December 11, 1886: The 1st Arsenal Match

Not quite the 1st Arsenal team, but perhaps the earliest known team photo,

1888, including some of the original players.

December 11, 1886: The Arsenal Football Club played its 1st game. It was on the Isle of Dogs, at a ground recently occupied by Millwall Football Club, against a team named Eastern Wanderers, which went out of business a few years later. The new club won, 6-0.

They were originally a works team -- what we in the U.S. would call a company team, as both the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers began -- at the Royal Arsenal (hence the nickname "The Gunners," which led to their fans later being tagged "The Gooners") in Woolwich (the 2nd W is silent), in what was then the county of Kent, but is now part of Southeast London (SE16).

They called themselves Dial Square Football Club, after the section of the Arsenal where they worked. On Christmas Day, December 25, 1886, they met at the nearby Royal Oak pub, to make things more official, and changed their name to the Royal Arsenal Football Club.

The 1st game under the new name, and the 1st game that could be called a "home game" for them, was on January 8, 1887, at Plumstead Common, 2 miles away, against a nearby club called Erith, and Royal Arsenal won, 6-1.

The Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. Photo dated 1960.

In 1893, they turned professional, and were admitted to England's Football League, but had to change their name, as Queen Victoria had signed a law that prohibited any professional sports team from having "Royal" in its name. (This is not the case in Spain, where there are professional soccer teams named Real Madrid, Real Mallorca, Real Betis, etc.)

And, of course, being professional, they had ceased to be a "club," even though the word remains part of the organization's name, and the fans continue to call their team "my club."

So they took on the name of their locality, and were Woolwich Arsenal from then until 1913, when they moved to a new stadium at Highbury in North London, "The Arsenal" until 1919 and "Arsenal Football Club" since, although "The Arsenal," Capital T, Capital A, is frequently still used, especially by the club's fans.

They could have changed their name to "Highbury Arsenal," or "Islington Arsenal," even though neither the Borough of Islington nor the Highbury neighborhood had any connection to the Royal Arsenal, aside from the club. As a result, Arsenal are 1 of only 2 professional clubs in England without a locality as part of their official name. The other is Port Vale, located in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.

Herbert Chapman was signed to manage Arsenal in 1925. He led them to win the Football Association Cup in 1930, and the Football League Division One in 1931 and 1933, before his death midway through the 1933-34 season. Under Joe Shaw, and then George Allison, the team he built went on to win the League again in 1934, 1935 and 1938, and the FA Cup in 1936. A rebuild after World War II, under manager Tom Whittaker, resulted in League titles in 1948 and 1953, and an FA Cup in 1950.

Like Chapman, Whittaker died in office, in 1956, and a down period resulted. The team's fortunes were turned around under Bertie Mee. In 1970, he guided the team to the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, the tournament now known as the UEFA Europa League. In 1971, Arsenal took both the League and the FA Cup, "The Double." A mid-1970s rebuild under Terry Neill led to an FA Cup win in 1979.

In 1986, George Graham, one of the players from the '71 Double was named manager. He led the team to the 1987 League Cup, the 1989 and 1991 League titles, the 1st-ever English domestic "cup double" (the League Cup and the FA Cup) in 1993, and the European Cup Winners' Cup (a tournament that no longer exists) in 1994.

In 1996, Arsène Wenger was named the team's 1st manager not a native of the British Isles, and he revamped everything, from tactics to exercise to diet. In 1998, now in the era of the Premier League, he took Arsenal to another Double. He did it again in 2002. He led them to another FA Cup in 2003. And he led them through the entire 2003-04 Premier League season without losing a game: Played 38, won 26, drawn 2, lost exactly none. It had never been done before, and it hasn't been done since. The unbeaten string eventually reached 49 games.

(The 1st season of the Football League was in 1888-89, and Lancashire team Preston North End went through the 22-game season unbeaten, and also won the FA Cup. But 38 is a lot more games than 22.)

After another FA Cup win in 2005, Arsenal advanced to the Final of the UEFA Champions League in 2006, their last season at Highbury. With the opening of the new 60,000-seat Emirates Stadium, the construction debt had to be paid off, and Wenger had less of a budget than before. Still, he managed to keep the team in the Champions League places.

A small but loud and angry section of the fanbase began to demand that Wenger spend more money on "world-class players," because they believed that winning the League title was all that mattered. When Wenger ended a 9-year trophy drought by winning the 2014 FA Cup, this small but loud and angry section decided that it wasn't enough.

Nor was it enough when he did it again in 2015 and 2017. They demanded that he be fired for not giving them another League title -- as if he hadn't already given them 3, as many as any other Arsenal manager had ever done. (Allison had won 3; Chapman, Whittaker and Graham had each won 2, Shaw 1.)

By 2017, Arsenal had been surpassed by bigger-spending teams run by billionaire owners, and fell out of the Champions League places. Late in the 2018 season, Wenger announced he was leaving. It is still debated whether he was fired, or he quit due to even his great patience finally being worn out by the whiners.

New manager Unai Emery turned out to be a poor replacement, and was fired in favor of Mikel Arteta, the Spanish midfielder who had captained the 2014 and '15 Cup wins. His leadership led to victory in the 2020 FA Cup, and a 2nd-place finish and a return to Champions League qualification in 2022.

The Arsenal have a great past, and a promising future. The hope is that the team can, within a short time, return to its former heights.

Good old Arsenal, we're proud to say your name.

While we sing this song, we'll win the game!

There are no other scores on this historic day. England's Football League wouldn't be founded for another 2 years, and, given the distances involved in the pre-automobile era, scheduling was risky. In America, the baseball season was over, the college football season was also over, basketball hadn't been invented yet, and hockey hardly had been.

November 30, 1872: The 1st International Football Match

Artist's depiction. England in white, Scotland in blue.

November 30, 1872: For the 1st time, soccer teams representing the best players in their respective countries play each other.

As comedian Jason Sudeikis asked, when introducing the character of Ted Lasso, an American football coach who'd gotten a job coaching an English "football" (soccer) team, "How many countries are there in this country?" By "this country," he meant the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The answer is four: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland -- with the Republic of Ireland, since 1921, being its own nation, not in the United Kingdom.

Charles Alcock, a soccer and cricket star of the era, had organized the 1st FA Cup in England the preceding year, and had also organized matches between teams representing the football associations of both his native England and Scotland. But these were matches between English players and Scottish players for teams based in and around London, and were not what would now be recognized as "full internationals."

Charles Alcock

So Alcock proposed a match between the truly best players from each country. It was set for November 30, 1872, at Hamilton Crescent, the home ground of the West of Scotland Cricket Club, in Glasgow.

The England team wore white caps, white shirts, white shorts, and blue socks:

* Goalkeeper: Robert Barker, of Wouldham, Kent, and Watford-based club Hertfordshire Rangers.

* Fullback: Harwood Greenhalgh, of Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, and Notts County.

* Halfback: Reginald Welch, of Kensington, West London, and London team Wanderers. He was the only one of these players to have also played in the 1st FA Cup Final, won by Wanderers 8 months earlier.

* Forward: Frederick Maddison, of Westminster, London, and Oxford University.

* Forward: William Maynard, of London, and 1st Surrey Rifles F.C.

* Forward: John Brockbank, of Whitehaven, Cumberland, and Cambridge University.

* Forward: Charles Clegg, of Sheffield, Yorkshire, and Sheffield Wednesday.

* Forward: Arnold Kirke Smith, also of Sheffield, and Oxford University.

* Forward and Captain: Cuthbert Ottaway, of Dover, Kent, and Oxford University. He was named Captain because Alcock was injured and unable to play. But Alcock did select every player on the England squad.

* Forward: Charles Chenery, of Lambourne, Berkshire, and the original Crystal Palace F.C. of South London (not the current team of that name).

* Forward: Charles Morice, of London, and Harrow Chequers.

Ottaway died of tuberculosis in 1878, only 27 years old. He remains the only Englishman to represent a university in 5 different sports. Welch lived until 1939.

The Scotland team wore red cowls, navy blue shirts (which would become traditional for them), white shorts, and socks of navy and white stripes, and was represented by the top Scottish club team of the time, Queen's Park of Glasgow.

Scotland captain Robert Gardner, an organizer in Scottish sports on the same level that Alcock was for England, attempted to gain the services of the top two Scottish players from the London area, who had both played in the 1872 FA Cup Final: Arthur Kinnaird of Wanderers and Henry Renny-Tailyour of Royal Engineers. As it turned out, both men were unavailable. Here's the team that Gardner did select, starting with himself:

* Goalkeeper: Robert Gardner, of Glasgow. He was described years later as the best goalkeeper in the world, although, given that England and Scotland were pretty much the only countries then playing the sport, that doesn't say much.

* Fullback: William Ker, of the Scottish capital of Edinburgh.

* Fullback: Joseph Taylor, of Glasgow.

* Halfback: James Thomson, of Annan, Dumfries.

* Halfback: James Smith, of Aberdeen.

* Forward: Robert Smith, of Aberdeen.

* Forward: Robert Leckie, of Killearn, Stirlingshire.

* Forward: Alex Rhind, of Aberdeen.

* Forward: Billy MacKinnon, of Glasgow, described as "a brilliant dribbling artist," perhaps the first player to use the overhead, or what became known as the "bicycle," kick.

* Forward: Jerry Weir, of Glasgow.

* Forward: David Wotherspoon, of Hamilton, South Lanarkshire.

Robert Gardner

James Smith died in 1876, only 32, from what's listed only as "a long illness," although he was listed as having played for South London team South Norwood in that calendar year. Weir died in 1887, of typhoid fever. Gardner also died in 1887, just short of turning 40. Leckie also died in 1887, just after turning 40. Taylor died in 1888, only 37. I cannot find a cause of death for any of them. MacKinnon was the last survivor of the game, living until 1942.

The referee was William Keay, a Scot. Given the tenor of the times, when athletes were supposed to conduct themselves as "sporting" and "gentlemen," I surmise that he must have already had a reputation for fairness that led to him being acceptable to Captain Ottaway as well as to Captain Gardner.

The game was attended by 4,000 people, and the same price of admission was charged as for the FA Cup Final: One shilling. In 2022 British money, that's about £24.10. In U.S. money, about $31.70. A more than reasonable price for such historic events.

The match was scheduled to kick off at 2:00. A delay meant that it got underway at 2:20. The field, or pitch, was a bit muddy, having been pelted with the infamous Scottish rain for 3 days.

The Scotsman, a national newspaper still in business today, wrote, "During the first half of the game the English team did not work so well together, but in the second half they left nothing to be desired in this respect." The Scots had a goal disallowed, because the umpire decided that the ball did not clear the tape that was used to represent a crossbar.

At halftime, as was traditional at the time, the teams rotated their goalkeeping duties. England put Maynard in goal, and moved Barker to Maynard's place on the forward line. Gardner was moved into Robert Smith's place, and Smith moved into goal.

England never had a serious attempt on goal. Scotland had one more, late in the game, when Leckie launched a shot that landed on top of the tape. Final score: England 0, Scotland 0.

The Aberdeen Journal wrote, "It was allowed to be the best game ever seen in Scotland." A sports-themed magazine titled The Field wrote, "The match was in every sense a signal success as the play was throughout as spirited and as pleasant as can possibly be imagined."

Really? All this from a game that ended scoreless? Well, deep into the 20th Century, Gianni Brera, considered Italy's greatest sportswriter, wrote that the ideal soccer game would end 0-0. Even today, "purists" -- the kind of people who, if they are baseball fans, prefer "pitchers' duels" to "slugfests" -- would agree.

A return match was played on March 8, 1873, at the Kennington Oval in South London. This time, there was scoring, and lots of it. William Kenyon-Slaney of England set the tone by scoring in only the 2nd minute, and England beat Scotland, 4-2.

Scotland gained their 1st win over England in 1874. They achieved celebrated wins over England in 1928, at Wembley Stadium in London, giving their side the name "The Wembley Wizards"; and in 1967, when a team led by Manchester United's Denis Law beat essentially the same England team that had won the World Cup the year before, winning the British Home Championship and becoming "Wembley Wizards II."

These 2 countries have played each other more often than any other. As of November 30, 2022, England have won 48 matches, to Scotland's 41, with 26 draws. However, a long decline of Scottish football means that Scotland have not beaten England in the sport since 1999 (though that win was at Wembley), and only that once since 1985.

UPDATE: The teams played again on September 12, 2023, at Hampden Park in Glasgow, Scotland's national stadium. England won, 3-1, raising their lead in the series to 49-41.

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November 30, 1872 was a Saturday. In North American sports, baseball season was over, basketball hadn't yet been invented, hockey barely was, and while there was college football as Americans understood that term, the season had already ended. So there were no other scores on this historic day.

But there was a notable person born on this day: John McCrae, the Canadian physician and poet who commemorated the dead of World War I in his 1915 poem "In Flanders Fields," and would join them in 1918.

November 24, 1887: Sherlock Holmes Debuts

Jeremy Brett as Holmes, in the PBS

anthology series Mystery!, sometime in the 1980s

November 24, 1887: The British magazine Beeton's Christmas Annual is published. It sells out before Christmas, largely on the strength of a novel whose text it contains: A Study in Scarlet, by Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle. The story introduces the character of consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, and his assistant, Dr. John H. Watson.

Watson was based on Conan Doyle himself. (He used "Conan Doyle" as a compound surname, but Britain's list of knighthoods, and most libraries, list him alphabetically under D for "Doyle.") Born on May 22, 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland, as Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, his mother was Irish Catholic, and his father's parents were as well, but he left the Church as a young man and became an agnostic.

He attended the University of Edinburgh Medical School, and studied botany at the Royal Botanical Garden there. He would have Holmes frequently rely on his knowledge of botany, particularly in how some plants are poisonous.

One of his professors was Dr. Joseph Bell (1837-1911), and it was on him that Conan Doyle based Holmes, writing to him in 1892, "It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes... Round the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I have heard you inculcate I have tried to build up a man."

Another University of Edinburgh graduate (though not of its medical school) who turned to writing, Robert Louis Stevenson, used Holmes-like deduction to figure it out, writing to Conan Doyle, "My compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes... Can this be my old friend Joe Bell?"

In September 1879, Conan Doyle was published for the first time, both with an academic article and a short story. And -- relevant to the 2020s -- he was a staunch supporter of early vaccination and a denouncer of anti-vaccinators.

In 1885, he married Louisa Hawkins, and they had a daughter named Mary Louise and a son named Arthur Kingsley. Known as "Kingsley," he was wounded in World War I, and died of pneumonia just 14 days before the Armistice. Louisa died of tuberculosis in 1906. The following year, he married Jean Leckie, and they had a son named Denis, a son named Malcolm, and a daughter named Jean.

He earned his medical doctorate, but was unsuccessful in the practice of medicine. In 1886, he wrote A Study in Scarlet, and it was accepted for publication by Ward Lock & Co., although they waited an entire year to print it in their Beeton's Christmas Annual. It got excellent reviews, and Ward Lock commissioned a sequel, which became The Sign of the Four.

In 1890, having fulfilled this commitment, and not liking the way he was being exploited, Conan Doyle stuck to writing short Holmes stories for The Strand magazine, and it through these stories that Holmes is best remembered.

Conan Doyle took the name and profession, but nothing else, from Dr. James Watson, once a colleague in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. Dr. John H. Watson narrated most of Holmes' stories. There was a Chief Inspector William Sherlock whose name was frequently  in the London newspapers, and Conan Doyle was find of the poetry of American writer Oliver Wendell Holmes.

It has been suggested that there was then a popular cricket player named Sherlock who inspired the detective's name, but this idea is usually dismissed. Nevertheless, Conan Doyle was a keen sportsman, and loved cricket, playing 10 first-class matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club at Lords. He played for an Authors XI alongside James M. Barrie (creator of Peter Pan), P.G. Wodehouse (Jeeves and Wooster) and A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh). As a bowler (equivalent in baseball to the pitcher), he had one first-class wicket (major league strikeout): W.G. Grace, a fellow physician, who was then regarded as the greatest batsman the sport had ever known.

He previously played as a goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club, while practicing medicine in the city. (That team went out of business in 1896, and the current Portsmouth Football Club -- "Play up, Pompey!" -- was formed 2 years later.) In 1901, he was 1 of 3 judges for the world's 1st major bodybuilding competition.  In 1908, he was a judge for the Olympic Games held in London, and was one of the judges who assisted Dorando Pietri after he fell on the final lap of the marathon, leading to Pietri's disqualification.

He had been an amateur boxer and, while on a lecture tour of America in 1910, was invited by boxing promoter Tex Rickard to referee the Heavyweight Championship fight between Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries. He declined, citing the distance and his schedule. (Rickard ended up refereeing the fight himself, which Johnson won by a 15th round knockout.) That same year, he was elected captain of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club in Sussex. He entered the English Amateur billiards championship in 1913. And some time that he spent in Switzerland, before creating Holmes, led to a love of skiing.

But his time spent in Switzerland also inspired the "death" of Holmes. He wanted to write about other things. Inspired by the  "scientific novels" of Jules Verne -- H.G. Wells had not yet tried the genre, and Hugo Gernsback had not yet coined the phrase "science fiction" -- he created the scientist Professor Challenger, including The Lost World, one of the 1st pieces of fiction to incorporate dinosaurs. He created Brigadier Gerard, an officer in Napoleon's Grand Armée. He created Sir Nigel Loring, a knight in the Hundred Years War.

His scientific and historical fiction got him the best reviews of his career. But the general public wanted more and more of Holmes. Conan Doyle couldn't take it anymore: In 1893, he published The Final Problem. He created a villainous equal for Holmes, Professor James Moriarty. Though Moriarty appeared in only this story, Holmes told Watson that they had been in a battle of wits for years.

They made their way to the Reichenbach Falls, a real place in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland. There, according to the story, on May 4, 1891, 10 years after Holmes and Watson first met, Holmes and Moriarty fight, and tumble over a protective fence to their deaths. From such a height, neither could have possibly survived.

Holmes fans were furious! How dare the man who created their hero kill him! Conan Doyle got death threats in the mail. He was attacked on the street, by men with umbrellas and women with purses. It was the first "toxic fandom" in the history of popular culture.

It also produced some of the earliest "fanfiction," as people began writing their own Holmes stories, not considering copyright laws. As you might guess, this included some pornographic stories, some involving Holmes and Irene Adler, and some even involving a homosexual relationship between Holmes and Watson, thus inventing what came to be known -- after similar "Kirk/Spock" stories by whacked-out female Star Trek fans -- in the 1970s as "slash fiction."

Irene Adler, like Moriarty, canonically appeared only once, in A Scandal in Bohemia, but to Holmes would always be "the woman," though Watson specifically said that Holmes held only respect for her: "It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler." Later film adaptations of Holmes would romantically link them, however. And author William S. Baring-Gould, a Holmes expert, suggested that Rex Stout's fictional private detective, Nero Wolfe, was the illegitimate son of Sherlock and Irene, the result of an affair after meeting again sometime after the incident at the Reichenbach Falls.

Bowing to pressure, in 1901, Conan Doyle published a full-length novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, obviously taking place before Holmes' death. This only increased the demand for more Holmes stories. In 1903, Conan Doyle gave in, writing The Empty House, and explaining how Holmes survived the Reichenbach Falls. Fandom had its 1st victory over the "cancellation" of a popular series. It would not happen again until the aforementioned Star Trek, 65 years later.

Though associated with the Victorian era, and (within his fictional world) known all over Europe for his detective work, the character of Holmes was never knighted by Queen Victoria. Nor was he knighted by her son, King Edward VII; nor by his son, King George V. But in 1902, King Edward did knight Conan Doyle -- not for his Holmes stories, but for his recent writings supporting the country, its government, and its Army in the Boer War.

In 1917, Conan Doyle published His Last Bow, which depicts Holmes and Watson, by then in their 60s, aiding the British government against the German Empire in the Summer of 1914, on the eve of World War I. As late as 1927, he was publishing Holmes stories, taking place between The Empty House and His Last Bow, and having Watson assure readers that Holmes, who had taken to beekeeping, "is long retired from his profession of detective but is still alive and well, albeit suffering from a touch of rheumatism."

