Charles Apple

Take a moment this Memorial Day weekend to do some stargazing.

On this Friday, 70 years ago, the man who would become one of the greatest Major League Baseball players of all time, Willie Mays, hit his first home run. What’s more: The 20-year-old slugger for the New York Giants hit that dinger off the all-time left-handed wins leader, Warren Spahn.

One hundred years ago Monday, arguably the worst racial conflict in U.S. history broke out in Tulsa, Oklahoma – in a section of town called the Greenwood District, where Black folks lived and prospered. Booker T. Washington himself coined a nickname for the area: Black Wall Street. For decades, what happened in Greenwood was referred to as a race riot, but no longer – what happened that day was no riot. It was an attack on the Black community by an armed and organized white mob.

Over the next few weeks, residents on the East Coast will find themselves tree trunk deep in thousands of loudly chirping cicadas. This is the red-letter year for “Brood X” – that’s the Roman numeral 10, not the letter “X” – which is the largest of the groups of cicadas that emerge once every 17 years. And just how do the cicadas know its been 17 years? Experts don’t know, exactly. The cicadas know. But they’re not talking ...

Sixty years ago today, President John F. Kennedy informed a joint session of Congress of his intention to put an American on the moon before the end of the decade. It seemed like an impossibly brash goal, given how the Soviet Union had beaten the U.S. at putting a satellite and then a man into orbit. But sometimes, it pays to dream big. Here’s how NASA followed through on Kennedy’s promise.

One hundred and twenty-five years ago Wednesday, Wall Street Journal founder and editor Charles Dow and his associate, journalist and statistician Edward Jones, launched a new way of measuring the ups and downs of the stock market. Their Dow Jones Industrial Average index would give investors – as well as newspaper readers around the country – insight into the behavior of Wall Street.

On this date 10 years ago, the first single off Adele’s second album, “21,” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. It would be the first of three consecutive No. 1 singles for the English singer-songwriter.

On this date 130 years ago, the movie industry was born when inventor Thomas Edison demonstrated his Kinetoscope – a device in which you’d drop a dime in order to watch a brief film clip. There was no hot buttered popcorn just yet. There were no trailers or post-credit scenes. And the “movie” was only 3 seconds long. But Edison’s work – and that of other inventors in the U.S. and Europe – would pave the way for James Bond, Pixar, Marvel Avengers and Disney Princesses.

History tells us that Henry VIII – the second King of England of the House of Tudor – was skilled in the art of war and at jousting. He made big plans, spent freely and made huge changes in the way his country was ruled. Henry’s tall, athletic looks also made him popular with the ladies. This is despite the fact that he was known to have multiple mistresses and considered wives to be disposable.

The story was a simple one: In a land of real-life fairy tales, a grumpy ogre and a loquacious donkey team up to rescue a princess who’s scheduled to marry the local nobleman. The best part, though, was that Fiona wasn’t the only one rescued.

Americans have a love-hate relationship with immigration. We love to talk about when our families moved here and we love the cheap labor provided by immigrants. But we are often suspicious of immigrants, especially during times of war, recession or political upheaval. The Emergency Quota Act – which took effect 100 years ago Wednesday – and the Immigration Act of 1924 – which became law 97 years ago this month – are examples of the winds of change in American immigration policy.

What does it take to portray a strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men? Like all fictional characters, Superman has had to change with the times.

At the 93rd annual Academy Awards ceremony last month, Frances McDormand earned her third Oscar for Best Actress. That puts her one behind the all-time champion for winning that category, Katharine Hepburn.

Forty years ago today, Bob Marley died of a rare form of melanoma. He was 36 years old. July 3 will be the 50th anniversary of the death of Jim Morrison (age 27), and July 16 will be the 30th anniversary of the death of Harry Chapin (age 38).

"The clock has started." Those were the words Alan Shepard used 60 years ago Wednesday to note his cockpit timepiece had begun running. This meant his Redstone rocket booster had left the ground sending him and his one-man Mercury spacecraft for America’s first trip into space.

While we, as a people, are divided by things like politics, vocation, money, personal preferences, favorite sports teams and so on, there’s one thing that binds most of us together: Our love for our pets. About 67% of U.S. households own pets, the American Pet Products Association says – that translates into 84.9 million homes.

Sixty years ago this week, a group of Black and white activists boarded buses for a journey in and around the Deep South. The intent of the group, which called itself “Freedom Riders”: To protest segregated bus terminals and “whites-only” facilities at bus terminals – facilities that were supposed to be integrated after a 1960 Supreme Court ruling.

Saturday’s Kentucky Derby is just the first of three huge horse racing events in the U.S. that make up the Triple Crown. In 102 years, only 13 horses have won that Triple Crown.

Any sports fan who grew up in the 1970s or 1980s could watch baseball or football on TV multiple times a week. But it was on Saturday afternoons that we were exposed to some of the lesser-known sports like boxing or bowling or track and field or auto racing or ski jumping. This was thanks to an anthology program that debuted 60 years ago today: ABC’s “Wide World of Sports”

These days, the medical world has a number of ways to treat a heart that’s not functioning properly. But the path to developing those methods has been one that’s taken at least 130 years. Here’s a look at the development of heart surgery and healthy hearts.

Thirty-five years ago Monday, April 26, a reactor at a Soviet nuclear power station 60 miles from Kiev exploded. Much of the radioactive core was vaporized, thrown into the atmosphere and spread across Europe. Nearly a quarter-million people were forced to resettle elsewhere from land that will be poisoned for centuries.

Computers have been around since the end of World War II. In order to use most of them, you had to learn fancy computer languages or use stacks of cards with holes punched into them or reel after reel of coded magnetic tape. All that changed 40 years ago, when an obscure experimental gadget was turned into the ultimate computer accessory that just about anybody could use.

Here’s your ‘Do you feel old yet?’ moment: The Cartoon Network series “Dexter’s Laboratory” – featuring an 8-year-old mad genius with a strange accent running all sorts of high-tech experiments in his secret lab tucked away behind his bedroom – turns a quarter-century old Wednesday.

It’ll be two months after its usual time of year – thanks again, coronavirus – but the 93rd annual Academy Awards will be awarded Sunday. Here’s a look at some of the most notable numbers and oddities in the long history of Oscar: