Baseball Legend Cy Seymour’s Final Resting Place
In 1905, Professional baseball player James Bentley “Cy” Seymour (1878-1919), led the National League, and all of professional baseball, in batting with a .377 average, hits with 219 and runs-batted-in...
View ArticleBuffalo Museum Celebrating 60 Years of Bills Football
Six decades of Buffalo Bills football stories are set to be told through exhibitions, events, and programming at The Buffalo History Museum in October. The month features new artifacts in the Icons...
View ArticleVirgin Blacktop: A Rockland Skateboard History Doc Showing
Charlie Samuels’ first feature documentary film Virgin Blacktop: A New York Skate Odyssey is set to screen at the Adirondack Film Festival in Glens Falls, on Saturday, October 19th at 3 pm. Virgin...
View ArticleBallston Spa’s Abner Doubleday and Baseball
This week’s guest on The Historians Podcast is Ballston Spa author and historian David Fiske who questions the persistent claim that Ballston Spa native and Civil War general Abner Doubleday invented...
View ArticleBuffalo Sports History Chronicled in New Book
Author Greg Tranter’s new book Makers, Moments & Memorabilia: A Chronicle of Buffalo Professional Sports (Buffalo History Museum and Western New York Heritage, 2019) explores the origins of Buffalo...
View ArticleOneida County Hockey History in Utica
Winner of the Kraft Hockeyville USA contest in 2018, the spirit and passion for hockey is strong in the village of Clinton, Oneida County, N.Y. This enthusiasm is rooted in the community’s rich hockey...
View ArticleBout of the Century: Heenan and Sayers
Britain and the US share a passion for boxing. Over time, it has been both mass entertainment and highbrow delight for writers from Byron to Norman Mailer, or artists from Cruikshanks to Bellows. In...
View Article40 Years After An Olympic Miracle
This episode of A New York Minute in History recalls the “Miracle on Ice,” when the U.S. Men’s Hockey team upset the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. Co-hosts Devin Lander and...
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‘Prince Hal’ Schumacher: A North Country Baseball Legend
A celebrity sports delegation attended the Saint Lawrence University commencement on June 12, 1933. “It was the first occasion that a major league ball team had ever came here to see one of their...
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Life After Baseball (Podcast)
This week on The Historians Podcast, Brad Balukjian tracks down ballplayers from a single pack of baseball cards from 1986 for his book The Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife...
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French Pugilist Georges Carpentier’s Visit To NY
French pugilist Georges Carpentier was traveling with the Seils-Floto Circus from Albany to Montreal in May 1920 when the train stopped briefly at Plattsburgh. (In an interesting side note, Carpentier...
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Baseball on the Erie Canal Virtual Talk
Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site has announced a virtual presentation by Derrick Pratt of the Erie Canal Museum, who will discuss the Erie Canal’s many connections to the earliest days of...
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Mohawk Valley Baseball History Virtual Talk
The Oneida County History Center will host a virtual talk by Lou Parrotta, the City of Utica Historian, on the history of baseball in the Mohawk Valley, and the local players who made it to the Major...
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Baseball’s Satchel Paige on Long Island
By 1950, Satchel Paige was a star of the Negro Leagues and a World Series winner with the Cleveland Indians. He spent most of that year barnstorming across the United States which is what brought him...
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Historians Podcast 2020 Highlights
This week on The Historians Podcast, highlights from 2020 episodes – Caryl Hopson on her book Murder and Mayhem in Herkimer County, Peter Ward discusses the history of personal cleanliness, Kathryn...
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Newyorkitis, Bodybuilding, Gymnastics & The Origins of Pilates
In the late nineteenth century, commentators on the medico-psychological effects of rapid urban expansion identified two developments of concern.One was an epidemic of nerves (neurasthenia) among the...
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Slang, Stirrups, Paris in the 20s, and the Invention of the Bloody Mary
Although much remains unclear about the origins of Cockney rhyming slang, there is a consensus that it stems from London’s East End, dates back to the 1840s, and is alive and thriving. One slang...
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Circus Artists and the Flying Trapeze Metaphor
Equestrian artist Philip Astley was a pioneering entertainment entrepreneur. His demonstrations of trick horse-riding at London’s Royal Amphitheatre in 1768 constitute the origins of modern circus....
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John Morrissey: Toward Setting The Record Straight
John Morrissey was born in Ireland on this day, February 12th, in 1831. As a result of bigoted attacks by his political enemies being carried forward by later writers like Herbert Asbury in Gangs of...
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Museums, Grave Robbing & The Dissection of Boxing ‘Giant’ Charles Freeman
Grave robbing has a long history in religion and science. As monasteries and churches were repositories of relics, religious institutions competed to take possession of bones, teeth, or skulls. Members...
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