Conan Doyle died on July 7, 1930, at 71, from a heart attack, at Windlesham Manor, his house in Crowborough, Sussex, about 40 miles south of London. He was buried in Minstead Churchyard in New Forest, Hampshire. His wife Jean died in 1940. None of his 5 children had children of their own, so, with his daughter Jean's death in 1997, the bloodline of Arthur Conan Doyle died out.

Baring-Gould, who placed Holmes' birth in 1854, considered the date of the creator's death to also be that of the creation. But Holmes lives on. His best known portrayal remains that of Basil Rathbone, in 14 films between 1939 and 1946. Some were set in Holmes' original period, but some were set in the present, and featured Holmes and Watson riding in automobiles and fighting Nazis, with Holmes wearing a fedora hat instead of a deerstalker cap. Nigel Bruce's portrayal rendered Watson as something of a bumbler, unworthy of standing alongside Holmes, for a generation of fans.

From 1970 to 2012, PBS' Sesame Street featured a Muppet named Sherlock Hemlock, voiced by Jerry Nelson, better known as the voice of The Count. Jeremy Brett played Holmes in 41 episodes of a Granada TV series from 1984 to 1994, which were broadcast in America as part of PBS' anthology series Mystery! Dr. Watson was played by David Burke in the 1st season, and Edward Hardwicke thereafter.

In 1987, the CBS movie The Return of Sherlock Holmes told the story of Jane Watson (Margaret Colin), the Doctor's great-granddaughter, a private detective living in present-day Boston, inheriting her family's English property, which included a cryogenic chamber in which Holmes (Michael Pennington) had frozen himself after being infected with plague. After getting him cured, he sees that modern London is no place for him, so she takes him home, his first experience on an airplane. Together, they solve a murder as he adjusts to the late 20th Century.

I was working at a movie theater in 1988 when Without a Clue was shown there. Ben Kingsley played Watson, and his creation, Holmes, had proven so popular that he hires an actor, Reginald Kincaid, played by Michael Caine, to play Holmes for the public. Together, they -- actually, just Watson, as Kincaid is called by Watson "You idiot!" to his face and, correctly, "a gambler, a womanizer, and a drunkard!" to others -- solve crimes, but Holmes gets the public credit. When Watson is kidnapped by Moriarty, Kincaid must take the lead for the first time, and be a real Holmes for the first time. With help from Mrs. Hudson, the landlady at 221b Baker Street, and a kid from the Baker Street Irregulars, he defeats Moriarty and closes the case.

More recently, 2 Holmes films have been made with Robert Downey Jr.; the TV series Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as a present-day Holmes, also shown on PBS' Mystery!; and the CBS series Elementary, with Jonny Lee Miller as a present-day Holmes moving from London to New York, where he meets Dr. Joan Watson, a divorcée born Joan Yun (Lucy Liu). Despite Watson now being a woman, the series never made them a romantic couple.

That show's title brings up an important point. Arthur Conan Doyle never, not even once, had Sherlock Holmes say to his partner the words, "Elementary, my dear Watson." Rathbone used it, making it forever identified with the character, but Conan Doyle didn't. He did have Holmes use the word "elementary" a few times, and call his partner "my dear Watson" a few times (other times, "my dear fellow"), but never paired them up.

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Cumberbatch played Dr. Strange, while Downey played Iron Man. I think the Marvel writers missed an opportunity: Neither actor had the chance in any Marvel film to say to the other, "No shit, Sherlock!"

As for the world's most famous address: During Conan Doyle's lifetime, addresses on London's Baker Street did not go as high as 221, but the street was later extended. In 1932, the Abbey National Building Society moved into a complex at 219 to 229 Baker Street. Abbey National employed a full-time secretary to answer mail that came to 221b, addressed to Holmes. Abbey House closed in 2005. Since then, the Sherlock Holmes Museum, at 237 to 241 Baker Street, NW1 6XE, has had legal ownership of the building at 221b.

In a 2012 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, rapper-comedian Zach Sherwin played Sherlock Holmes, and Saturday Night Live castmember Kyle Mooney played Dr. John Watson, against "Nice" Peter Shukoff as the Christian Bale version of Batman, with "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist, incongruously, as the Burt Ward version of Robin.

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November 24, 1887 was a Thursday. Erich von Manstein was born on this day. He became a Field Marshal of the Wehrmacht, Nazi Germany's army, and was convicted of war crimes. He served 4 years in prison, and, under NATO supervision, led the rebuilding of West Germany's armed forces.

In America, it was Thanksgiving Day. So, while baseball season was over, hockey hadn't yet come over the Canadian border, basketball hadn't yet been invented, and football hadn't yet gone professional, there was college football played that day:

* Yale beat Harvard in "The Game," 17-8 at the original Polo Grounds, at 111th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan. Effectively, this was the National Championship Game, as both teams came in undefeated. Harvard had outscored its opponents 652-0; Yale, 509-4. Led by quarterback Harry Beecher, who became the 1st football player to appear on what would later come to be called baseball cards, Yale won the game.

* That game at the Polo Grounds was the 2nd game of a doubleheader. In the 1st game, Wesleyan University beat the University of Pennsylvania, 10-4. Yale, Harvard and Penn, as Ivy League schools, now compete in the NCAA's Football Championship Subdivision (FCS, formerly Division I-AA); while Wesleyan, in Middletown, Connecticut, competes in NCAA Division III.

* The U.S. Naval Academy beat Johns Hopkins, 8-0 on the Academy grounds in Annapolis, Maryland. Hopkins, the Baltimore university famous for its medical school, now competes in Division III.

* The University of Richmond beat Randolph-Macon College, 14-13 in Richmond, Virginia. Richmond now compete in the FCS. Randolph-Macon, in Ashland, Virginia, compete in Division III.

* And the University of Michigan beat the Chicago Harvard School, 26-0 on a mudpatch of a field at the Wanderer Cricket Ground, at 37th Street and Indiana Avenue on the South Side of Chicago.

Michigan had intended to play Northwestern University on the day, but Northwestern backed out after the Michigan team had already arrived in Chicago. It was suggested to them that the CHS team was better than Northwestern, anyway, so the game was set up. It rained, and instead of being "the great equalizer," the rain held CHS back, and allowed Michigan to dominate.

The Chicago Harvard School was basically a private high school, intended to prepare its students for schools like Harvard and the University of Chicago, and did not play a major college in football again. It closed in 1962.

November 9, 1888: Jack the Ripper's Last Murder

Who the bloody hell was he?

November 9, 1888: Jack the Ripper strikes again. This time, it is the most brutal of his murders.

