicted that, just as he came in with it, he would go out with it. He was right.

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.

In 1985, William Hauptman and country singer Roger Miller wrote a musical titled Big River, based on Huck's novel, and it won Tony Awards. Many later movies and TV shows were based on imagined later adventures of Tom and Huck, but still depict them as boys, as teenagers at the oldest. Few have dared to show what they were like as grown men.

In 1983, Greg Matthews published a novel, The Further Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck and Jim "light out for the territory," but go well past Oklahoma, participating in the California Gold Rush of 1849. So, in this one, Huck is still just a kid.

In 1968, Robert Coover published a novel about a man who created, and becomes obsessed with, a version of what would now be called "fantasy baseball": The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. In 2017, Coover published Huck Out West, imagining Huck's adventures during the Civil War, when he and Tom would have been in their late 20s.

The 2003 film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen cast Shane West as a now-grown Tom, a U.S. Secret Service agent. The character was not in the original graphic novel. But West was 25 years old at the time. Since the story takes place in 1899, Tom, had he lived to that point, was more likely to have been at least twice that old.

The 2015 film Band of Robbers puts the characters in the present day, as young adults, with the trope of two boys in trouble, one got caught and went to jail (Huck), and the other got away and cleaned up his act (Tom). But when Huck is released, it turns out Tom, now a cop, still has dreams of being a Robin Hood type, stealing from criminals and giving back the stole property.

In 1981, Bernard Sabath wrote a play, The Boys in Autumn. It's set in the 1920s, and after a long life away, Tom returns to Hannibal. Tom became a vaudeville performer, and Huck, to the much greater surprise, became a respectable gentleman, now a grumpy old man. Frank Rich, then the Broadway columnist for The New York Times, ripped the original production, starring John Cullum (later Holling on Northern Exposure) as Tom and George C. Scott as Huck, angry that Sabath had "given the men lurid secrets that reduce two of the most beloved characters in our cultural heritage to extras in a Harold Robbins novel."

As if that wasn't just the kind of thing that Twain himself wouldn't have applauded! After all, on August 31, 1884, as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was heading for the printing press, Twain wrote a letter to fellow novelist William Dean Howells, saying, "Isn't human nature the most consummate sham & lie that was ever invented?"  

*

December 10, 1884 was a Wednesday. Baseball and football season were over. Hockey was barely organized. And basketball hadn't even been invented. So there were no scores on this historic day.

November 4, 1884: Cleveland vs. Blaine, the Era's Nastiest Election

November 4, 1884: One of the closest and nastiest elections in American history ends. Grover Cleveland was the Democratic nominee. At age 47, he was the Governor of New York, and had previously been the Mayor of Buffalo and the Sheriff of Erie County.

The New York World endorsed him for 4 reasons, according to its publisher, Joseph Pulitzer: "1. He is an honest man. 2. He is an honest man. 3. He is an honest man. 4. He is an honest man." How honest was he? He managed to win public offices in the State of New York despite resisting the efforts of Tammany Hall, the State's Manhattan-based Democratic political machine.

At the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Representative Edward S. Bragg of Wisconsin, who had been a Union General during the Civil War, told the delegates, "They love him, gentlemen, and they respect him, not only for himself, for his character, for his integrity and judgment and iron will. But they love him most of all for the enemies he has made."

Apparently, he made enemies at the Buffalo Evening Telegraph. On July 21, that newspaper published a story that he had fathered a child out of wedlock, institutionalizing the mother to keep her quiet, and putting the kid up for adoption. Republicans began singing, "Ma! Ma! Where's my Pa?" And political cartoons lampooned the father/mother/son relationship.

Note the "Grover the Good" tag on Cleveland's coat,

as the kid screams, "I want my Pa!"

Presumably, irony on the part of the artist.

Cleveland's advisers asked him what to do. He said, "Above all, tell the truth." Given that this answer was completely vague, they did the wisest possible thing with it: They said nothing, and let the charge flow, implying that it was true.

In contrast, the Republican nominee was, as the song went, "Blaine! Blaine! James G. Blaine! The continental liar from the State of Maine!" At 54, he was a U.S. Senator, and had been Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Secretary of State under President James Garfield. Indeed, he was standing next to Garfield when he was shot. Had shooter Charles Guiteau's aim been a little off, Garfield would likely have been running for re-election against Cleveland, and, without Blaine's many scandals (which had nothing to do with Garfield), Garfield might have won easily.

