Today in History: April 20

Dr. Simon Forman was a doctor and astrologer in Shakespeare’s time who would be forgotten except he kept a diary about his day-to-day life in 1610 and 1611-era London. In it, he recounts seeing several of Shakespeare’s plays live in production at the Globe Theater. He describes seeing “Macbeth” on April 20, 1610 (or 1611; opinions differ), in what was one of the first-ever productions of “the Scottish play.”

He only devotes a couple paragraphs to describing the play (excerpted above), and he crams several acts into this (below the fold):
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Today in History: April 19

Tim Curry is 70 today.

The actor has offered several performances in his career that could be described as “career-defining”; so many defining performances that he really does not have one for which he is most fondly remembered, except of course, THIS one:
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Today in History: April 18

The longest professional baseball game in history started 35 years ago today. The Pawtucket Red Sox (box score above) and the Rochester Red Wings, two Triple-A teams, played 32 innings to a 2-2 tie between 8:25 p.m. and 4:07 a.m. the next morning, April 19. Several players recorded more than a dozen at bats each in the game. (Wade Boggs went four for 12 for Pawtucket and Cal Ripken, Jr. went two for 13.)

Most cities and, thus, most professional sports leagues have mandatory curfews that dictate a game should be suspended at a certain time if it is tied. This is for many reasons, all of them having to do with common sense: courtesy to the neighbors of the ballpark if the park is located in a residential neighborhood, for one thing, and also so that those in attendance who need mass transportation services to get home can catch the last trains home. The rule book in home plate umpire Dennis Cregg’s possession did not happen to have the league’s curfew rule included in it. So when 12:50 a.m. ticked by, which was the league’s mandatory, common sense, curfew hour, the two teams continued playing.
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