December 31, 1902: The World Series of Football

 

The 2nd Madison Square Garden, 1891-1925

December 31, 1902: The 1st World Series of Football is held, at Madison Square Garden in New York.

This might be a little confusing. The term "World Series" was first used for a baseball championship in 1884, although the current event of that title did not begin until 1903. And this was the 2nd Madison Square Garden, built in 1891 on the site of the 1st, in 1879, at the northeastern corner of 26th Street and Madison Avenue, overlooking Madison Square Park, closed in 1925.

So the game was held indoors, on a field too short and too narrow for American football as we now understand it: 70 by 35 yards. The event was the idea of Tom O'Rourke, a boxing manager who was then the manager of The Garden, who wanted an event for what was then a slow time of the year for sporting events, as basketball and hockey were not yet major sports in America, much less in New York. 

O'Rourke is 2nd from the right.

2nd from the left is George "Tex" Rickard,

also a boxing promoter, who took over

management of the 2nd Garden, and built the 3rd Garden.

He decided to invite several professional and college teams to The Garden for the series, envisioning a series of games, showcasing the best in college and pro teams, eventually leading to one climactic game, crowning the "champion of the world."

But he had a tough time finding teams to play in the tournament. The colleges refused, due to increased pressure from the Amateur Athletic Association (AAU) to stop participating in professional games. The Philadelphia baseball teams, the Phillies and the Athletics, had sponsored football teams, but had disbanded them.

In the end, only 4 teams competed: The Knickerbocker Athletic Club of Manhattan, the Warlow Athletic Club of Queens, the Orange Athletic Club of New Jersey, and the Syracuse Athletic Club of the city of the same name.

O'Rourke did finally get a fifth team to join the series when some players from the Phillies and Athletics got together and formed what was called the New York Club. In calling them the "New York" team, O'Rourke expected to give his patrons the pleasure of watching a "home team" win.

He was wrong. In the 1st game, on December 29, Syracuse beat "New York," 5-0. On December 30, Knickerbocker beat Warlow, 11-6. On New Year's Eve, December 31, Syracuse beat Knickerbocker, 36-0, and clinched the title. On New Year's Day, January 1, 1903, Syracuse beat Orange, 36-0.

O'Rourke planned another series for 1903, planning 15 football games in a span of 6 days, something that wouldn't be physically possible with players the size the would become in the mid-20th Century. Knickerbocker and Orange returned, but it would be the Franklin Athletic Club, of northwestern Pennsylvania, that won the tournament. With crowds too small to maintain the event, O'Rourke never scheduled another "World Series of Football."

One note of interest: The Orange Athletic Club had been founded in 1887, and in 1929, they entered the NFL, as the Orange Tornadoes. In 1930, they moved a few miles and became the Newark Tornadoes, playing at what became known as Newark City Schools Stadium.

They had to drop out of the NFL due to declining revenue in the Great Depression, and moved back to Orange for the 1931 season. In 1937, the Tornadoes moved back to Newark, and renamed themselves the Newark Bears, after the city's baseball team, in 1939. They remained a semi-pro team, in the Atlantic Coast Football League, through the 1965 season. From 1966 to 1969, they competed in the ACFL as the Orlando Panthers, and then folded.

*

December 31, 1902 was a Wednesday. There were no other scores on this historic day: Baseball was out of season, professional basketball barely existed, and while there was professional hockey, no games were scheduled.

Roy Goodall was born that day. The defender captained Yorkshire soccer team Huddersfield Town to the 1922 FA Cup, and then to 3 straight Football League titles, in 1924, '25 and '26.

November 16, 1902: The 1st Teddy Bear

November 16, 1902: The Washington Post publishes a political cartoon, drawn by Clifford Berryman, showing a black bear lassoed and set up to be shot by a hunter. A very particular hunter, famous for shooting wild animals.

Except this time, the hunter in question is shown refusing to shoot. He is Theodore Roosevelt, the current President of the United States.

The cartoon was the by-product of a bear-hunting trip that Roosevelt had taken to Mississippi earlier in the month, along with that State's Governor, Andrew H. Longino (Yes, an Italian-American served as Governor of the most racist State in the Union at the dawn of the 20th Century), and an ally of Longino's, noted lawyer LeRoy Percy, later to be elected to the U.S. Senate. (His son, Walker Percy, became a best-selling novelist.)

After most of the other hunters involved had already killed at least one bear, a party of Roosevelt's attendants, led by Holt Collier, a 54-year-old former slave noted for his hunting skill, cornered, clubbed, and tied an American black bear to a willow tree after a long and exhausting chase with hounds. They called Roosevelt to the site, and suggested that he should shoot the bear dead, although Collier told Roosevelt not to shoot the bear while it was tied. Roosevelt refused to shoot the bear himself, deeming this unsportsmanlike, but instructed that the bear be killed to be put out of its misery.

Morris Michtom, who ran a toy store in Brooklyn, saw the cartoon, and created a stuffed bear, putting it in the window of his store, calling it "Teddy's bear." Roosevelt didn't mind being referred to by his initials, "TR," but hated being called "Teddy." Nevertheless, the term "teddy bear" caught on, and similar bears became the thing that every kid wanted that Christmas.

Clifford Berryman had drawn for the Post since 1891. In 1898, he coined the slogan, "Remember the Maine!" asking Americans to think of the destruction of the battleship USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba (which was almost certainly the result of an accidental boiler explosion, not sabotage) as a reason to fight the Spanish-American War.

He moved to The Washington Star in 1907, and continued to draw for them until his death in 1949, at the age of 80.