James Gillespie Blaine

In spite of Blaine being, most likely, the American politician who had the most of what would now be called "political IOUs," many Republicans really wanted General William Tecumseh Sherman, hero of the Civil War, and brother of an 1880 candidate, Senator John Sherman of Ohio. He flat-out refused: "I will not accept if nominated, and will not serve if elected." What became known as a "Shermaneseque Declaration" is sometimes incorrectly written as, "If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve."

William Tecumseh Sherman, circa 1884

Cleveland's Vice Presidential nominee was Thomas A. Hendricks, who served Indiana as Governor and in both houses of Congress, and had been Samuel Tilden's Vice Presidential nominee in 1876. Blaine's running mate was John A. Logan, a Civil War General and a U.S. Senator from Illinois.

Mark Twain, the most popular author in America, was weeks away from publishing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He was well-known to be a Republican, but, this time, he was one of the "Mugwumps": Republicans supporting Cleveland, because, for them, Blaine's corruption had gone too far. He said:

This present campaign is too delicious for anything. To see grown men, apparently in their right mind, seriously arguing against a bachelor's fitness for President because he has had private intercourse with a consenting widow! These grown men know what the bachelor's other alternative was -- & tacitly they seem to prefer that to the widow. Isn't human nature the most consummate sham & lie that was ever invented?

Moorfield Storey, a prominent Boston lawyer who later served as President of the American Bar Association, and as the 1st President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (though he was white), noted:

We are told that Mr. Blaine has been delinquent in office but blameless in private life; while Mr. Cleveland has been a model of official integrity, but culpable in his personal relations. We should therefore elect Mr. Cleveland to the public office which he is so well qualified to fill, and remand Mr. Blaine to the private station which he is admirably fitted to adorn.

(Historians seem to disagree on whether Blaine was faithful to this wife, Harriet Stanwood.)

On October 29, 6 days before the election, Blaine had attended a dinner at the famed Delmonico's restaurant in Lower Manhattan. One of the speakers, a Presbyterian minister named Samuel Burchard, called the Democrats "the Party of Rum, Romanism and Rebellion!"

In other words: They were against the movement for the Prohibition of alcohol, they had great support among Roman Catholics (and thus, it was believed, would be puppets of the Pope in a country dominated by Protestants), and supported slavery and the South during the Civil War.

That line hit the newspapers, including Pulitzer's World. If Rev. Burchard intended it as a hit piece, what would now be called an "October Surprise," it backfired completely: It cost Blaine the State of New York, which had a lot of Catholic and anti-Prohibition voters, and was wobbling on Cleveland, even though he had been popular as Governor and as Mayor of Buffalo.

And the speech hitting the papers made all the difference: By winning New York, Cleveland took the Electoral Vote, 219 to 182. He won just 48.9 percent of the popular vote, to Blaine's 48.3. In fact, Cleveland ran for President 3 times, and won the popular vote all 3 times (though he lost the Electoral Vote in 1888, winning it again in 1892), but on none of those occasions did he win a majority of it.

When Cleveland was beaten in 1888, under dubious circumstances, his opponent, Benjamin Harrison, returned Blaine to the State Department, but he resigned due to ill health in 1892, and died just before the term ended in 1893.

Had Burchard -- not related to another Republican activist by that name, a Congressman from Wisconsin -- kept his mouth shut at that dinner late in the 1884 campaign, Blaine would have become the 22nd President of the United States, and Cleveland would only be remembered for, "Ma! Ma! Where's my Pa?" Instead, the Democrats' answer was, "Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!"

So what was the truth? In 1874, between offices and in private law practice (he had been Sheriff, but not yet Mayor), Cleveland paid child support for Maria Halpin and her son, named Oscar Folsom Cleveland. Maria was, apparently, mentally ill, and was indeed institutionalized, though there is no evidence that it was on Cleveland's request. The boy was adopted, was given the name James E. King Jr., and became a doctor like his adoptive father.

