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Who Was Ty Cobb? The History We Know That’s Wrong - Imprimis (hillsdale.edu)

But what about Cobb’s 19th-century Southern roots? How could someone born in Georgia in 1886 not be a racist? What I found—and again, not because I am the Babe Ruth of researchers, but because I actually did some research—is that Ty Cobb was descended from a long line of abolitionists. His great-grandfather was a minister who preached against slavery and was run out of town for it. His grandfather refused to fight in the Confederate army because of the slavery issue. And his father was an educator and state senator who spoke up for his black constituents and is known to have once broken up a lynch mob.

Cobb himself was never asked about segregation until 1952, when the Texas League was integrating, and Sporting News asked him what he thought. “The Negro should be accepted wholeheartedly, and not grudgingly,” he said. “The Negro has the right to play professional baseball and whose [sic] to say he has not?” By that time he had attended many Negro league games, sometimes throwing out the first ball and often sitting in the dugout with the players. He is quoted as saying that Willie Mays was the only modern-day player he’d pay to see and that Roy Campanella was the ballplayer that reminded him most of himself.
Cobb was, like the rest of us, a highly imperfect human being. He was too quick to take offense and too intolerant of those who didn’t strive for excellence with the over-the-top zeal that he did. He did not suffer fools gladly, and he thought too many others fools. He was the first baseball celebrity, and he did not always handle well the responsibilities that came with that. And yes, he once went into the stands and repeatedly punched a man who had been heckling him for more than a year, and who turned out to have less than the full complement of fingers—hence the story of him attacking a handicapped fan. This is a mark against him. But was he a racist and an embarrassment to the game? Far from it.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: 

Charles the Good Is Assassinated (1127)
As count of Flanders from 1119 until his death, Charles the Good strove to help the poor, distributing bread in times of famine and working to ensure that grain was sold to them at a fair price. Angered by this policy, one influential family had Charles hacked to death while in church. The popular count's brutal murder provoked public outrage, and though he was not formally beatified until the 19th century, he was almost immediately regarded popularly as a martyr.

Steve Balboni to reporter after hitting a grand slam: “Hitting your first grand slam is a thrill. I’ll always remember this.”
Balboni: “Oh yeah. I guess I forgot about that one.”

Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engines are prepared for shipment at the Ford Aircraft Engine Plant in Dearborn, Michigan - 1942
The Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp was a twin-row, 18-cylinder, air-cooled radial aircraft engine with a displacement of 2,800 cubic inches.
Designed in 1937, 125,334 total variants of the R-2800 were manufactured between 1939 - 1960.
Aircraft that used the R-2800 included;
Douglas A-26 Invader
Douglas DC-6
Fairchild C-82 Packet
Fairchild C-123 Provider
Grumman F6F Hellcat
Grumman F7F Tigercat
Grumman F8F Bearcat
Martin B-26 Marauder
Martin PBM-5 Mariner
Northrop P-61 Black Widow
Republic P-47 Thunderbolt
Vought F4U Corsair
And many more…
LIFE Magazine Archives - Gordon Coster Photographer

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: 

Chicago Is Incorporated as a City (1837)
In 1803, the US Army built Fort Dearborn on a tract of land along the Chicago River that had been acquired from the Native Americans after the Northwest Indian War. Over time, the settlement that grew up around the fort was incorporated as a city. A major port and the commercial, financial, industrial, and cultural center of the Midwest, Chicago is now the third-largest city in the US. Its name is derived from the Native American word shikaakwa, meaning "onion field,"