Chicago Cubs history unpacked, May 6

Cubs Birthdays: Bill Hands*, Tom Baker, Leo Burke. Also notable: Willie Mays HOF.

Today in history:

• 1626 – Dutch colonist Peter Minuit organizes the purchase of Manhattan Island from Native Americans for 60 guilders worth of goods, believed to be the Canarsee Indians of the Lenape
• 1733 – First international boxing match: Local fighter Bob Whittaker beats “The Venetian Gondolier”, Tito di Carni at James Figg’s academy amphitheatre in Marylebone, London
• 1837 – US blacksmith John Deere creates the first steel plough in Grand Detour, Illinois
• 1851 –  Linus Yale Jr. patents the Yale cylinder lock
• 1889 – Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) in Paris opens with the recently completed Eiffel Tower serving as the entrance arch; the lifts in the tower are not ready, so intrepid visitors have to climb 1,710 steps to reach the top
• 1937 – German airship Hindenburg explodes in flames at Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 35 of the 97 on board and one on the ground
• 1954 – English athlete Roger Bannister becomes the first to run a sub-4-minute mile, recording 3:59.4 at Iffley Road Track in Oxford
• 1960 – US President Eisenhower signs Civil Rights Act of 1960
• 1994 – Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait sets fire to the guest chair on NBC’s “The Tonight Show”
• 1994 – Nelson Mandela and the ANC, finally confirmed winners in South Africa’s first post apartheid election

*pictured.