By 1907, teddy bears were so popular that the song "Teddy Bears Picnic" was written, and became a hit. That same year, Michael G. Esper, a Catholic priest in Michigan, declared them to be "horrible monstrosities," which, by supplanting the "good old dolls," would cause girls to lose the urge to nurture babies, leading to declining birth rates among the white population, and thus "race suicide." The suggestion attracted widespread but short-lived attention, and Father Esper drifted back into well-deserved obscurity.

In 1908, as Roosevelt was leaving office, and William Howard Taft was running as his handpicked successor, word got out that he liked opossums, and so "Billy Possum" stuffed toys were produced. Taft won, but the opossum dolls named for him did not catch on.

A teddy bear owned by his son Christopher Robin Milne inspired British writer A.A. Milne to create Winnie-the-Pooh in 1926. In 1958, another British writer, Michael Bond, created Paddington Bear. The cartoon Care Bears debuted in 1983, and Seth MacFarlane's foul-mouthed Ted debuted in 2012.

In 1957, a rumor got around that Elvis Presley loved teddy bears, and that he even had a collection of them. It wasn't true, but he soon got a collection, because girls began throwing them onstage at his concerts. Kal Mann and Bernie Lowe wrote a song for him, "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear," and it was Number 1 on Billboard magazine's pop music charts for 7 weeks.

*

November 16, 1902 was a Sunday. Baseball was out of season. Professional football existed on only a minor-league level. Basketball was barely even on that level. And hockey was still all-amateur, unless guys were getting paid under the table. So there were no scores on this day. 

November 13, 1902: Joseph Conrad Publishes "Heart of Darkness"

November 13, 1902: Joseph Conrad publishes Youth: a Narrative, and Two Other Stories. They are, in the order in which they appear in the book: Youth: a Narrative; Heart of Darkness; and The End of the Tether.

Heart of Darkness had previously been serialized in Blackwood's magazine in 3 issues: February, March and April 1899. Unlike the other 2 stories, it is widely remembered and read today.

Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski was born on December 3, 1857 in Berdychiv, Ukraine, to parents of Polish nobility. He grew up in Warsaw, the capital of Poland. His father ran a merchant marine business, and sent him to Marseille, France to take the business up. By 1878, he was serving in Britain's version, and began to immerse himself in English-language culture.

A voyage to the Congo Free State in 1890 made him a writer. The Congo was not merely a colony of Belgium: It was personally owned by Leopold II, King of the Belgians, and its riches, including diamond mines, went to him. And he didn't care who had to live, and die, or under what conditions, to get it. He had an endless supply of black men to work for his white overseers; and if they died, there would be more to take their places.

Seeing all this made his innate depression worse. His mental discomfort was on top of physical ones: He claimed gout, malaria, swollen hands that made writing difficult, and that every novel cost him a tooth. But his 1896 marriage to Englishwoman Jessie George not only made him happy, but enabled him to write more. They had 2 sons, Borys and John.

Heart of Darkness is narrated by Charles Marlow, who tells of his assignment as steamer captain for a Belgian company in the African interior. This was the period where the terms "Darkest Africa" and "the Dark Continent" were common, and referred not just to the skin of the native people, but to the dangers of a vast land where cities were few and far between. After all, 1902 was the year that Cecil Rhodes, who linked Cairo and Cape Town by telegraph, and had tried to do so by road, killing thousands as a result, died.

Marlow meets Kurtz, an ivory trader working on a trading station far up the river, who has "gone native," and is the object of Marlow's expedition. His reputation precedes him: His mother was half-English, his father was half-French, and thus "All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz." As the reader finds out at the end, Kurtz is a multitalented man: Painter, musician, writer, promising politician.

At first, Kurtz, like so many Europeans before him, wanted to bring "civilization" to the natives. However, over the course of his stay in Africa, he becomes corrupted. With the help of technology superior to that of the natives, Kurtz monopolizes his position as a demigod among native Africans. He takes his pamphlet and scribbles in, at the very end, the words "Exterminate all the brutes!"

Despite being strongly impressed by Kurtz, Marlow is under orders to return him to the coast via steamboat. But as he does so, it becomes clear that Kurtz is dying from jungle fever. Kurtz dies on the boat. His last words: "The horror! The horror!"

Having already gained a literary reputation in Britain with novels like Lord Jim (1900), Heart of Darkness made Conrad a star. His later novels included Nostromo (1904) and The Secret Agent (1907, popularizing that term a year before James Bond's creator, Ian Fleming, was born). He died on August 3, 1924, in Bishopsborne, Kent, England, outside London. He was 66.

Just one week after his similarly chilling adaptation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds in 1938, Orson Welles starred in a CBS radio adaptation of Heart of Darkness. He wanted to make a film version, with the Kurtz character being adapted into a Fascist dictator, but no film studio would touch it. (So much for "The Jews run Hollywood.")

In 1958, the CBS anthology TV series Playhouse 90 aired a 90-minute play version, with Roddy McDowall as Marlow, Boris Karloff as Kurtz, plus actresses Inga Swenson and Eartha Kitt. The best-known adaptation is Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now, moving the setting to the Vietnam War, and starring Martin Sheen as a U.S. Army Captain assigned to "terminate" rogue Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando at his most eccentric.

In 1993, TNT adapted Heart of Darkness, starring Tim Roth as Marlow and John Malkovich as Kurtz. The 2019 film Ad Astra is basically Heart of Darkness in space, starring Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones.

*

November 13, 1902 was a Thursday. Baseball season was over. Professional basketball barely existed, and professional hockey only existed under the table. There was 1 score in college football: Davidson College beat the Georgia Institute of Technology, 7-6 at Brisbine Park in Atlanta.