The thing was, in those days, long before DNA or even blood tests would have shed some light on the subject, Grover Cleveland was not the only possible father. Another possible father was Cleveland's law partner, whose name was... Oscar Folsom. But of the several possible fathers, Cleveland was the only one who was not married at the time, and thus would be the one least scandalized if the story got out -- or so he thought.

By today's standards, we would find what Cleveland did next to be much worse: He married Frances Folsom, the daughter of Oscar Folsom, who had died and left her guardianship to him. She was 21 when they married in 1886, making her easily the youngest First Lady ever (next is Julia Tyler, 24), and their wedding ceremony was the 1st ever held in the White House itself.

But as icky as their relationship sounds, it lasted for the rest of his life, until 1908. Grover and Frances Cleveland had 5 children: Ruth, Esther, Marion, Richard and Francis. Ruth was not, as the legend says, the namesake of the Baby Ruth candy bar. She died of diphtheria at age 12. The rest all lived until at least 1974, and Francis lived until 1995, 111 years after his father was first elected President. (It would be as if, in 2022, a child of Woodrow Wilson were still alive, or if Malia or Sasha Obama were to live until 2119.)

Rev. Burchard died in 1891, Blaine in 1893, and Harrison in 1901. Frances Cleveland died in 1947 -- as did Oscar Folsom Cleveland/Dr. James E. King Jr.

Cleveland and the other President who lived most of his life in Buffalo, Millard Fillmore, both have statues in front of City Hall, facing Niagara Square. The Square's centerpiece is the McKinley Monument, a memorial to President William McKinley, who was assassinated there.

Cleveland statue at Buffalo City Hall

There are high schools named for Cleveland in his birthplace of Caldwell, New Jersey; in Ridgewood, Queens, New York City; in his adopted hometown of Buffalo, New York; and in St. Louis, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle. In 1928 and 1934, gold certificates standing in for $1,000 bills were issued with Cleveland's portrait. These would be America's last bills with a value above $100.

Cleveland remains the only President born in New Jersey, although he lived most of his life in New York State, before returning to New Jersey, to Princeton, where he lived his post-Presidential life.

Cleveland has been played by Stuart Holmes in The Monroe Doctrine and The Oklahoma Kid, both in 1939; William Davidson in Lillian Russell in 1940; Carroll O'Connor in Profiles in Courage in 1965; Pat McCormick in Buffalo Bill and the Indians in 1976; A.J. Freeman in Timestalkers in 1987; and Richard Herd in The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. in 1994.

William Hoke Smith, usually known by his middle name, served as Secretary of the Interior during Cleveland's 2nd term. Hoke Smith was publisher of the Atlanta Journal, the South's largest newspaper, and promoted Cleveland's candidacy in 1892. So the Cabinet appointment was basically a payoff for his support, something that seems out of character for Cleveland. Smith was a progressive on many issues, but, like most major Southern politicians of his time, he was a white supremacist. He turned out to be the last surviving member of Cleveland's Cabinet, living until 1931.

*

November 4, 1884 was a Tuesday. The baseball season was over. There were no college football games played that day. Hockey was still all-amateur and all in Canada. And basketball hadn't been invented yet. So there were no scores on this historic day.

November 1, 1884: The Gaelic Athletic Association Is Founded

November 1, 1884: The Gaelic Athletic Association is founded at Hayes's Hotel in Thurles, County Tipperary, in what's now the Republic of Ireland. The GAA governs the traditional Irish sports such as hurling and Gaelic football -- but not Irish soccer, which is governed by the Football Association of Ireland (FAI). The Northern Ireland equivalent is the Irish Football Association (IFA).

For decades, Irish athletes resisted the sports that England were first to organize: Association football (soccer), rugby, and cricket. So they developed their own version of football, and rounders (a baseball-like game then less popular in England than cricket), and hurling. For girls, the game of canogie was invented, sort of a cross between field hockey and lacrosse.

By the 1960s, the growth of television allowed Irish people to see English sports more easily, and they decided to try to, literally, beat the English at their own games. An Ireland rugby team, made up of both Republic of Ireland players and Norther Ireland players, has been very successful. In soccer, though the Republic team (run by the Football Association of Ireland, or FAI) and the Northern Ireland team (run by the Irish Football Association, or IFA) remain separate, and tend not to do well.

