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THIS DAY IN HISTORY: 

"BTK" Serial Killer Dennis Rader Pleads Guilty to 10 Murders (2005)
Rader was a city employee, married father of two, Boy Scout leader, and an active churchgoer—and a serial killer. From 1974 to 1991, he killed 10 people in and around Wichita, Kansas. In 2004, after years of silence, he resumed taunting police and local media with letters describing the murders. In February 2005, police used information on a floppy disk he had sent them to locate and arrest him. He pled guilty that June. Five days after his arrest, he was fired from his job

TODAY'S BIRTHDAY:

Abner Doubleday (1819)
Doubleday was a US Army officer who distinguished himself in the American Civil War. He fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter and saw action at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg. He also served in the Mexican and Seminole Wars. He retired from the army in 1873 and wrote many articles, including two accounts of his war experiences, drawing on his 67 volumes of diaries. For years, accounts persisted that he invented the game of baseball in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839.

From what I've read the impact of the Civil War on Baseball was to standardize it.  Apparently, prior to the Civil War there were various "baseball like" games being played all over the place and it was the congregation of large numbers of young men in the military that caused that to become standardized.  

More to the topic of this board, I *THINK* that the Civil War also had a similar impact on what became Football.  I knot that our word "soccer" comes from "Association Football".  In general terms:  Football, Rugby, and Soccer all developed in parallel and a lot of the differences were simply regional differences.  Eventually they coalesced into the three distinct sports and the "baseball like" games coalesced into baseball and cricket.  

1778 Liberty Bell returns home to Philadelphia after the British departure

1806 Buenos Aires captured by British

1847 New York and Boston are linked by telegraph wires

1867 Bank of California opens doors

1890 Canadian boxer George Dixon becomes the first Black world champion when he stops English bantamweight champion Edwin "Nunc" Wallace in 18 rounds in London

1893 Great stock crash on NY stock exchange

1894 American Annie Londonderry [Annie Kopchovsky] sets out from Boston to become first woman to bicycle around the world (completes journey September 1895)

1914 Defending champion Jack Johnson beats fellow American Frank Moran on points in 20 rounds in Paris, France to retain his lineal heavyweight boxing title

1923 Capt. Lowell H. Smith and Lt. John P. Richter perform the first-ever aerial refueling in a DH-4B biplane

1929 First color television demonstration is performed by Bell Laboratories in NYC

1942 FBI captures 8 Nazi saboteurs from a sub off NY's Long Island

1944 Cherbourg was liberated by Allied forces, primarily American troops, during the Battle of Cherbourg from June 6 to June 30, 1944.

1950 North Korean troops reach Seoul, causing the UN to ask member states to aid South Korea. Harry Truman orders the US Air Force and Navy into the Korean conflict.

1954 First nuclear power station opens in Obninsk near Moscow, Russia

1956 MLB Cleveland Indians trailing Baltimore Orioles 9-1, come back to win 12-11 in 11 innings

1971 Bill Graham's New York rock venue Fillmore East closes down, to be succeeded by Fillmore West in San Francisco

1973 "Live & Let Die", 8th James Bond Film, 1st to star Roger Moore, also starring Jane Seymour, 1st released in the US

2021 Hottest temperature ever recorded in Canada at 46.6 C (116 F) in Lytton, British Columbia (breaks record 2 days later with 49.6 C)

2024 First debate between presumptive US presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump, hosted by CNN, raises fears about Biden as he appears to stumble with his words

FACT OF THE DAY:

The U.S. Secret Service was originally created on July 5, 1865, during the Civil War to fight counterfeiting, which was a huge problem. By the end of the war, between 1/3 and 1/2 of all U.S. paper currency in circulation was counterfeit.