Georgia Tech finished the season 0-6-2. "The horror." Davidson, located in the Charlotte, North Carolina suburb of the same name, finished 4-4-1. Since 1954, they have not competed at the top level of college football, settling in 1989 at Division I-AA, now the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS).

October 26, 1902: The 1st Brazilian Soccer Championship

Charles William Miller

October 26, 1902: The 1st Campeonato Paulista is held, the 1st soccer/football/futebol championship of any kind in Brazil, the country that would do so much to make the sport the world's game.

São Paulo Athletic Club, established in 1888 by British people living in the Brazilian city of São Paulo, won the game, 2-1 over Paulistano, at the Velódromo Paulistano, a bicycle racing track.

The team was led by SPAC's founder and goalkeeper, Charles William Miller, born in 1874 to a Scottish railway engineer and his English wife in São Paulo. He was sent back to England for his education, and learned his soccer in Southampton. He would be both a top scorer and, later in his career, a goalkeeper. He is considered the founding father of Brazilian football, and also of Brazilian rugby union.

SPAC would also win the championship in 1903, 1904 and 1911. But in 1912, the club retired from football competition. It would continue to compete in other sports, specializing in rugby union, but not in soccer. Miller lived until 1953.

Brazil's other States would develop their own championships: Bahia in 1905; Rio de Janeiro in 1906; Pará and Paraíba in 1908; Amazonas in 1914; Ceará, Minas Gerais, Paraná and Pernambuco in 1915; Piauí in 1916; Espírito Santo in 1917; Maranhão, Rio Grande do Norte and Sergipe in 1918; Acre and Rio Grande do Sul in 1919; Santa Catarina in 1924; Alagoas in 1927; Mato Grosso in 1936; Amapá and Goiás in 1944; Rondônia in 1945; Roraima in 1946; the Distrito Federal (Brasilia) in 1959; Mato Grosso do Sul in 1979; and Tocantins in 1989.

There would not be a national league until Série A was founded in 1937. And there would not be a national tournament like England's FA Cup until the Copa do Brasil was founded in 1989.

*

October 26, 1902 was a Sunday. There were no other scores to report on this historic day: Baseball season had just ended, and in a professional sense, football, basketball and hockey barely existed.

On this day, future Heavyweight Champion Jack Sharkey was born. So was British writer, aviator and racehorse trainer Beryl Markham. So was American astronomer Henrietta Hill Swope.

October 7, 1902: The 1st All-Star Game In American Sports?

Honus Wagner

October 7, 1902: Perhaps the first all-star game in North American sports is played, at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh, home of the National League's Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates' current stadium, PNC Park, is built roughly on the site. The Pirates, including the great shortstop John Peter "Honus" Wagner, beat a team of American League all-stars‚ 4-3. Sam Leever is the winning pitcher, and Cy Young of the Boston Americans (Red Sox) is the losing pitcher.

The Pirates ran away with the National League Pennant, going 103-36, to finish a record 27 1/2 games ahead of the 2nd-place team, the Brooklyn Superbas, forerunners of the Dodgers. In the American League, and across the State of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Athletics, managed by Connie Mack -- the eventual "Grand Old Man of Baseball" was about to turn 40 -- won the Pennant by 5 games over the St. Louis Browns. However, with the Leagues still "at war" with each other, there would be no postseason World Series until the following year.

October 7, 1902 was a Tuesday. This was the only score on this historic day: Football was in midweek, hockey was still all-amateur, and basketball barely existed.

October 4, 1902: The Flying Dutchman and the Record-Setting Pirates

Honus Wagner

October 4, 1902: The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Cincinnati Reds, 11-2 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. Shortstop Honus Wagner goes 1-for-5 with an RBI, while 1st baseman William "Kitty" Bransfield goes 3-for-5 with an RBI. Charles "Deacon" Phillippe goes the distance, for his 20th win against 9 losses.

The Pirates finish the season with a record of 103 wins and 36 losses. That's a winning percentage of .741, and it's still a record. They win the National League Pennant by 27 1/2 games, also a record 1st-place finish to this day. They clinched the Pennant on September 2, yet another record. (The American League record is September 4, by the 1941 New York Yankees.)

Pitching, as it so often is for a championship team, was the key. In addition to Phillippe going 20-9 with a 2.05 ERA, Jack Chesbro went 28-6 with 2.17, Jesse Tannehill went 20-6 with 1.95, Ed Doheny went 16-4 with 2.53, and Sam Leever went 15-7 with 2.39.

The team as a whole batted .286. Center fielder Clarence "Ginger" Beaumont led them with a .357 average, while Wagner batted .330, and right fielder-manager Fred Clarke batted .316. Wagner led the team with 91 RBIs, and 3rd baseman Tommy Leach had 85.

A Pittsburgh native, John Peter Wagner was the son of German immigrants, and so "John" was often reverted to the German name "Hans," which became "Honus." Despite his bowed legs, he was very fast, allowing him to steal bases, and play just about any position well, but especially shortstop, the most difficult position in the infield. He was known as "The Flying Dutchman" -- "Dutch" meaning "Deutsch," as in "German," not "Dutch" as we now understand that term, meaning "from the Netherlands."

At the time, Wagner was 28 years old, and was regarded as the best player in baseball -- at the least, one of the top two, along with Napoleon Lajoie, of the team that would, the next season, actually be named for him, the Cleveland Naps.

John McGraw, himself a pretty good player in the 1890s, and newly installed as manager of the New York Giants, called Wagner "the nearest thing to a perfect ballplayer." And Chicago sportswriter Hugh Fullerton once wrote, "If a man with a voice loud enough to make himself heard all over the United States should stand on top of Pike's Peak, and ask, 'Who is the greatest ball player?' the name he'd hear shouted back would be, 'Wagner.'"