The GAA also promotes Irish music and dance, as well as the Irish language, and it also promotes environmental stewardship through its Green Clubs initiative. Today, it is headquartered at Croke Park, the 82,300-seat national stadium, in Dublin. A GAA museum is at the stadium.

*

November 1, 1884 was a Saturday. In America, baseball was the most popular sport, especially among its many Irish immigrants, but the season was over. But some Irish turned to American-style football, due to its closer to resemblance to the Gaelic version and rugby than to English soccer. These were still the early days of college football, and only 4 games were played that day:

* Wesleyan University, of Middletown, Connecticut, beat Harvard, 16-0 at the Hartford Ball Club Grounds in Hartford, Connecticut.

* Rutgers beat Lehigh, 61-0 at College Field in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

* The College of New Jersey, renamed Princeton University in 1896, beat Stevens Institute of Technology, of Hoboken, New Jersey, at University Field in Princeton, New Jersey.

* And the University of Pennsylvania beat Lafayette, 21-0 at the University Athletic Grounds in Philadelphia.

October 24, 1884: Providence, World Champions

The 1884 Providence Grays. Old Hoss is at the far left,

holding a bat despite his fame coming as a pitcher.

October 24, 1884: The New York Mets lose the World Series. Well, not exactly.

The Providence Grays, Champions of the National League, defeat the New York Metropolitans -- and, yes, this early franchise was called the Mets for short -- 3-1, behind the pitching of future Hall-of-Famer Charlie "Old Hoss" Radbourn, at the Polo Grounds in New York. This gives the Grays the first-ever postseason series between champions of 2 major professional baseball leagues, a series that was officially called the "World's Series."

In those days, pitching was mostly done underhanded, and most teams had as few as 2 pitchers. The Grays had 2: Radbourn and Charlie Sweeney. But they hated each other, and even fought in the clubhouse. Following a drunken incident on July 22, Sweeney left the team.

Radbourn had pitched 76 of the team's last 98 games in 1883, and offered to pitch every game for the rest of the season. Of the remaining 43, he ended up starting 40 and winning 36. His final won-lost record was 60-12 -- or 59-12, depending on whose rules and accounting you go by. (The criteria for which pitcher to credit with a win had yet to be standardized.) Either way, it's an all-time record that was never seriously challenged even before 1893, when the distance from the pitcher's mound to home plate was increased from 50 feet to 60 feet, 6 inches.

A Game 3 was played, for charity, and the Grays won that, too. The Grays had won the NL Pennant in 1879, too, but would go out of business after the 1885 season. Radbourn went on to the Grays' arch-rivals, the Boston Beaneaters (forerunners of the Atlanta Braves), probably because they could pay the most. In an 1886 team photo, he raised his middle finger, and this is believed to be the earliest photographic evidence of anyone "flipping the bird," although the gesture goes back at least as far as ancient Rome.

He stayed in the majors through the 1891 season, retired with a record of 310-194, ran a billiard parlor, and died in 1897, possibly of the effects of syphilis. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939, but his plaque reads "CHARLIE RADBOURNE," with an extra E on the end. His tombstone in Bloomington, Illinois also puts the extra E on the end.

The last survivor of the 1884 Providence Grays was outfielder Paul Radford, who lived until 1945 -- 61 years, 10 States and 11 Presidents later.

Aside from teams known as the the Providence Steam Rollers in the NFL (1920-1931, 1928 Champions) and the NBA (only the inaugural 1946-47 season), the State of Rhode Island has never had another major league sports team -- the New England Patriots, who play 25 miles from downtown Providence in Foxboro, Massachusetts, don't count.

The Grays had previously won the NL Pennant, and thus became de facto World Champions, in 1879. With a population of about 105,000 in 1884, Providence remains the smallest city ever to be home to the World Champions of baseball. Today, the population is nearly double that, about 191,000, but still much too small to be home to a major league sports team. The Grays' home, the Messer Street Grounds, had a suburban-style housing development built on it.

*

October 24, 1884 was a Friday. No other baseball games were played. No college football games were played, although a few were played the next day. Hockey was still all-amateur and all in Canada. And basketball wouldn't be invented for another 7 years. So, no other scores on this historic day.