In the last few years of the reign of Queen Victoria, London was the biggest and most advanced city in the world. But it was also one of economic extremes: Great wealth, and dire poverty. Dreamers came from all over the British Isles, and from all over the world, in the hopes of making their living, or even their fortune, in the seat of the British Empire, which stretched all over the world, and thus, it was said, the Sun never set on it.

As with other cities -- in America from that time onward, the leading example has been New York, and would be joined by Los Angeles -- in London, that hope soon vanished in a morass of deprivation. Unless a woman had a man to work alongside, the only living most women could make was through prostitution.

And while there was always a market for it, that didn't mean that one would meet that market every night. Paying rent on even the meagerest of lodgings was hard. And as for keeping yourself well-fed, clean and healthy, and thus attractive enough for your potential customers, that was unlikely. Not that some men cared: They would take whatever they could afford.

Being a prostitute was a good way for a woman to get killed. Every year, a few "ladies of the evening" were murdered in London. But it didn't happen often enough for the police to notice a pattern. In 1887, there was a murder in the East End that some later tried to tie to the Ripper killings, but most people who've studied the case don't see enough similarities to think it was one.

The murders of Emma Elizabeth Smith on April 3, 1888 and Martha Tabram on August 7 of that year, both in the Whitechapel district of the East End, bear some resemblance to the Ripper killings, but the differences were noticeable enough for them to be ruled not the work of the Ripper. Generally, there are 5 murders said to be his work, known as "the Canonical Five." I'll spare you the most gruesome, and the most intimate, details.

1. August 31, 1888. Mary Ann Nichols, 43 years old, from Soho, West London. She was discovered on Buck's Row, now Durward Street, in Whitechapel -- current London postcode, E1 5BA. Found at about 3:40 AM by her roommate, Emily Holland. It was a vicious knife attack, by anyone's standards. Still, the area had seen killings like this before.

2. September 8, 1888. Annie Chapman, not quite 48, from Paddington, West London. Found at about 6:00 AM at 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields, E1 6QS, about a mile west of the Nichols murder. A witness had seen her half an hour earlier, "in the company of a dark-haired man wearing a brown deer-stalker hat and dark overcoat."

This was just 8 days after the Nichols murder, and the details were very similar. Now, people in the neighborhood were getting scared. Already, guesses were being made, based on the wounds. The killer was lefthanded. Or not. The killer was used to using knives. Maybe he was a surgeon. Or a barber. Or a butcher. Or a shoemaker. (Hence the 1st nickname the London press gave him: "Leather Apron.") Maybe he was of one of the immigrant groups in the East End. An Irishman. A Russian. A Pole. A Hungarian. A Jew. Take your pick of bigotries: It was available.

On September 27, the Central News Agency received a letter postmarked that same day, dated September 25. On September 29, they gave it to the London police, collectively called Scotland Yard after their headquarters' address. It read (grammar, spelling and underlining are shown here exactly as written):

Dear Boss,

I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha. ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn't you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife's so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck. Yours truly

Jack the Ripper

Dont mind me giving the trade name

PS Wasnt good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it. No luck yet. They say I'm a doctor now. ha ha

Was this letter actually from the killer? Or was it someone having a little fun with the police? The police weren't sure if they should take it seriously. And then...

3. September 30, 1888: Elizabeth Stride, 44, a Swedish immigrant born Elizabeth Gustafsdotter, and known as Long Liz for her unusual height. She was found at around 1:00 AM in Dutfield's Yard, off Berner Street (now 71 Henriques Street), E1 1LZ. The places where Nichols and Chapman were found were both less than a mile away.

Witnesses said they had seen Stride talking to a man on the street a few hours earlier, but their descriptions did not agree, split on both his complexion and his clothes. This murder was also different in that there was only one incision, across her neck. This had been done to Nichols and Chapman, but they'd had more done.

This led to 2 competing theories: Either the Ripper was disturbed in mid-murder, and left so he wouldn't be caught, and thus felt he had to kill another prostitute, in order to fulfill his compulsion; or Stride was killed by someone other than the Ripper, possibly what would now be called a "copycat killer," and it happened to have occurred right before an actual Ripper murder. But the next one is almost universally agreed to be the Ripper's work:

4. September 30, 1888: Catherine Eddowes, 46, from Wolverhampton in the West Midlands, near Birmingham. Found in Mitre Square, not in the East End but in "The City of London," EC3A 5DE. Still, this was within a one-mile walk of the other murders.

She was found at around 1:45 AM -- only about 45 minutes after Stride was found. Certainly, an able-bodied man would have been able to walk less than one mile within 45 minutes. And part of her ear was missing, just as "the Dear Boss Letter" had suggested would happen -- something the police would have known, but the general public would not have, meaning that, almost certainly, this killer was no copycat.

At 2:55 AM, a bloody apron was found in front of a tenement on Goulston Street, about 6 blocks away from Mitre Square. It was recognized as belonging to Eddowes. Above it, someone had written in chalk, "The Juwes are The men That Will not be Blamed for Nothing." (Again, I have not changed the text.) Was this graffito already there? Or was it a suggestion that Jack was Jewish? Police Commissioner Charles Warren thought it might spark an anti-Semitic riot, and ordered it washed away before dawn -- thus removing potential evidence.

Two murders in 45 minutes? It became known as "The Double Event." Now, the whole city was in terror, and the newspapers and magazines of the time didn't help, publishing sensational stories of the murders, with wild theories.

On October 1, 1888, the day after the Double Event, the Central News Agency received a postcard, postmarked that day. It read:

I was not codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip, you'll hear about Saucy Jacky's work tomorrow double event this time number one squealed a bit couldn't finish straight off. Had not time to get ears off for police thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again.
Jack the Ripper

In 1931, 43 years later, a reporter claimed that he'd written all the correspondence attributed to the Ripper to "keep the business alive." In 2018, a handwriting expert concluded that, at the very least, "The Dear Boss Letter" and "The Saucy Jacky Postcard" were definitely written by the same person. Which didn't mean that said person was the actual killer, or somebody riding his attention.

By October 16, there had not been another murder resembling those of Nichols, Chapman, Stride and Eddowes. Things had not calmed down, however. The Whitechapel Vigilance Committee had been formed, a group of local volunteers who patrolled the streets at night, looking for the Ripper. Their chairman was George Lusk, a 49-year-old builder.

On October 16, Lusk received a letter, postmarked the day before. Again, I have not changed the text, leaving the misspellings and grammar intact:

From hell.

Mr Lusk,

Sor

I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer

signed

Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk

To me, someone who grew up outside New York City and remembers 1977, the Dear Boss Letter looks reminiscent of the letters that David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, sent to the police and the New York Daily News. But "The From Hell Letter" sounds more like Hannibal Lecter, the villain of Thomas Harris' novels including The Silence of the Lambs. (In 2014, the Internet series Epic Rap Battles of History had the Ripper, played by English online celebrity Dan Bull, face Lecter, played by "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist.)

