On this day in 1959 Elijah Jerry "Pumpsie" Green made his major league debut for the Boston Red Sox, entering as a pinch-runner for Vic Wertz in a 2-1 loss to the White Sox. This is notable because he was the first black player for Boston, which was the last team in MLB to integrate. The BoSox had given some guy named Jackie Robinson a tryout back in 1945, but did not sign him, and also passed on a chance to sign another no-name called Willie Mays in 1949. But they wisely held out for the superior talent of "Pumpsie", a lifetime .246 hitter.
Ernest Hemingway was born today in 1899, and became the world's best monosyllabic author. And in 1973 an obscure record with an Afro-Latin beat from an even more obscure Cameroonian artist Manu Dibango hit the Top 40, and began the conflagration of a disco inferno which soon consumed the music industry . . . and still burns people up to this day. You don't remember it? Consider yourself lucky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWK_Josc0Og