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This Day In History

1999 Michael Jordan retires for a second time

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On January 13, 1999, the National Basketball Association (NBA) superstar Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls announces his retirement from professional basketball, for the second time, in front of a crowd at Chicago’s United Center.

Jordan had an outstanding college career, but left the University of North Carolina after his junior year when he was selected by the Chicago Bulls as the third-overall pick in the first round of the 1984 NBA draft. Jordan helped the Bulls make the playoffs in each of his first six seasons on the team. In 1991, he got to his first NBA finals, where he led his team to the first of three consecutive championships.

Shaken and disillusioned by the murder of his father and an NBA investigation into allegations of illegal betting (of which he was eventually cleared), Jordan announced his retirement from basketball in 1993. He signed a minor league contract with the Chicago White Sox baseball team and was assigned to a White Sox affiliate team, the Birmingham Barons. Though his very presence on the field drew crowds, Jordan batted only .202 in his first summer, striking out 114 times in 127 games. By March 1995, he had decided to put down his bat and return to the basketball court.

After a disappointing finish in the 1994-95 season, Jordan (aided by his old allies Scottie Pippen and Coach Phil Jackson, as well as the new star Dennis Rodman), turned things around for the Bulls. Jordan led the league in scoring that year with 30.4 points per game and helped his team to a 72-10 record, the best regular season finish in the history of the NBA. The Bulls won three more consecutive NBA championships in 1996, 1997 and 1998, becoming the first team in league history to win three straight championships twice. In his 12 full seasons with the Bulls, Jordan was voted the NBA’s Most Valuable Player five times and won six NBA Finals MVP awards, one for each final his Bulls played.

Jordan’s second retirement announcement, in January 1999, came after bitter tension between General Manager Jerry Krause and Coach Jackson resulted in Jackson’s leaving Chicago. Though he had earlier stated publicly that he would not play for any coach besides Jackson, Jordan explained his decision to retire by saying he had lost the drive and desire that was necessary to continue playing at such a high level, and that he wanted to spend more time with his family. When asked if there was a chance he would come back, Jordan said he was “99.9 percent” sure he would not.

In January 2000, Jordan became part-owner and president of basketball operations of the Washington Wizards, a struggling NBA franchise. After the Wizards won only 19 games in Jordan’s first full season in this position, he decided to rebuild the team, hiring the former Bulls coach Doug Collins. Most surprisingly, the 38-year-old Jordan got himself into playing shape and came out of retirement yet again in September 2001 as a free agent with the Wizards. Though he scored his 30,000th career point on January 4, 2002, against his former team, the Bulls, Jordan was never able to lead the Wizards into playoff competition. He retired for the third and final time on April 16, 2003, and is widely considered to have been the greatest player in the history of the sport.

Source: www.history.com

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This Day In History

Truman announces development of H-bomb

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U.S. President Harry S. Truman publicly announces his decision to support the development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II.

Five months earlier, the United States had lost its nuclear supremacy when the Soviet Union successfully detonated an atomic bomb at their test site in Kazakhstan. Then, several weeks after that, British and U.S. intelligence came to the staggering conclusion that German-born Klaus Fuchs, a top-ranking scientist in the U.S. nuclear program, was a spy for the Soviet Union. These two events, and the fact that the Soviets now knew everything that the Americans did about how to build a hydrogen bomb, led Truman to approve massive funding for the superpower race to complete the world’s first “superbomb,” as he described it in his public announcement on January 31.

On November 1, 1952, the United States successfully detonated “Mike,” the world’s first hydrogen bomb, on the Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Marshall Islands. The 10.4-megaton thermonuclear device, built upon the Teller-Ulam principles of staged radiation implosion, instantly vaporized an entire island and left behind a crater more than a mile wide. The incredible explosive force of Mike was also apparent from the sheer magnitude of its mushroom cloud–within 90 seconds the mushroom cloud climbed to 57,000 feet and entered the stratosphere. One minute later, it reached 108,000 feet, eventually stabilizing at a ceiling of 120,000 feet. Half an hour after the test, the mushroom stretched 60 miles across, with the base of the head joining the stem at 45,000 feet.

Three years later, on November 22, 1955, the Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb on the same principle of radiation implosion. Both superpowers were now in possession of the “hell bomb,” as it was known by many Americans, and the world lived under the threat of thermonuclear war for the first time in history.

Source: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/truman-announces-development-of-h-bomb

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This Day In History

Gandhi assassinated

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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the political and spiritual leader of the Indian independence movement, is assassinated in New Delhi by a Hindu extremist.

Born the son of an Indian official in 1869, Gandhi’s Vaishnava mother was deeply religious and early on exposed her son to Jainism, a morally rigorous Indian religion that advocated nonviolence. Gandhi was an unremarkable student but in 1888 was given an opportunity to study law in England. In 1891, he returned to India, but failing to find regular legal work he accepted in 1893 a one-year contract in South Africa.

Settling in Natal, he was subjected to racism and South African laws that restricted the rights of Indian laborers. Gandhi later recalled one such incident, in which he was removed from a first-class railway compartment and thrown off a train, as his moment of truth. From thereon, he decided to fight injustice and defend his rights as an Indian and a man. When his contract expired, he spontaneously decided to remain in South Africa and launched a campaign against legislation that would deprive Indians of the right to vote. He formed the Natal Indian Congress and drew international attention to the plight of Indians in South Africa. In 1906, the Transvaal government sought to further restrict the rights of Indians, and Gandhi organized his first campaign of satyagraha, or mass civil disobedience. After seven years of protest, he negotiated a compromise agreement with the South African government.

In 1914, Gandhi returned to India and lived a life of abstinence and spirituality on the periphery of Indian politics. He supported Britain in the First World War but in 1919 launched a new satyagraha in protest of Britain’s mandatory military draft of Indians. Hundreds of thousands answered his call to protest, and by 1920 he was leader of the Indian movement for independence. He reorganized the Indian National Congress as a political force and launched a massive boycott of British goods, services, and institutions in India. Then, in 1922, he abruptly called off the satyagraha when violence erupted. One month later, he was arrested by the British authorities for sedition, found guilty, and imprisoned.

Source: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gandhi-assassinated

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U.S. Baseball Hall of Fame elects first members

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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. 

Source: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-baseball-hall-of-fame-elects-first-members

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