He helped the Pirates win 3 straight NL Pennants: 1901, 1902 and 1903. The Pirates lost the 1st World Series, in 1903, to the team now known as the Boston Red Sox. By the start of the next decade, he would be surpassed by Ty Cobb, center fielder for the Detroit Tigers. But in 1909, Wagner's Pirates beat Cobb's Tigers in the World Series, and Wagner outplayed Cobb. Both men would be among the 1st 5 players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, along with Babe Ruth, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson.

Wagner finished his career with 3,420 hits, more than any player before him, and he has been surpassed by only 6 players since: Cobb, Tris Speaker, Stan Musial, Hank Aaron, Pete Rose and Derek Jeter. His 1,847 hits in the 1900-09 decade made him its leader.

*

October 4, 1902 was a Saturday. These other baseball games were played that day:

* A doubleheader was split at the South End Grounds in Boston. The Boston Beaneaters won the opener, 5-2. John Malarkey (yes, that was his name) outpitched Christy Mathewson. The New York Giants won the nightcap, 5-1. Joe McGinnity (21-18) outpitched Vic Willis (27-20).

* And the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals were rained out after 7 innings at Robison Field in St. Louis, with the game tied, 7-7.

It was also a day for college football. The University of Kansas and Kansas State University play each other in football for the 1st time. The Kansas Jayhawks beat the Kansas State Wildcats 16-0, at McCook Field on the Jayhawks' campus in Lawrence. Through the 2021 season, the Jayhawks lead the all-time series in the "Sunflower Showdown," 64-49-5. (UPDATE: Through 2023, it's 65-51-5. The Jayhawks haven't won it since 2008.)

In other notable games:

* Army beat Tufts, 5-0 on The Plain in West Point, New York.

* Navy lost to Princeton, 11-0 at Worden Field in Annapolis, Maryland.

* Harvard beat Bates College, 23-0 at Soldiers' Field in Boston. (Unlike the later stadium in Chicago, this one was, and is, named "Soldiers' Field," not "Soldier Field.)

* Massachusetts beat Boston College, 30-0 at Alumni Field in Amherst, Massachusetts.

* Yale beat Amherst, 23-0 at Yale Field in New Haven, Connecticut.

* The University of Pennsylvania beat Penn State, 17-0 at the original Franklin Field in Philadelphia. The schools haven't played each other since 1958, when Penn embraced its Ivy League status, and accepted that they couldn't be as big as Penn State then was, even with Joe Paterno just an assistant coach under Rip Engle.

* Michigan, defending and upcoming National Champions, beat Case, 48-6 at Regents Field in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

* The University of Chicago beat Knox College, 5-0 at Marshall Field in Chicago.

* Nebraska beat Colorado, 10-0 at Gamble Field in Boulder, Colorado.

* And Columbia beat Rutgers, 43-0 at Neilson Field in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

And in English soccer, Bristol City beat Woolwich Arsenal, 1-0 at St John's Lane in Bristol, in England's West Country. In 1904, City moved to Ashton Gate. Woolwich Arsenal would later move to North London, change their name to simply "Arsenal," and, decades later, become the team I support.

October 1, 1902: The Flatiron Building Opens

October 1, 1902: The Fuller Building opens in Manhattan, at the intersection of 23rd Street, 5th Avenue and Broadway, across from Madison Square. Because of its triangular shape, it becomes known as the Flatiron Building. It was meant as the headquarters of the Fuller Company, a construction firm. They sold the building in 1925.

The address is 175 Fifth Avenue. It is 285 feet tall, with 22 stories. Contrary to what some people have believed, it was never the tallest building in the world: At the time, that was City Hall in Philadelphia, 548 feet high. It wasn't even the tallest building in New York City: Three buildings in the City were then taller, topped by 309-foot World Building, named for the New York World newspaper. That building was demolished in 1955.

Designed by skyscraper pioneers Daniel Burnham and Frederick P. Dinkelberg, locals placed bets on how far the debris would spread when the wind knocked the building down. Newspapers of the time also claimed that "every window in the building" would break in high winds, Pedestrians were initially reluctant to walk on the same side of the street as the Flatiron Building because of concerns over the wind gusts. The building became known as Burnham's Folly.

The concerns were unfounded: The American Architect and Building News observed that only a few windows broke during one such instance of high winds. Nevertheless, wind from the north would split around the building, downdrafts from above and updrafts from the vaulted area under the street would combine to make the wind unpredictable.

Films preserved by the Library of Congress confirm that the building's shape did contribute to high winds around the intersection. These winds raised women's skirts, and scattered paper bills from pedestrians' pocketbooks. According to some accounts, this gave rise to the phrase "23 skidoo":

Policemen would shout this phrase at men who tried to get glimpses of women's dresses being blown up by the winds swirling around the building due to the strong downdrafts.

However, the origin of the phrase "23 skidoo" itself is disputed: Even before the building was constructed, the number "twenty-three" and the word "skidoo" were independently used as expressions of dismissal.

The building was featured in the 1958 film Bell, Book and Candle; the 1981 film Reds, in a scene set in 1915; and stood in for the headquarters of the fictional Daily Bugle newspaper in the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies in 2002, 2004 and 2007.

By the time of the building's 100th Anniversary, the neighborhood around it had become known as the Flatiron District. This was a creation of real estate agents, always looking for an easy "hook." The neighborhood just to the north, across 23rd Street, previously considered to be the eastern part of the Chelsea neighborhood, became known as "NoMad": North of Madison Square.

The building closed in 2019 for a renovation. As of October 1, 2022, that renovation had not yet been completed.