On This Day

1762 First reported counterfeiting attempt in Boston

1776 Charleston, South Carolina repulses British sea attack

1776 Final draft of Declaration of Independence submitted to Continental Congress

1778 Battle of Monmouth, New Jersey (General Washington beats Clinton)

1778 Mary Ludwig Hayes "Molly Pitcher" aids American patriots

1846 The saxophone is patented by Antoine-Joseph "Adolphe" Sax

1865 The Army of the Potomac is disbanded

1892 Phillies tie club record of 16 straight victories

1894 Labor Day established as a holiday for US federal employees

1895 Painter Paul Gauguin leaves France for Tahiti for the second time and never returns

1904 SS Norge runs aground and sinks off Rockall in the North Atlantic; more than 635 die, the largest maritime loss of life until the Titanic

1907 MLB Washington Senators steal a record 13 bases off of New York Highlanders catcher Branch Rickey

1910 First airship with passengers, the Zeppelin LZ7 Deutschland, makes its maiden voyage and gets stuck in trees on Mount Limberg, Lower Saxony, injuring one crew member

1914 Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and his wife Sophie are assassinated by Bosnian-Serb assassin Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, setting off a chain of alliances and events that lead to World War I

1919 Treaty of Versailles is signed in France, ending World War I and establishing the League of Nations

1924 Tornado strikes Sandusky and Lorain, Ohio, killing 93

1926 Mercedes-Benz forms when the world's oldest automobile manufacturers DMG and Benz & Cie merge

1935 Earl Averill's consecutive-game streak ends at 673

1935 FDR orders a federal gold vault to be built at Fort Knox, Kentucky

1939 Yanks hit 13 HRs, sweep A's 23-2 & 10-0

1945 Polish Provisional government of National Unity set up by Soviets

1946 Enrico de Nicola becomes 1st President of Italy

1950 North Korean forces capture Seoul, South Korea in opening phase of the Korean War

1956 The first atomic reactor built for private research operates in Chicago, Illinois

1957 Reds' fans stuff ballot box, electing 8 Reds as All Star starters

1957 MLB Commissioner Ford Frick overrules fan voting, due to ballot stuffing in Cincinnati, and names Stan Musial, Willie Mays, & Hank Aaron to the All-Star team

1959 Meldrim trestle disaster; freight train derails over Ogeechee River in Georgia causing IPG tanks to explode killing 23

1959 Philadelphia Phillies' Wally Post is only outfielder to throw out 2 runners in an inning twice, in a 6-0 loss to Giants at Seals Stadium, San Francisco, California

1965 1st US ground combat forces in Vietnam authorized by President Lyndon B. Johnson

1971 US Supreme Court (8-0) overturns draft evasion conviction of Muhammad Ali

1974 Paul McCartney & Wings release singles "Band on the Run" and "Zoo Gang" in UK

1977 Billy Hunter becomes Rangers' 4th manager in 6 days

1987 Boston outfielder Don Baylor sets MLB career hit-by-pitch mark at 244 when plunked by Rick Rhoden in Red Sox, 6-2 win over NY Yankees

1992 Two earthquakes, including the third strongest in the US (7.4), rock California

1997 American TV evangelist Robert Schuller (70) attacks a male flight attendant (33), after disputes regarding during a luggage stowage, and cheese

2009 Professor Stephen Hawking hosts a 'party for time travelers at the University of Cambridge, not sending out the invites until after the party

2018 Power company uncovers Neolithic wooden trackway 2,300 years old in Suffolk, England. One of the largest archaeological digs in Europe at 16,000 square meters

2019 3,400 year old Bronze Age palace from the Mittani Empire uncovered on the banks of the Tigris River, due to lack of rainfall dropping the water level in the Mosul Dam reservoir

2020 Global death toll from COVID-19 passes 500,000, doubling in less than two months (Johns Hopkins)

2021 Mexico's Supreme Court decriminalizes marijuana use by adults

2023 New York Yankees' pitcher Domingo Germán (30) throws a perfect game in 11-0 win over Oakland A’s at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum; it is his first complete game in 7-year MLB career