TRIVIAL TIDBIT
Baseball
season wrapped up just last week, with the Chicago White Sox
clinching their first World Series title in 88 years—a
longer curse than that suffered by the Red Sox (who, before
last fall, hadn’t clinched a title since 1918). It wasn’t
a very exciting series, but it got me thinking: why do we
call the baseball championship the World Series
if it only involves teams from North America?
A quick search yielded a common myth and a repudiation. The
myth is that the Series was named after the New
York World newspaper, which allegedly sponsored
the series at its birth. The truth is that the Series is so
named because the winner is considered the world’s champion.
“World Series” is therefore a shortened form of
“world’s championship series.”
I can only speculate on why this Americentric appellation
made sense in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but
it might have had to do with baseball’s limited popularity
outside of the U.S. at the time.
QUICK FACTS
—The first World Series in 1903 was won by the Boston
Red Sox, who bested the Pittsburg Pirates 5 games to 3.
—Of the 101 World Series played so far, 19 have been
sweeps (won 4 games to 0) and 35 have gone to a game 7.
—The Yankees have the most World Series titles at 26.
Source: snopes.com |
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OCTOBER 31, 1517: Martin Luther nails his
95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church in Wittenberg,
Germany. The theses, whose formal title is The
Disputation of Doctor Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy
of Indulgences, challenged the views of the
Catholic Church on the authority of the pope and on the nature
of penance and indulgences.
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To
understand an indulgence, one must first understand how the
church treated sins. In Luther’s day, when a man committed
a mortal or venial sin, he did penance and asked forgiveness
for his wrongs, typically by confessing to a priest. While
the sin was forgiven, it was not completely “erased,”
since a punishment (called a temporal
punishment) was still due to God. To erase this sin, one had
two options: die and go to purgatory—where the soul
would be purged of the temporal punishment—or get an
indulgence from the church. An indulgence was typically granted
to an individual who did certain acts, such as praying; however,
certain unscrupulous men of the cloth decided to sell them
to finance their grand schemes. Among these men was Johann
Tetzel, a Dominican priest who sold indulgences to finance
the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
Luther’s theses provided the spark that ignited the
Protestant Reformation, which resulted in the creation of
Lutheran and Anabaptist “subdivisions” within
the Catholic church.
Source: Wikipedia
An indulgence granted by Johann Tetzel in 1517.
It reads: “By the authority of all the saints, and in
mercy
towards you, I absolve you from all sins and misdeeds
and remit all punishments for ten days.”
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