It was noted that the handwriting on the From Hell Letter was different from the Dear Boss Letter and the Saucy Jacky Postcard. Nor did it mention, let alone taunt, the police. Nor did it include a prediction of a murder to come. Nor did it include the name "Jack the Ripper" or any derivation thereof. But it did come with a box containing half a human kidney. If the journalist who claimed in 1931 to have written the 2 earlier notes was telling the truth, then the From Hell Letter may be the only real thing.

And then came a killing that truly seemed to come from Hell itself:

5. November 9, 1888: Mary Jane Kelly. Less is known about her than the other victims. She was apparently 25 years old, or around that age, making her young enough to be the daughter of the 1st 4. She claimed to have come from Limerick, Ireland, and grown up in Wales.

This murder was different, and not just because of the victim's age or origin. For one thing, her body was found indoors, at 13 Miller's Court, off Dorset Street, Spitalfields. The street names have changed since: It's at the corner of Brushfield Street and Commercial Street, E1 6AG. One big similarity: Each of the other 4 murder sites was within a one-mile walk, and Chapman's was right around the corner.

Because she wasn't murdered on the street, where she could be easily found by a passerby, it took until 10:45 AM to find her. There were morgue photos taken of the 1st 4, so we have facial photos of them, if not living ones. That was impossible with Kelly: Her face was "hacked beyond all recognition," and it was, by far, the bloodiest and goriest of the Canonical Five crime scenes.

Five prostitutes murdered, all in the same neighborhood, all within 70 days. And then... the killings stopped.

Or... did they? After 1888, pretty much anytime a woman, especially a prostitute, anywhere in the world, was stabbed to death, people blamed Jack the Ripper. There were "Rippers" all over the world. Later murders of prostitutes in Whitechapel were attributed to the Ripper, including those of Alice McKenzie, known as "Clay Pipe Alice," on July 17, 1889; and Frances Coles, known as "Carrotty Nell" for her carrot-orange hair, on February 13, 1891. But the differences in the details of the killings dismissed the unknown killer as theirs.

But the killer was never officially identified, and this is what keeps the Ripper case active in public memory. Who was he? There were several immigrants who were questioned, but the evidence against them wasn't strong enough to bring a case: Doctors like Irish-American Francis Tumblety and Russian Michael Ostrog, and shoemakers like Pole Aaron Kosminsky.

A popular theory is that it was Dr. William Gull, a physician working for the royal family, who killed prostitutes known to have been visited by Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, eldest son of the Prince of Wales, grandson of Queen Victoria, and thus would have been King of England had he lived. Gull -- possibly acting on the Queen's orders -- had to silence these women. There's even a theory that the Duke himself, a.k.a. "Prince Eddy," was the Ripper, leading to the title of a book: Frank Spiering's 1981 Prince Jack.

It wasn't Prince Eddy: Records show that he was at Windsor Castle, 25 miles away, at the time of every one of the Ripper's "canonical five murders." Given the transportation available at the time, there was no way he could have gotten to the murder sites and back without blowing his cover. It wasn't Gull, either: He was 71 years old, and had suffered a stroke, and was unlikely to have been able to overpower the women enough to kill them. If he ever killed anybody, it was through medical mistake, not willful murder.

Another theory, proposed by the initial investigator, Inspector Frederick Abberline, is that Jack was actually a Jill: A midwife would have carried blades, would be able to move around a poor neighborhood at night without raising suspicion, would have known how to render a patient/victim unconscious, could have bloodstained clothing explainable by her work, and would have known how to perform the particulars of some of the mutilations of the Ripper victims. And, since everyone was looking for a man, "Jill the Ripper" was far less likely to become a suspect. Two female murderers contemporary to the Ripper case have been identified as suspects, but circumstances make either seem unlikely.

A theory with some merit is that the last murder, that of Mary Jane Kelly, shocked even the Ripper himself, so deeply that whatever sanity he had left snapped, and that he was found mad on the street, and committed, and no one ever found out that the Ripper had, in fact, been caught -- because he was not identified as the Ripper.

A similar theory is that he was so guilt-stricken by what he'd done to Kelly that he killed himself, possibly by drowning himself in the River Thames. His body would have been found, and, even if identified, no one would ever have known he was the Ripper. Either way, it would explain why Kelly was the last "canonical victim."

Then there are those who notice that the 3rd and 5th killings, those of Stride and Kelly, don't really match the others, and suggest that, while Nicholas, Chapman and Eddowes were killed by the same man, Stride and Kelly were murders separate from them, and separate from each other. Some take this theory to the next logical step: All 5 killings were done by different people, and the name "Jack the Ripper" was totally made up. In other words, There was no Jack the Ripper. Given the nature of crime at the time, there is some logic to this theory.

DNA evidence is useless: The artifacts of the case that survive have been handled by so many people, a positive identification is impossible. In 2014, a shawl belonging to Eddowes was discovered to have DNA from both her and Aaron Kosminsky. But all that proves is that they had sex. She was, after all, a prostitute, and he did live in the same neighborhood. It could have been a one-time thing, or he could have been a regular customer. It doesn't even prove that they were together on the night of her murder, let alone that he was the Ripper.

Most cultural depictions of the Ripper make up fictional characters with which to identify him, including the 1979 film Time After Time: Malcolm McDowell, better known for playing bad guys, is cast not as the Ripper, but as H.G. Wells, author of The Time Machine. In this film, Wells himself invents a time machine, and discovers a friend of his, Dr. John Stevenson, played by David Warner, is the Ripper. Stevenson escapes to the present day, and Wells has to follow him. Stevenson decides to stay, believing that the late 20th Century is much better suited to his sadistic, homicidal ways.

The 1989 DC Comics story Gotham By Gaslight, which puts Batman in the Victorian era, and has his civilian identity, Bruce Wayne, convicted of Ripper-like slayings in Gotham City, before he breaks out of jail and discovers that the Ripper and the man who killed his parents were, in this story, one and the same: Jacob Packer, a man who was in love with Martha Wayne, and kills her and Thomas out of jealousy. This graphic novel launched DC's Elseworlds line, out-of-canon stories involving their characters in "worlds that don't, couldn't, or shouldn't exist."

Other authors have tried to link the Ripper killings to such Victorian-based characters as Wells' The Invisible Man and Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; to have Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, a contemporary of the Ripper, solve the case; and, in one novel, Michael Dibdin's 1978 The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, combine all three: Holmes tries to find a cure for his cocaine addiction, which leads him to become a Hyde-like character, and commit the Ripper murders.

Barring the invention of an actual time machine, we will never know.

In a 2014 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, British comedian Dan Bull played the Ripper, against "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist as Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs.

*

November 9, 1888 was a Friday. The baseball season was over. Hockey was still all-amateur. Basketball wouldn't be invented for another 3 years. And no college football games were played. So there were no scores on this historic day.