*

October 1, 1902 was a Wednesday. Baseball season was over, and there was, as yet, no World Series. It was too soon for hockey, and basketball barely existed. But, despite being in midweek, there were several college football games played. Among them:

* Harvard beat Bowdoin, 17-6 at Soldiers' Field in Boston.

* Brown and Vermont played to a 0-0 at Andrews Field in Providence, Rhode Island.

* Yale beat Tufts, 34-6 at Yale Field in New Haven, Connecticut.

* Princeton beat Lehigh, 23-0 at University Field in Princeton, New Jersey.

* The University of Pennsylvania beat Franklin & Marshall, 16-0 at the original Franklin Field in Philadelphia. (It was replaced with the current stadium of that name in 1922.)

September 29, 1902: The Death of Émile Zola

September 29, 1902: Émile Zola dies in Paris. He was 62 years old.

He may have been murdered. Given the political role he'd taken over the preceding 5 years, the correct term may be "assassinated."

Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola was born on April 2, 1840, also in Paris. From childhood, he was a friend of the painter Paul Cézanne. Zola's mother wanted him to be a lawyer, but he failed the law school entrance exam. He went into journalism, opposing the dictatorial regime of Emperor Napoleon III.

And he became a novelist. More than half of Zola's novels were part of the 20-volume Les Rougon-Macquart cycle, which details the history of a single family under the reign of Napoléon III. Set in the context of Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann's reconstruction of Paris, which gave rise to the term "Second Empire Architecture," the series traces the environmental and hereditary influences of violence, alcohol, and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the Industrial Revolution. The series examines two branches of the family: The respectable (that is, legitimate) Rougons and the disreputable (illegitimate) Macquarts, over 5 generations.

By 1877, at age 37, 7 years after the fall of Napoleon III following defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Zola was paid more as a writer than was Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables.

In 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an artillery officer, both Jewish and Alsatian, was accused of having recently communicated French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris. He was convicted, and sentenced to the notorious prison on Devil's Island, in the South African colony of French Guiana.

In 1896, new evidence came to light, showing that the guilty party was, instead, Major Ferdinand Esterhazy. Not wanting to look foolish after having already "gotten their man," a military court acquitted Esterhazy in a trial that lasted only 2 days.

The Dreyfus Affair had polarized France, its alleged ideals of "Liberté, égalité, fraternité  (liberty, equality, brotherhood) dragged through the mud of elitism (many of the officers involved in framing Dreyfus were monarchists, still loyal to the idea of the fallen Napoleon III and other royal pretenders) and bigotry (France, by this point, had no official religion, but was still largely Catholic).

On January 13, 1898, L'Aurore (The Dawn), a national newspaper with a liberal stance, published an open letter from Émile Zola to the President of France, Félix Faure. Having already written extensively about how French society fell apart due to the Franco-Prussian War, Zola seemed to have credibility with both sides. He had already received France's highest civilian honor, "Officer of the Legion of Honor."

So his letter in L'Aurore caught everyone's attention. How could it not? In a big, bold headline, the paper blasted: "J'Accuse! Lettre au Président de La République par Émile Zola." (I accuse! Letter to the President of the Republic from Émile Zola.)

Zola wrote, "The conviction of Alfred Dreyfus was based on false accusations of espionage and was a misrepresentation of justice." He accused Major Armand du Paty de Clam of framing Dreyfus. He pointed out that the evidence clearly showed that the incriminating document came from an infantry officer, not an artillery officer. 

Zola accused many influential men in his letter, including Major Esterhazy. And he wrote, "The evidence of Drefyus's character, his affluence, the lack of motive and his continued affirmation of innocence combine to show that he is the victim of the lurid imagination of Major du Paty de Clam, the religious circles surrounding him, and the 'dirty Jew' obsession that is the scourge of our time."

As with the Marquess of Queensberry's accusation 3 years earlier, that Oscar Wilde was having a (then-illegal) gay affair with the Marquess' son, Zola's purpose was to get sued for libel, so that the truth would come out, and those he accused would be exposed and ruined. Unlike the Marquess, however, Zola's move didn't work. He was brought to trial for libel, and was convicted, sentenced to jail, and removed from the Legion of Honor.

When the Marquess first accused Wilde, and again after Wilde was convicted, Wilde's friends told him to flee to France. He refused. To avoid jail time, Zola fled to England.

In 1899, the pressure on the French government could no longer be ignored. Faure died in office that year -- from a stroke while receiving, ahem, assistance from his mistress -- and Émile Loubet became President. He ordered Dreyfus returned to France for another trial. But he was convicted again, and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Loubet pardoned him, and he was released. That freed him, but it did not restore his honor.

Zola returned to France. On September 29, 1902, he died in his house in Paris, from carbon monoxide poisoning, caused by an improperly ventilated chimney. Accusations of murder were launched, but no suspect was arrested. His funeral was attended by thousands, including, having gotten permission from Zola's widow, Alexandrine.

In 1906, Dreyfus was officially exonerated, and his rank of Major and his previous decorations were restored. He served through the entirety of World War I, and retired with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He died in 1935. Ferdinand Esterhazy, who committed the crime of which Dreyfus was accused, fled to England in 1899, and died there in 1923.

In 1937, the film The Life of Emile Zola was released. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Paul Muni played Zola, and was nominated for Best Actor. He didn't win, but Joseph Schildkraut won Best Supporting Actor for playing Dreyfus.

In 1953, the newspaper Libération published the deathbed confession of Henri Buronfosse, a chimney-sweep: "Zola was asphyxiated voluntarily. I'm the one who blocked the chimney in his apartment."

*

September 29, 1902 was a Monday. There were 3 baseball games played that day:

* The Brooklyn Superbas beat their arch-rivals, the New York Giants, 5-2 at the 1891 version of the Polo Grounds. Frank Kitson outpitched Christy Mathewson. The Superbas became the Dodgers in 1911.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Boston Beaneaters, 5-4 at National League Park (later Baker Bowl) in Philadelphia. The Beaneaters went through some name changes, and finally became the Boston Braves in 1912.

* And the Boston Americans beat the Baltimore Orioles, 9-5 at Oriole Park in Baltimore. After the season, the Orioles were folded by the American League, and a new franchise was established for 1903, the New York Highlanders. In 1908, the Americans became the Boston Red Sox. In 1913, the Highlanders became the New York Yankees.

September 19, 1902: The Shiloh Baptist Church Stampede

September 19, 1902: A stampede at the Shiloh Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama kills 115 people.

Located at the southeast corner of 19th Street and Avenue G, about 5 miles west of downtown, it was built the previous year, and was then the largest black church in the State's largest city. There were about 3,000 people on hand, to hear Booker T. Washington, then the nation's leading civil rights figure, address the National Convention of Negro Baptists.

His speech went off without a hitch. But after he concluded his remarks, a convention delegate began arguing with the choir leader, concerning an unoccupied seat. Someone in the choir yelled, "There's a fight!" Except, in the commotion, someone else misheard the word "fight" as "fire," and other people also began to yell, "Fire!" The congregation rose en masse, and started for the door.

A minister took to the podium, and shouted, "Quiet!" over and over again. But, again, the word "quiet" was misheard as "fire." (This was supported by Washington's own account in a newspaper interview.) People crawled over benches and fought their way into the aisles. People were trampled upon.

To make matters worse, the auditorium/sanctuary was not on the ground floor. It was 15 feet above street level, and long staircases led from the sidewalk to the lobby. Many people fell down the stairs, and died from their injuries even before they could be trampled by others. Someone finally pulled a fire alarm, and firemen managed to get some people out safely, but they correctly determined that there was no fire.

There is no longer a church on the site. The current version of Shiloh Baptist Church is at 2135 Jefferson Avenue SW, in West End Manor, about 6 miles southwest of downtown Birmingham.

The current church

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September 19, 1902 was a Friday. There were 3 baseball games were played on that day:

* The Boston Beaneaters (forerunners of the Braves) beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-5 at the 3rd and final version of the South End Grounds in Boston.

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Boston Americans (renamed the Red Sox in 1908), 6-4 at Columbia Park in Philadelphia. Rube Waddell (who rose to 23-7) outpitched Cy Young (who fell to 31-11).

* And the Chicago White Sox beat the Detroit Tigers, 9-2 at South Side Park in Chicago.

September 1, 1902: "A Trip to the Moon" Premieres

September 1, 1902: The 1st science fiction film premieres. It is Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon), directed by Georges Méliès.

The film is black & white, silent, and runs 18 minutes. It was inspired by Jules Verne's 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon, and its 1870 sequel Around the Moon. A group of astronomers get into a capsule, and are fired from a cannon to the Moon, where they find aliens. It is widely agreed to be an anti-imperialist satire.

The image of the capsule landing in the eye of "the Man in the Moon" became an icon. It may also have helped to further the trope that "the Moon is made of green cheese."

*

September 1, 1902 was a Monday. It was Labor Day, so all 16 teams then in what would later be called Major League Baseball played doubleheaders:

* The St. Louis Cardinals swept the New York Giants, 6-4 and 8-2 at the Polo Grounds. In the 2nd game, Stan Yerkes outpitched Christy Mathewson.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates swept the Brooklyn Superbas, 4-3 and 8-7 at Washington Park in Brooklyn. The Superbas became the Dodgers in 1911. Honus Wagner went 2-for-8 on the day.

* There was a split at the South End Grounds in Boston. The Boston Beaneaters won the opener, 7-6. The Cincinnati Reds won the nightcap, 7-4. The Beaneaters became the Braves in 1912.

* There was a split at National League Park (later renamed Baker Bowl) in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Phillies won the 1st game, 11-3. The Chicago Cubs won the 2nd game, 6-1.

* The Cleveland Bronchos not only swept the Boston Americans, they shut them out, 10-0 and 8-0. The team later known as the Naps, the Indians and the Guardians got 6-hit shutouts from both Earl Moore and Bill Bernhard.

* The Detroit Tigers swept the Washington Senators, 4-2 and 13-1 at Bennett Park in Detroit. In the 1911-12 off-season, Bennett Park was torn down, and what would eventually be named Tiger Stadium was built on the site.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles, 8-4 at South Side Park in Chicago. This was followed by a 2nd game that was tied, 5-5 after 9 innings, when it was called due to darkness. The Orioles had already been bought and stripped of their best players, and the franchise was returned to the American League at the end of the season. A new franchise was granted to New York for 1903, and it would eventually become the Yankees. But they and the 1901-02 Orioles were not the same team.

* And the St. Louis Browns swept the Philadelphia Athletics, 5-1 and 4-3 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.

July 17, 1902: The Invention of Air-Conditioning

July 17, 1902: Willis Carrier devises the first modern air conditioning system, for a plant in New York City.

Born on November 26, 1876, outside Buffalo in Angola, New York, Willis Haviland Carrier got his Masters of Engineering degree from Cornell University in 1901. The following year, in Buffalo, in response to an air quality problem experienced at the Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing & Publishing Company of Brooklyn, Carrier submitted drawings for what became recognized as the world's first modern air conditioning system. It was so humid in summer that the paper grew and shrank, which resulted in poor quality images, because the color printing process involved running the same piece of paper up to four times, each with a different color ink.