September 28, 1884: Anfield Opens

September 28, 1884: Anfield opens on the edge of Stanley Park in Liverpool, England. The home team wins.

Present-day fans of Liverpool Football Club will not be surprised to learn this. But they may be surprised to learn that the home team was Everton Football Club. The "Toffees" beat nearby team Earlestown, 5-0, and went on to use Anfield as their home ground until 1892, when Goodison Park opened, a mile away on another side of Stanley Park.

Imagine if, instead of at their actual locations in The Bronx and Queens, respectively, Yankee Stadium had been built where the American Museum of Natural History is, at 79th Street and Central Park West; and Shea Stadium had been built across Central Park, 1 mile away, where the Metropolitan Museum of Art is, at 81st Street and 5th Avenue. That's how close Anfield and Goodison Park are.

The stadium is named after the surrounding area. The word "Anfield" originated in the combination of Old English and Middle English words, which mean "a field on a slope." An alternate explanation is that the name is linked to the influx of people fleeing the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, crossing the Irish sea from Dublin to Liverpool, and was associated with Annefield, outside New Ross, County Wexford.

A dispute between Everton and the land's owner, John Houlding, led to them moving to Goodison. Houlding was left with an empty stadium, and decided to form a new club to occupy it. Liverpool F.C.'s 1st game there was played on September 1, 1892, and they beat South Yorkshire team Rotherham Town, 7-1.

Seating capacity was originally 8,000, and was expanded to 11,000 in 1895. In 1906, a new stand was built along Walton Breck Road. Ernest Edwards, the sports editor of newspapers the Liverpool Daily Post (which went out of business in 2013) and the Liverpool Echo (still in business), named it the Spion Kop, after a famous hill in South Africa where a local regiment had suffered heavy losses during the Boer War in 1900. More than 300 men had died, many of them from Liverpool, as the British army attempted to capture the strategic hilltop. While many soccer stadiums would call one of their end sections the Spion Kop, most, like Liverpool's have been "The Kop" for short.

In 1928, the Kop was redesigned and extended, to hold 30,000 spectators, all standing. A roof was erected as well. The stadium got lights in 1957. In 1963, the old Kemlyn Road Stand was replaced by a cantilevered stand, accommodating 6,700 spectators. Two years later, responding to the demand for tickets following Liverpool's 1964 Football League title and 1965 FA Cup win, alterations were made at the Anfield Road Stand, turning it into a larger covered standing area with refreshments under the structure.

The biggest redevelopment came in 1973, when the old Main Stand was partially demolished and extended backwards with a new roof. In the 1980s the paddock in front of the Main Stand was turned into seating, and in 1982 seats were introduced at the Anfield Road Stand. The Shankly Gates were erected in 1982, a tribute to former manager Bill Shankly.

Across the Shankly Gates are the words "You'll Never Walk Alone." In the 1960s, at Anfield, games would be preceded by the public address system playing the Top 10 songs in the country. Gerry & The Pacemakers' version of "You'll Never Walk Alone," from the 1945 Broadway musical Carousel, debuted in the Top 10 on October 19, 1963, and so it was played at Anfield for the 1st time. It hit Number 1 in Britain. (It was not a hit in America.)

But when it fell out of the Top 10, Liverpool fans demanded that it be played at Anfield, anyway, just before the team walked onto the pitch. This was done, and Liverpool, managed by Shankly, won the Football League in 1964. After that, in England, the song was considered a good-luck charm by fans of the Mersey Reds, and was irrevocably tied to the team. Everton fans would become sick of the song, and one of their fans' slogans is "I'd rather walk alone."

Shankly retired after the 1973-74 season, but under his right-hand man, Bob Paisley, they actually got better. I've often compared Liverpool to American football's Pittsburgh Steelers: A "football" team from a hardscrabble, hardworking town, with the loss of so much industry casting a pall over the era, starts winning, dominating their league in the decade, and becomes everything to the people, many of them of Irish descent. The biggest difference between the teams is that, unlike the Steelers, the Mersey Reds did have some success before the 1970s.