It was the birthdate of Jean Monnet, a French civil servant and diplomat, who is considered one of the founding fathers of the European Union.

September 8, 1888, The Football League Begins Play

September 8, 1888: The 1st games are played in England's Football League. Their national sport, which America would come to call "soccer," had been played for decades. The Football Association (FA) had been founded in 1863. A national tournament, the FA Cup, had been contested since the 1871-72 season. But now, there was a national league.

It was made up solely of teams from the North. From Birmingham and the surrounding area: Aston Villa, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers, a.k.a. Wolves. From the East Midlands: Derby County and Notts County. (Nottingham Forest had applied to be a charter member, but were turned down. They were admitted in 1892.) From Staffordshire: Stoke City. From Liverpool: Everton. (Liverpool F.C. would be founded in 1892.) From the Manchester area: Bolton Wanderers. (Manchester United wouldn't join the League until 1892, and Manchester City weren't founded until 1894.) From Lancashire: Preston North End, Blackburn Rovers, Burnley and Accrington Stanley.

Of the 12 teams, 10 played on the 1st day. The 2 that didn't were Blackburn Rovers and Notts County.

The 1st goal was scored by Kenny Davenport of Bolton, 2 minutes into their match with Derby. However, Derby won the game, 6-3. West Brom beat Stoke 2-0. Preston beat Burnley 5-2. Everton beat Accrington 2-1. And Aston Villa and Wolves drew 1-1.

Preston, which had won the FA Cup the previous season, not only won it again in 1889, but went through the League season undefeated: Played 22, won 18, drew 4, lost exactly none. At the time, a win was 2 points, and a draw 1. They finished with 40 points, with Aston Villa finishing 2nd with 29 points.

Hail the Champions: James Trainer, goalkeeper; Bob Howarth, right back; Bob Holmes, left back; George Drummond, right half; David Russell, centre half; Johnny Graham, left half; Jack Gordon, right wing; Jimmy Ross, inside forward; John Goodall, centre forward; Fred Dewhurst, inside forward; Sammy Thomson, left wing.

It would take 115 years for another English team to go through a League season unbeaten: In the 2003-04 season, North London team Arsenal played 38, won 26, drew 12, lost exactly none.

*

September 8, 1888 was a Saturday. There was no professional football, as Americans understand that word. There was no professional hockey. Basketball wouldn't even be invented for another 3 years. But there was what we would later call Major League Baseball:

* The New York Giants beat the Indianapolis Hoosiers, 3-2 at Athletic Park in Indianapolis. The Giants went on to win the National League Pennant. The Hoosiers played just 1 more season before going out of business.

* A doubleheader was split at Recreation Park in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Alleghenys won the opener, 2-0. The Philadelphia Quakers won the nightcap, 3-2. The Alleghenys would be accused of unfairly acquiring a player, a method that was called "nothing but piratical." So they became the Pittsburgh Pirates for the 1891 season. The Quakers became the Philadelphia Phillies in 1890.

* The Cleveland Blues beat the Cincinnati Red Stockings, 2-1 at League Park in Cleveland. The following season, the Blues became the Cleveland Spiders, because a writer noted that their fielders were so good, they seemed to have 8 arms. They went out of business after the 1899 season. The Red Stockings became simply the Reds in 1890.

* A doubleheader was split at Recreation Park in Detroit. The Washington Nationals won the 1st game, 2-1. The Detroit Wolverines won the 2nd game, 7-2. Despite having won the Pennant in 1887, the Wolverines ran out of money, and folded at the end of the 1888 season. The Nationals went out of business after the 1899 season, and have no connection to the current National League team of that name.

* The Chicago White Stockings beat the Boston Beaneaters, 11-6 in Chicago. The White Stockings became the Cubs in 1903, and the Beaneaters became the Braves in 1912. 

August 29, 1882: The Birth of Cricket's "Ashes"

The Ashes Urn, held by Captains

of England (blue) and Australia (green).

August 29, 1882: A legend is born in the sport of cricket.

As a colony of Great Britain until independence in 1901, Australia adopted cricket as its national sport. They also came to love rugby, and adapted it into what became known as Australia Rules Football; and soccer, although it took them longer to achieve anything in that sport; and tennis; and swimming, because it's an island nation.

In August 1882, under team Captain Billy Murdoch, the Australia cricket team, successful against England on home soil the preceding Winter, made the long passenger ship journey to England, and played only 1 test, against Surrey County Cricket Club. Then as now, although it is in Kennington, South London, not in Surrey, The Oval was Surrey's home ground, and that's where the matches were played.

Fred Spofforth was known as "The Demon Bowler," and the English players could do little against him. Cricket historian C.P. Moody wrote, "Spofforth was bowling the most remarkable break-backs at tremendous pace." Despite the skill of W.G. Grace, whom some observers still call England's greatest cricketer ever, the offensive star of the test turned out to be Australia's Hugh Massie.

Fred Spofforth

When it was over, Australia had won, 185-178. For the first time, an England side had lost a Test match in England. After the match, a mock obituary was famously inserted in the Sporting Times, which read:

"In Affectionate Remembrance of ENGLISH CRICKET, which died at the Oval on 29 August 1882, Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances R.I.P.

N.B. – The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia."

Ivo Bligh, later the 1st Earl of Darnley, was the Captain of the England team, and promised that, on the tour to Australia in 1882–83, he would regain "those ashes." He spoke of them again several times over the course of the tour, and the Australian media quickly caught on. The three-match series resulted in a two-one win to England, notwithstanding a fourth match, won by the Australians, whose status remains a matter of ardent dispute.

Upon England's victory, Bligh was presented with a small urn, 4.1 inches high, which contained the ashes of a burnt cricket ball. This original urn is on display at the Middlesex Cricket Club Museum at Lord's, the other major cricket venue in London, known as "The Home of Cricket," much as the "real" Stanley Cup is on display at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. A replica urn is presented to the winning Captain.

The 2022 contest was won by Australia, who have now won it 34 times. England have won it 32 times. There have been 6 draws. In the event of a draw, the holders retain the urn.

Sammy Jones was the last survivor of the 1882 Australia cricket team, living until 1951.

*

August 29, 1882 was a Tuesday. The only professional sport in North America at the time was baseball. These games were played in the National League:

* The Boston Red Stockings beat the Chicago White Stockings, 3-1 at the Union Base-Ball Grounds in Chicago. The Red Stockings became the Braves, and the White Stockings became the Cubs.

* The Cleveland Blues beat the Worcester Ruby Legs, 5-4 at Kennard Street Park in Cleveland. The Ruby Legs became the Philadelphia Phillies the next season. The Blues went out of business after 1884.

* The Detroit Wolverines beat the Troy Trojans, 4-3 at Recreation Park in Detroit. The Trojans became the New York Gothams the next season, and eventually the Giants. The Wolverines won the NL Pennant in 1887, but that led to salary demands that management couldn't keep up with, and they went out of business after 1 more season.

