Milestones: April 15, 2024

April 15, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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MLB DEBUT IN BROOKLYN — JACKIE ROBINSON ON APRIL 15, 1947, BECAME THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN PLAYER IN MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL, and Brooklyn got the spotlight. Robinson walked out onto Ebbets Field in Flatbush, breaking the color barrier in place for more than half a century. He served in the army and then played for a season in the Negro American League. He also played in the Canadian minor league team the Montreal Royals when he was called up to the Majors in 1947. After joining the Brooklyn Dodgers, Robinson soon became the team’s star infielder and outfielder for the Dodgers, as well as the National League’s Rookie of the Year. During his career, Robinson led the Dodgers to win six National League pennants and the 1955 World Series.

However, Robinson still faced hurdles related to his skin color. For example, when traveling for away games, he could not dine publicly or even stay at the same hotel as his teammates because of their Jim Crow segregation laws.

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ROBINSON’S #42 RETIRED — FIFTY YEARS LATER ON THE GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY OF LEGENDARY PLAYER JACKIE ROBINSON’S first Major League Baseball game, the league retires Jackie Robinson’s number, 42. Robinson, whose breaking of the “color barrier” in 1947 was a landmark in the history of racial integration in the United States. Robinson, who 25 years earlier died at age 53, became the only player in MLB history to have his number retired across all teams, an expression of the reverence and love toward him. During the ceremony, then-MLB Commissioner Bud Selig declared, “Number 42 belongs to Jackie Robinson for the ages.”

Exceptions were made for players who already had been wearing number 42 before it was retired in honor of Robinson. The very last player to wear a #42 jersey was Mariano Rivera, closer for the NY Yankees and Hall of Famer, who played the last game of his career in 2013.

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TITANIC SINKS — THE BRITISH OCEAN LINER TITANIC SINKS INTO THE NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN ON APRIL 15, 1912, during its maiden voyage. The ship, carrying more than two thousand passengers and crew, sank about 400 miles from Canada’s Newfoundland province about 2 ½ hours before sinking. The ship had departed Southampton, England five days earlier for its maiden voyage. Irish shipbuilder William Pirrie designed and built the vessel, deemed to be the world’s fastest.

The iceberg crash and sinking prompted a conference the following year: the first International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea, at which rules were adopted that mandated ships provide lifeboat space for every person on board. It also required lifeboat drills to be conducted. The new safeguards included the establishment of an International Ice Patrol and 24-hour radio watches for ships.

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‘INAUSPICIOUS VISIT’ — NEWLY-EMPOWERED CUBAN LEADER FIDEL CASTRO ON APRIL 15, 1959, VISITED THE UNITED STATES FOR THE FIRST TIME, and the trip did not bode well for relations between the two countries. Cuba had begun a new regime on New Year’s Day that year when Castro’s forces overthrew the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Curious about this revolutionary and his ideas, the American Society of Newspaper Editors invited him to a meeting. However, disliking both the questions and the tone, he walked out abruptly. Meanwhile, then-President Eisenhower, a highly decorated military general before entering politics, ordered the CIA to train a group of Cuban exiles to launch an attack on their homeland. That attack, which proved disastrous, would be executed in 1962, under the Kennedy administration.

The Cold War animosity worsened between America and Cuba and lasted for half a century.

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BOMBING AT BOSTON MARATHON — THREE SPECTATORS WERE KILLED AND HUNDREDS WOUNDED WHEN PRESSURE-COOKER BOMBS EXPLODED during the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. More than 5,700 runners were still in the race when the bombing happened near the finish line at Boylston Street, causing the deaths of a 23-year-old woman, a 29-year-old woman, and an 8-year-old boy, and the limb amputations of more than a dozen people. The perpetrators, two brothers surnamed Tsarnaev from one of the former Soviet republics, and with extremist views, learned to make bombs from the Internet.

A four-day chase ensued during which one of the brothers was killed during a shootout with police. The other was found in a boat stored in a shed in nearby Watertown when the owner ventured in. Until the second brother was apprehended, all of Watertown was on lockdown.

See previous milestones, here.