In fact, they won 18 titles in the Football League Division One: 1901, 1906, 1922, 1923, 1947, 1964, 1966, 1973, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1988 and 1990. The Premier League was founded in 1992, and, infamously, it took them until the COVID season of 2019-20 for them to win it, as Manchester United surpassed them with a 19th and a 20th title, in 2011 and 2013, respectively.

They've also won the FA Cup, English soccer's season-long national tournament, 8 times: 1965, 1974, 1986, 1989, 1992, 2001, 2006 and 2022. And they've won the European Cup/UEFA Champions League 6 times, more than any other British team: 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, 2005 and 2019. The 1985-86 season remains the only one in which they've won both the League and the Cup, known in England as "doing The Double."

They almost did it again in 1989. In the FA Cup Semifinal, they were playing Nottingham Forest, on neutral ground at Hillsborough Stadium in South Yorkshire, home of Sheffield Wednesday. A mistake in opening the gates led to the deaths of 97 people. The game was replayed, Liverpool won, and, as in 1986, they beat Everton in an All-Merseyside Final.

And with North London team Arsenal having blown a lead for the League title, all Liverpool had to do to win the League was avoid losing the last game of the season, home to Arsenal, by more than 1 goal. Arsenal hadn't won at Anfield in 15 years. With the home fans singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" with more emotion than ever, giving hope to a grieving city over the last few weeks, it seemed impossible for Arsenal to do what needed to be done. But a goal by Michael Thomas in stoppage time gave Arsenal a 2-0 win.

The Hillsborough Disaster led to, among other things, the conversion of English stadiums to all-seater. This would reduce capacity, without more building. The Kemlyn Road Stand was double-decked, and renamed the Cenentary Stand in 1992, in connection with the team's 100th Anniversary. The Kop was demolished and rebuilt in 1994, its capacity reduced to 12,390, but still the most intimidating stand in the sport. Overall, the stadium's seating capacity was down to 35,000. In 1998, a new, 2-tier Anfield Road Stand was opened, bringing capacity back up to 44,736.

In 2017, the Centenary Stand was renamed the Kenny Dalglish Stand, for the team's all-time greatest player, who had managed them to the 1986 Double while still playing.

Since the 2010 purchase of the team by Fenway Sports Group, owners of the Boston Red Sox, the stadium has been redeveloped and modernized. Unlike a ballpark, a four-sided soccer stadium can have parts demolished and rebuilt without the team having to leave. The new Main Stand (southeast) opened in 2016, raising capacity to 54,074. The new Anfield Road Stand (northeast) is set to open in 2023, raising capacity to 60,725. (UPDATE: It took until February 10, 2024.)

As of September 28, 2022, there are no plans to redevelop the Kop (southwest) or the Kenny Dalglish Stand (southeast, and as a 1992 construction the oldest current part of the stadium). 

Outside the stadium are a bust of builder John Houlding, statues of managers Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley, and a memorial to the victims of Hillsborough.

*

September 28, 1884 was a Sunday. In America, the only league sport of the time was baseball, and the National League prohibited its teams from playing on Sundays. The American Association allowed it, but had no games scheduled for the day. The Union Association, which played only in this season before folding, allowed Sunday ball, and 3 games were played:

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Washington Nationals, 5-0 at the Wright Street Grounds in Milwaukee. Both of these teams folded with the UA, and have no connection to the present-day National League teams of the same names.

* The St. Louis Maroons beat the Baltimore Monumentals, 12-1 at Union Base Ball Park in St. Louis. In those days, the sport's name was usually written as 2 words, "base ball." The Maroons were run by Henry V. Lucas, a St. Louis businessman and founder of the league. Naturally, he favored his team, and they ran away with the Pennant. That dominance, producing the feeling throughout the league that everybody else's games were meaningless, was a big reason for its demise.

* And the Kansas City Unions beat the Boston Reds, 6-1 at Athletic Park in Kansas City.

May 18, 1884: John Singer Sargent's "Portrait of Madame X"

May 18, 1884: John Singer Sargent's Portrait of Madame X goes on display at the annual Paris Salon. It is considered scandalous.

Sargent was born on January 12, 1856 in Florence, Italy. His father was an eye doctor from Philadelphia, but when Dr. Sargent's wife became physically ill and mentally exhausted after the death of a daughter, he took her abroad to recover her health, and they never returned to America. John and a younger sister were born in Florence, a city renowned for its Renaissance art.

