This Day In History: 04/15/1947 - Jackie Robinson Plays Ball - HISTORY

On this day in history in 1947, Jackie Robinson, age 28, becomes the first African-American player in Major League Baseball when he steps onto Ebbets Field in Brooklyn to compete for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

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Many historical events occurred on April 4th, and Russ Mitchell recaps them in this video clip from This Day In History. President William Henry Harrison became the first US President to die while in office when his cold turned into pneumonia. Congress passed and authorized what would become known as the American flag, with 13 strips, and then 20 stars with a blue background. Each state that would be added would add another star to the flag. Also, the first Mexican American, Henry Cisneros, became mayor of a major city, which was Texas. On Martin Luther King Jr.'s Memphis hotel balcony, James Earl Ray assassinated King.

The first African-American to play major league baseball, Jackie Robinson describes his experience in the first few games of the 1947 season, when he was subjected to vicious epithets from other teams and spectators.

It didn't begin as a grand vision to stage a generation-defining cultural event. It began as a minor item in a business plan to build a professional recording studio in the vicinity of Woodstock, New York. "Press Party," was what the entry near the bottom of the project outline read, and it was just enough to catch the eye of Joel Rosenman, who, along with his business partner John Roberts, was being pitched as a potential investor in the recording studio venture by two aspiring music-biz entrepreneurs named Mike Lang and Artie Kornfeld. Just as Roberts was preparing to say "No, thanks" to the proposal, his partner, Rosenman, posed a fateful question to Kornfeld: "Artie, what's this entry here about a press party?" The discussion that followed would eventually lead the four young men present to become partners in planning, promoting and staging the historic Woodstock Music and Art Fair, which opened its three-day run on this day in 1969.

The USS Maine explosion started the Spanish American War, Galileo was born, the teddy bear was introduced and inspired by Teddy Roosevelt, and the Canadian flag changed in This Day in History video. The date is February 15th. The USS Maine was blown up in Cuba's Havana harbor.

The first Super Bowl was held with Vince Lombardi on the sidelines, the Pentagon opened, Sara Jane Moore shot Gerald Ford in a presidential assassination attempt in This Day in History video. The date was January 15. Thomas Nash used the donkey to represent the Democratic party for the first time on this date.

Mata Hari, the archetype of the seductive female spy, is executed for espionage by a French firing squad at Vincennes outside of Paris. She first came to Paris in 1905 and found fame as a performer of exotic Asian-inspired dances. She soon began touring all over Europe, telling the story of how she was born in a sacred Indian temple and taught ancient dances by a priestess who gave her the name Mata Hari, meaning "eye of the day" in Malay. In reality, Mata Hari was born in a small town in northern Holland in 1876, and her real name was Margaretha Geertruida Zelle. She acquired her superficial knowledge of Indian and Javanese dances when she lived for several years in Malaysia with her former husband, who was a Scot in the Dutch colonial army. Regardless of her authenticity, she packed dance halls and opera houses from Russia to France, mostly because her show consisted of her slowly stripping nude. She became a famous courtesan, and with the outbreak of World War I her catalog of lovers began to include high-ranking military officers of various nationalities. In February 1917, French authorities arrested her for espionage and imprisoned her at St. Lazare Prison in Paris. In a military trial conducted in July, she was accused of revealing details of the Allies' new weapon, the tank, resulting in the deaths of thousands of soldiers. She was convicted and sentenced to death, and on October 15 she refused a blindfold and was shot to death by a firing squad at Vincennes.