He tested his device thoroughly, finally getting a patent for it in 1906. The Carrier Engineering Corporation was founded in New York in 1915. The company grew, and in 1939, its igloo-shaped pavilion at the New York World's Fair raised its profile. Carrier was still involved with the company that bore his name when he died on October 7, 1950.

In 1980, Syracuse University opened its new on-campus indoor football and basketball stadium. Carrier Corporation contributed $2.75 million to its construction, and the University named it for them, which made sense, since indoor sports venues would not be practical without air conditioning. The stadium was known as the Carrier Dome until 2022. A local mobile phone service provider bought the naming rights, and it was renamed the JMA Wireless Dome.

My mother once told me that the most important invention of the 20th Century wasn't radio, or television, and certainly not the atomic bomb. It was air conditioning. She had a point: It made the growth of the American South and West possible, thus making the growth of the country possible, thus making the defeat of the Nazis possible.

But she also told me that air conditioning didn't become common for a long time. When she was a kid in New York in the early 1950s, the only places that had it were movie theaters and drugstores, the kind that had "soda fountains" and sold candy, comic books and baseball cards. She and her friends would go in, buy a pack of gum for a nickel, split the 5 sticks of gum, and hang out in the air conditioning,

*

July 17, 1902 was a Thursday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The Cleveland Bronchos were leading the Boston Americans, 3-2 after 5 innings, at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston, when the game was called due to rain. The Americans became the Red Sox in 1908. The next season, the Bronchos renamed themselves for their best hitter and 2nd baseman, and even named him their manager: Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie. They became the Cleveland Naps in 1903, the Cleveland Indians in 1915, and the Cleveland Guardians in 2022.

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Chicago White Sox, 7-4 at Columbia Park in Philadelphia.

* Rain also cut short the game between the St. Louis Browns and the Baltimore Orioles at Oriole Park in Baltimore, ending it 0-0. The Orioles folded at the end of the season, and were replaced by the New York team that would become the Yankees in 1913. After the 1953 season, the Browns moved, becoming... the Baltimore Orioles.

* The Washington Senators beat the Detroit Tigers, 9-2 at Boundary Field in Washington.

* The New York Giants beat the Cincinnati Reds, 6-3 at the Palace of the Fans in Cincinnati. The ballpark that would eventually be named Crosley Field was built on the site in 1912. Christy Mathewson was the winning pitcher.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Beaneaters, 8-2 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. Honus Wagner did not play. The Beaneaters went through some name changes before becoming the Braves in 1912.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 10-6 at Robison Field in St. Louis.

* And the Brooklyn Superbas and the Chicago Orphans were not scheduled. The Brooklyn team became the Dodgers in 1911. The Chicago team, formerly known as the White Stockings and, for their youth, as the Colts, had long been led by 1st baseman and manager Adrian Constantine Anson. He was known as "Cap," for "Captain," until he got older, and became known as "Pop." He retired after the 1897 season, and the team became known as the "Orphans," because "they missed their Pop." They were renamed the Chicago Cubs in 1903.

July 14, 1902: The Discovery of Machu Picchu

July 14, 1902: Agustín Lizárraga and his expedition to the area now known as Machu Picchu, in Urubamba in his native Peru. It became one the greatest archaeological finds of all time.

In the indigenous Quechua language, "machu" eans "old," as opposed to "wayna," meaning "young"; while "pikchu" means "summit." So "Machu Picchu" means "Old Mountain."

Often referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas," Machu Picchu is one of the most iconic symbols of the Inca civilization, and a major archaeological site in the Americas. It is believed to have served as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti, though no contemporary written records exist to confirm this. The site was abandoned roughly a century later, likely during the Spanish Conquest. Modern radiocarbon dating places its occupation between circa 1420 and 1530.

Machu Picchu was constructed in the classical Inca style, featuring finely crafted dry-stone walls. Notable structures include the Temple of the Sun, the Temple of the Three Windows, and the Intihuatana ritual stone. Although the site was known locally and reached by Lizárraga, it was brought to international attention in 1911 by the American historian Hiram Bingham III.

In 1954, the film Secret of the Incas was filmed there, with Charlton Heston playing an American adventurer named Henry Steele. With his brown leather jacket, fedora, tan pants, over-the-shoulder bag and revolver, Steele is often cited as an inspiration for the later character of Indiana Jones, whose first on-screen appearance, from the viewer's perspective, came at the start of the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark, with the label, "South America, 1936," though not specified as Peru, let alone Machu Picchu.

*

July 14, 1902 was a Monday. This was also the day that the original Campanile of St. Mark collapsed in Venice, Italy. I have a separate entry for that event.

These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Giants lost to the Cincinnati Reds, 6-0 at League Park in Cincinnati. Clarence Currie pitched a 6-hit shutout.

* The Chicago Orphans beat the Brooklyn Superbas, 2-0 at the West Side Grounds in Chicago. Jack Taylor pitched a 2-hit shutout.

For 22 seasons, Adrian Anson was the 1st baseman for the team originally known as the Chicago White Stockings. He became their Captain and manager, and was nicknamed Cap. As he got older, he was nicknamed Pop. The team was renamed the Chicago Colts in 1890, because they were so young. Anson retired after the 1897 season, and the team was renamed the Orphans, because "they missed their Pop." In 1903, they again embraced youth, and became the Chicago Cubs.

As for the Brooklyn team, they had previously been managed by Ned Hanlon, and there was a famous circus troupe of the era, named Hanlon's Superbas. In 1911, they took the name Brooklyn Dodgers, as Brooklyn had many trolley lines, and natives had to "dodge" the trolleys.

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Boston Americans, 4-3 in 10 innings at Columbia Park in Philadelphia. Howard Wilson outpitched Cy Young, with both men going the distance. The Americans became the Boston Red Sox in 1908.

* The Washington Senators beat the Baltimore Orioles, 10-9 at American League Park in Washington. The Orioles had already been bought and stripped of their best players, and the franchise was returned to the American League at the end of the season. A new franchise was granted to New York for 1903, and it would eventually become the Yankees. But they and the 1901-02 Orioles were not the same team.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Beaneaters, 4-1 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. Honus Wagner went 3-for-4 with 2 RBIs. The Beaneaters became the Braves in 1912.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 9-2 at Robison Field in St. Louis.

* And the Chicago White Sox, the Cleveland Bronchos, the Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Browns were not scheduled. The Cleveland team became the Naps in 1903, the Indians in 1915, and the Guardians in 2022. 

July 14, 1902: St. Mark's Campanile Collapses In Venice

The restored Campanile

July 14, 1902: St. Mark's Campanile, the bell tower of St. Mark's Basilica, overlooking St. Mark's Square and the mouth of the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy, collapses after centuries of ill care, despite an ongoing attempt to restore it.

The original Campanile was completed in 1513, at the height of the Italian Renaissance, when Venice was one of the greatest cities in the world, and one of the most productive, in both economy and art. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarotti and Raffaello Sanzio (known to the modern world as Raphael) were all active at the time, and had worked in Venice.

To put this in perspective: Henry VIII was the King of England, 22 years old, handsome and athletic, and happily married to his 1st wife, Catherine of Aragon; his troops, later in the year, would kill King James IV of Scotland at the Battle of Flodden Field, and defeat those of King Louis XII of France in the Battle of the Spurs; the Spanish Inquisition was at its height, and, by this point, everybody expected it; Juan Ponce de León became the 1st European to sight Florida, but the Americas were completely unsettled by Europeans; Christopher Columbus, on whose 2nd voyage to the Americas, in 1493, Ponce de León had served, had been dead for only 7 years; and William Shakespeare and Galileo Galilei wouldn't be born for another half a century.

The Campanile was initially intended as a watchtower, to sight approaching ships and protect the entry to the city. It also served as a landmark to guide Venetian ships safely into harbor. The spire was gilded, making the tower visible to distant ships in the Adriatic Sea. Historically, the bells served to regulate the civic and religious life of Venice, marking the beginning, pauses, and end of the work day; the convocation of government assemblies; and public executions.

The campanile stood alone in the square, near the front of St Mark's Basilica. It had a simple form, recalling its early defensive function, the bulk of which was a square brick shaft with lesens, 39 feet wide on each side and 160 feet tall. The belfry was topped by an attic with effigies of the Lion of St. Mark and allegorical figures of Venice as Justice. The tower was capped by a pyramidal spire at the top, of which there was a golden weather vane in the form of the Archangel Gabriel.

When the original tower collapsed, the Basilica was not damaged, and the only fatality was the caretaker's cat. There were some people who thought that it wasn't worth rebuilding it, but it was. With the original plans intact, the replica could be exact.

The ruins after the collapse

The tower itself was completed on October 3, 1908. The following year, work began on the belfry, and the year after on the attic. The allegorical figures of Venice as Justice on the eastern and western sides were reassembled from the fragments that had been recovered from the ruins, and were restored.

The twin effigies of the winged lion of Saint Mark located on the remaining sides of the attic had already been chiseled away, and irreparably damaged after the fall of the Venetian Republic, at the time of the first French occupation, from May 1797 to January 1798. They were completely remade.

Work began on the spire in 1911, and lasted until March 5, 1912 when the restored statue of Gabriel was hoisted to the summit. The new campanile was inaugurated on April 25, 1912, on the occasion of St. Mark's feast day, exactly 1,000 years after the foundations of the original building had allegedly been laid.

*

July 14, 1902 was a Monday. This was also the day that the ruins of Machu Picchu were discovered in Peru. I have a separate entry for that event. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Giants lost to the Cincinnati Reds, 6-0 at League Park in Cincinnati. Clarence Currie pitched a 6-hit shutout.

* The Chicago Orphans beat the Brooklyn Superbas, 2-0 at the West Side Grounds in Chicago. Jack Taylor pitched a 2-hit shutout.

For 22 seasons, Adrian Anson was the 1st baseman for the team originally known as the Chicago White Stockings. He became their Captain and manager, and was nicknamed Cap. As he got older, he was nicknamed Pop. The team was renamed the Chicago Colts in 1890, because they were so young. Anson retired after the 1897 season, and the team was renamed the Orphans, because "they missed their Pop." In 1903, they again embraced youth, and became the Chicago Cubs.

As for the Brooklyn team, they had previously been managed by Ned Hanlon, and there was a famous circus troupe of the era, named Hanlon's Superbas. In 1911, they took the name Brooklyn Dodgers, as Brooklyn had many trolley lines, and natives had to "dodge" the trolleys.

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Boston Americans, 4-3 in 10 innings at Columbia Park in Philadelphia. Howard Wilson outpitched Cy Young, with both men going the distance. The Americans became the Boston Red Sox in 1908.

* The Washington Senators beat the Baltimore Orioles, 10-9 at American League Park in Washington. The Orioles had already been bought and stripped of their best players, and the franchise was returned to the American League at the end of the season. A new franchise was granted to New York for 1903, and it would eventually become the Yankees. But they and the 1901-02 Orioles were not the same team.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Beaneaters, 4-1 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. Honus Wagner went 3-for-4 with 2 RBIs. The Beaneaters became the Braves in 1912.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 9-2 at Robison Field in St. Louis.

* And the Chicago White Sox, the Cleveland Bronchos, the Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Browns were not scheduled. The Cleveland team became the Naps in 1903, the Indians in 1915, and the Guardians in 2022.