Sargent was already noted for his drawing skill by age 13, and attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, by this point considered the family's home even though the father's wealth allowed them frequent travel. He painted mostly landscapes before producing his first portrait at age 21, of a childhood friend, a woman named Fanny Watts. It was his 1st painting to be accepted into the Paris Salon, and he became a regular subject there.

Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau was an expatriate New Orleans belle whose father had been killed with the Confederate Army at the Battle of Shiloh, and the wife of a prominent Paris banker and shipping magnate.

In 1883, when she was 24 years old, Sargent met her and became quite taken with her. He wrote to a friend, "I have a great desire to paint her portrait and have reason to think she would allow it and is waiting for someone to propose this homage to her beauty."

Sargent had previously only done portraits by request. This time, he asked his proposed subject. She agreed, but it took him over a year to produce the final product. The original version of the painting showed her with white-powdered skin, a cocked head, and a dress with a plunging neckline and the right strap down from her shoulder. For the sake of propriety, he called the painting Portrait of Madame X, with the letter X already being known as a symbol for the unknown.

The reaction of visitors to the Salon was furious. One French critic wrote that if one stood before the portrait during its exhibition in the Salon, one "would hear every curseword in the French language." It was not that a woman of Virginie's station in society would not pose as a model: She later posed for other painters, with no accompanying furor.

The scandal hurt Sargent considerably more: He was seen as having openly defied convention by flaunting the subject's apparent immoral lifestyle. The reaction was so bad, Sargent repainted it to show the right shoulder-strap in an upright position. That didn't work, or perhaps it was too late: He received no more commissions from anywhere in France, and found it necessary to move to London, and wrote to a friend that he might have to give up painting for music, or -- horrors -- business. But it wasn't all bad: French poet Judith Gautier wrote:

Is it a woman? a chimera, the figure of a unicorn rearing as on a heraldic coat of arms or perhaps the work of some oriental decorative artist to whom the human form is forbidden and who, wishing to be reminded of woman, has drawn the delicious arabesque? No, it is none of these things, but rather the precise image of a modern woman scrupulously drawn by a painter who is a master of his art.

Sargent did not give up painting, and the British upper classes had no problems with commissioning him to produce portraits. They were bought all over the Western world, including this one, of President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House in 1903, which is now the White House's official portrait of the 26th President.

Madame Gautreau died at the age of 56, in 1915. That year, Sargent said of her portrait, "I suppose it is the best thing I have ever done." Certainly, it is his best-remembered. Sargent died on April 14, 1925, of heart disease, in London, at 69. The original Portrait of Madame X is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

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May 18, 1884 was a Sunday. It was a year of 3 major leagues in baseball, although the National League still refused to play on Sundays, and State law forbid it in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania regardless of league decisions. These games were played:

* In the Union Association, the St. Louis Maroons beat the Baltimore Monumentals, 6-3 at Union Base Ball Park in St. Louis. In the 19th Century, the sport was usually printed as 2 words: "Base ball." Since the Maroons were owned by the league's founder, Henry V. Lucas, he directed as many good players as he could to his team, and the Maroons ran away with the Pennant, going 94-15, 21 games ahead of 2nd-place Cincinnati. Nearly half the teams, 5 out of 12, didn't finish the season.

* The Cincinnati Outlaw Reds, so named because they were defying the more popular Reds of the AA, beat the Philadelphia Keystones, 7-5 at the Bank Street Grounds in Cincinnati. 

* The Chicago Browns beat the Washington Nationals, 2-0 at the original South Side Park in Chicago. The Browns failed, and were sold and moved in mid-season, becoming the Pittsburgh Stogies. A later stadium named South Side Park would be the original home of the American League's Chicago White Sox and the Negro League's Chicago American Giants.

* In the American Association, the Columbus Buckeyes beat the Louisville Eclipse, 8-5 at Recreation Park in Columbus, Ohio.

* And the Cincinnati Reds, the only one of these teams to make it into the 20th Century, let alone the 21st, beat the Indianapolis Hoosiers, 5-1 at Seventh Street Park in Indianapolis.