I was rummaging through the This Day in Daily Happen History files and came across these nuggets for October 26:

1492 Lead (graphite) pencils first used. Poor Christopher Columbus. He was halfway around the world when this happened and by the time he came back, he had the second biggest story in Europe. You discovered an entire continent? Big deal, Chris! We got pencils!

1858 Hamilton Smith patents rotary washing machine. Mrs. Hamilton Smith had to quit her bridge club that day. Suddenly her afternoon got a lot busier.

1861 Pony Express (Missouri to California) ends after 19 months. It only took 19 months to figure out this wasn’t a good idea?

1881 Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday involved in gunfight at OK Corral, in Tombstone, Ariz. It lasted all of 30 seconds. Both Earp and Holliday survived and went on to have bad mustaches for many years to come.

1919 US President Woodrow Wilson’s veto of Prohibition Enforcement Bill is overridden. I’m betting Happy Hour was interesting that afternoon.

1949 US President Harry Truman increases minimum wage from 40 cents to 75 cents. So the buck really didn’t stop at Harry’s desk. Only 75 cents did.

1973 Wings release “Helen Wheels.” On October 27, 1973, they apologized.

1976 Trinidad & Tobago becomes a republic. Was it not working out as a solo act? Was this the best title they could come up? Why didn’t Tobago get top billing?

1984 “The Terminator” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton is released in the US. I still haven’t see it. Don’t be surprised.

From an Orioles and Rangers fan, good for you, Red Sox and Dodgers. Also I hate you.

Their owners moved the Washington Senators to Texas in 1972 not necessarily to become the New York Yankees of the South, but instead to become a sort of poor-man’s country club for a fan base that sported “The West Wasn’t Won With Registered Guns” bumper stickers on its pickup trucks.

The photo you see is a bubblegum card of the 1972 RANGERS, although really it’s the 1971 Senators. So, you get a feeling of how things are gonna go…

My first Rangers game in Arlington, I got no closer to the field than the parking lot. 1974. We’d moved here from Carolina and my parents took me and my sisters to Six Flags Over Texas. I voted for a Rangers game instead. Didn’t happen. But I talked my dad into pulling the Impala into the parking lot that night and, thanks to the Baseball Gods, there was the frail and aging former Yankees manager Casey Stengel – he would be dead in less than two years – getting out of a golf cart by the press gate. Had on an all-white suit and carried a cane.

My heart stopped.

The P.A. guy was announcing “Graig Nettles, New York Yankees third baseman!,” as the next batter. All I can tell you is that I could not believe it was happening, even as we drove past car after empty car, away from Stengel, away from the stadium, my ignorant family still too jacked up over the log ride to understand that we were in the presence of greatness.

I didn’t ask if we could go in. I didn’t ask if we could turn around. The Stengel sighting (I’d name my son ‘Casey’) and hearing an actual batter announced on a big-league P.A. system was more than I expected and more than I deserved. I thanked Fate and the Rangers for the timing, for the first of many happy moments they’ve given me, none of which involved them winning or losing. I didn’t care. Just like the Rangers’ higher-ups don’t appear to now.

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