And, for reasons lost to history, a game scheduled for this date was postponed until September 1: The Buffalo Bisons beat the Providence Grays, 6-2 at Riverside Park in Buffalo. Despite the Grays having already won a Pennant in 1879, and winning another in 1884, both teams went out of business after the 1885 season.

And these games were played in the American Association:

* The Pittsburgh Alleghenys beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 2-1 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. The Alleghenys would become the Pirates, and join the NL. The Athletics went out of business with the AA in 1891, but an American League team would take their name.

* The Louisville Eclipse beat the Cincinnati Red Stockings, 6-2 at Eclipse Park in Louisville, Kentucky. Both teams would join the National League, with the Red Stockings shortening their name to the Reds. But the Eclipse, who became the Louisville Colonels, were consolidated out of the NL after the 1899 season.

* And the St. Louis Brown Stockings beat the Baltimore Orioles, 3-2 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Both teams would join the NL. The Brown Stockings would become the Browns, and eventually the Cardinals. The Orioles would win NL Pennants in 1894, 1895 and 1896, but go bankrupt in 1899. An AL team would take the St. Louis Browns name, but in 1954 would move, becoming... the Baltimore Orioles.

June 30, 1894: Tower Bridge Opens In London

June 30, 1894: Tower Bridge opens to traffic in London, its access ramp at the northeast corner of the Tower of London. Of course, this means foot, bicycle, horse-drawn wagon and horse-drawn carriage traffic. Not very many automobiles were on the streets of London at this point.

The bridge was constructed to give better access to the East End, which had expanded its commercial potential in the 19th century. The bridge was opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales, later King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra.

It should not be confused with London Bridge, the next bridge up the River Thames, 8/10ths of a mile to the west. Tower Bridge has become an icon, not just of London but of the United Kingdom itself, every bit as much as the Palace of Westminster, 3 miles up the Thames.

It became the logo of Thames Television, the franchise holder of network ITV from 1968 to 1992. In America, we would call it a network affiliate. Actually, Thames only broadcast from Monday morning to late Friday afternoon, at which point LWT, London Weekend Television, took over until the next Monday morning.

*

June 30, 1894 was a Saturday. These National League games were played that day:

* The Brooklyn Bridegrooms lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 10-6 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Cleveland Spiders, 5-3 at League Park in Cleveland.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Washington Senators, 12-0 at League Park in Cincinnati.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Louisville Colonels, 13-6 at Eclipse Park in Louisville, Kentucky.

* The St. Louis Browns beat the Boston Beanaters, 10-9 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.

* And the New York Giants and the Chicago Colts were rained out at West Side Park in Chicago. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on September 18. The Giants swept, 4-3 and 9-6.

The Brooklyn Bridegrooms became the Dodgers, the St. Louis Browns became the Cardinals, the Boston Beaneaters became the Braves, and the Chicago Colts became the Cubs. The Baltimore Orioles, the Cleveland Spiders, the Washington Senators and the Louisville Colonels were all contracted out of the NL after the 1899 seasons. But all except Louisville got teams in the American League in 1901, although that version of the Orioles failed. A new St. Louis Browns started in the AL in 1902, moving to Baltimore to become the current version of the Orioles in 1954.

May 25, 1895: The 1st Entertainer to Be Knighted

May 25, 1895: Queen Victoria of Great Britain, having turned 76 the day before, issues her annual "birthday honors," including knighthoods. Actor Henry Irving becomes the 1st entertainer ever to be knighted by a British monarch.

Sir Henry Irving was born John Henry Brodribb on February 6, 1838 in Keinton Mandeville, Somerset, England. He was raised by his mother and her sister, who were intensely religious, and disapproved of his passion for the theatre. He learned his craft in a succession of provincial theatres, and occasionally in London.

In 1870, he established himself as a West End actor with a leading role in a long-running play at the Vaudeville Theatre. The impresario H.L. Bateman, proprietor of the Lyceum, then recruited him and Irving soon made a sensational impression in The Bells, which propelled him into the front rank of English actors. After Bateman died in 1875, his widow took over the company, which she handed over to Irving in 1878.

With Ellen Terry as his leading lady, over the next 23 years, Irving made the Lyceum the most important theatre in London. He became particularly associated with the plays of William Shakespeare, although most of his productions were of modern works. He engaged leading designers and composers, and became known for the lavishness of his productions, which he presented not only at the Lyceum but on tour in Britain and North America.

Despite mannerisms in speech and sometimes ungainly movement, he was known as an intense, magnetic actor who could hold an audience spellbound. He appeared in roles that displayed nobility and goodness, and others that were malign and evil.

For a time, his business manager was the Irish writer Bram Stoker. Allegedly, Stoker told his friends that Irving sapped his personal energies, and thought of vampire legends; and that he also took inspiration from Irving's portrayals of the moneylender Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, and as Mephistopheles, the Devil character in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's play Faust, to create the character of the Romanian vampire count in his 1897 novel Dracula.

However, Stoker also wrote a biography of Irving, and made no mention of this characterization. And when Stoker adapted Dracula into a stage play, Irving turned the title role down. Maybe it hit a little too close to home.

Overwork and financial difficulties undermined Irving's health, and led to his leaving the Lyceum in 1902, moving to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. On October 13, 1905, he died at his hotel, at the age of 67.

*

May 25, 1895 was a Saturday. On this same day, playwright Oscar Wilde was convicted of "gross indecency." I have a separate entry for this event.

An ocean removed from these proceedings in London, these games were played in baseball's National League:

* The New York Giants beat the Cleveland Spiders, 11-8 at League Park in Cleveland. The most familiar version of League Park was built on the same site in 1910.

* The Brooklyn Bridegrooms beat the Louisville Colonels, 9-7 at Eclipse Park in Louisville. The Dodgers-to-be took the "Bridegrooms" name after several players got married in the 1887-88 off-season.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Beaneaters, 1-0 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. The Beaneaters would go through a few name changes before adopting "Braves" in 1912.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 8-4 at League Park in Cincinnati.

* The Chicago Colts beat the Baltimore Orioles, 7-3 at West Side Park in Chicago. Despite this, the Orioles went on to win the Pennant. In 1903, the Colts took the name by which they have been known ever since: The Chicago Cubs.

* The Washington Senators beat the St. Louis Browns, 5-1 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Both of these teams would later have American League teams named after them. The NL Senators folded after the 1899 season, as did the NL Orioles, the Spiders and the Colonels. The NL Browns became the St. Louis Cardinals in 1900. The most familiar version of Sportsman's Park was built on the same site in 1909.

This was also the birthdate of Dorothea Lange, the photographer famous for her 1936 Migrant Mother photo that became one of the familiar images of the Great Depression.