THIS DAY IN HISTORY 29 January- U.S. Baseball Hall of Fame elects first members

   On January 29, 1936, the U.S. Baseball Hall of Fame elects its first members in Cooperstown, New York: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Matthewson and Walter Johnson.

  The Hall of Fame actually had its beginnings in 1935, when plans were made to build a museum devoted to baseball and its 100-year history. A private organization based in Cooperstown called the Clark Foundation thought that establishing the Baseball Hall of Fame in their city would help to reinvigorate the area’s Depression-ravaged economy by attracting tourists. To help sell the idea, the foundation advanced the idea that U.S. Civil War hero Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown. The story proved to be phony, but baseball officials, eager to capitalize on the marketing and publicity potential of a museum to honor the game’s greats, gave their support to the project anyway.

  In preparation for the dedication of the Hall of Fame in 1939–thought by many to be the centennial of baseball–the Baseball Writers’ Association of America chose the five greatest superstars of the game as the first class to be inducted: Ty Cobb was the most productive hitter in history; Babe Ruth was both an ace pitcher and the greatest home-run hitter to play the game; Honus Wagner was a versatile star shortstop and batting champion; Christy Matthewson had more wins than any pitcher in National League history; and Walter Johnson was considered one of the most powerful pitchers to ever have taken the mound.

  Today, with approximately 350,000 visitors per year, the Hall of Fame continues to be the hub of all things baseball. It has elected 278 individuals, in all, including 225 players, 17 managers, 8 umpires and 28 executives and pioneers.

Also on this day, 1843
William McKinley, first U.S. president to ride in a car, is born

  

   On this day in 1843, William McKinley, who will become the 25th American president and the first to ride in an automobile, is born in Niles, Ohio. McKinley served in the White House from 1897 to 1901, a time when the American automotive industry was in its infancy. During his presidency, McKinley (who died from an assassin’s bullet in September 1901) took a drive in a Stanley Steamer, a steam-engine-powered auto built in the late 1890s by brothers Francis and Freelan Stanley. The Stanley Motor Carriage Company produced a number of steam-powered vehicles before going out of business in the early 1920s, after being unable to compete with the rise of less expensive gas-powered cars.

  Theodore Roosevelt succeeded McKinley as president and during his administration the government owned a Stanley Steamer, although Roosevelt allegedly preferred horses to automobiles. William Taft, the 27th president, replaced the horses in the White House stables with a fleet of cars, including two gas-powered Pierce-Arrows and a White Model M Stanley Steamer. (In 1951, Congress officially eliminated horses and stables from the White House budget.) Warren Harding, the 29th commander-in-chief, was the first to ride to his inauguration in a car, a Packard, in 1921.

  Calvin Coolidge, America’s 30th president, was the first in a long line of chief executives to be chauffeured in a Lincoln limousine (Lincoln has been a luxury division of the Ford Motor Company since the 1920s). President Franklin D. Roosevelt traveled in a 1939 black Lincoln convertible nicknamed the “Sunshine Special”; it featured steel armor plating and was the first presidential vehicle to be constructed to the specifications of the Secret Service. (Roosevelt’s fleet at one time also included an armored Cadillac that the U.S. Treasury Department had seized from gangster Al Capone.) John F. Kennedy, the 35th U.S. president, was assassinated on November 22, 1963, while riding in a navy blue 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible in Dallas, Texas.

  Cadillac, a division of General Motors, has also provided a number of presidential limousines, dating back to Woodrow Wilson, America’s 29th commander-in-chief. On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama rode to his swearing-in ceremony as the nation’s 44th president in a new Cadillac presidential limo referred to in the media as a “rolling tank with windows” and nicknamed “The Beast.” For security reasons, specific details about the vehicle were kept under wraps by the Secret Service. (In 2001, the Secret Service for security reasons instituted a policy of destroying presidential limos once they were taken out of commission.)