There may have been some--a very few--who were better than these, but none had greater impact on how their games were played. Along with Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and Pele, these were the people who shaped the century in sports --By Daniel Okrent BABE RUTH In sports' first golden age, there was Babe Ruth--and then there was everyone else. In 1920, only his second season as an everyday player, he hit 54 home runs--more than any entire team ...

Engaged. Helen Douglas Robinson, daughter of onetime Assistant Secretary of the Navy and Mrs. Theodore Douglas Robinson; and one John Arthur Hinckley; in Manhattan.Married. Bainbridge Colby, 59, Wilsonian Secretary of State; and a Mrs. Anne Von Ahlstrand Ely, 39, in Brooklyn. Last month he was divorced at Reno by Mrs. Nathalie Sedgwick Colby, from whom he had sought divorce in Paris; with whom he had a $1,500-per-month agreement to keep her from ridiculing him in her writings. Married. Weston R. Shipstead, 20, ...

One could write a political history of African Americans based on changes in hairstyles, ranging from kinky and short to kinky and long, from greased and "pressed" to straightened, waved or jerry-curled. But it was Madam C.J. Walker, as the historian Rayford W. Logan maintains, who "made straight hair 'good hair,'" and in doing so, made a fortune for herself and a decent standard of living for a work force of "agents" that numbered 20,000 in the U.S. and ...

On April 20, Major League Baseball took control of the Los Angeles Dodgers, a team whose overleveraged owner is going through a humiliating public divorce and steering the franchise towards bankruptcy. The Dodgers' financial situation had been so dire that last week Frank McCourt, who is fighting for ownership of the team with his estranged wife, Jamie, needed a $30 million loan from Fox, the team's television partner, to make payroll. That's right, the Dodgers, one of ...

Is pornography essentially an outlet for sexual fantasy, rightly protected by the First Amendment's free speech provisions? Or is it an instruction manual for violent men that shatters women's civil rights by contributing to their harassment, humiliation and subordination? Those questions are at the heart of an often acrimonious debate that has divided feminists and civil libertarians across the U.S. The argument is currently raging on three fronts: -- In Massachusetts, feminist groups can be found on both sides of ...

In an industry dominated by men, leave it to women to come up with the winning idea in a contest to create a concept for a video game about losing one's virginity. On Wednesday, at the Game Developers Conference here, the two-woman team of Heather Kelley and Erin Robinson won the Game Design Challenge with just 36 hours of preparation, while their competitors had weeks to come up with concepts for a game about "your first time." This was the ...

America faces an economic calamity. Trouble brews in faraway lands. Sound familiar More than 70 years ago, the very first superheroes debuted in the dire times of the Great Depression and the early years of World War II. Their names became legend -- Superman, Batman (or, as he was then known, the Bat-Man), Wonder Woman, Captain America -- and they're still with us today. A new exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles celebrates these ...

On a winter evening in early 1940, Hattie McDaniel became the first black performer to win an Oscar, a best supporting actress honor for her performance as Mammy, the servant in "Gone With the Wind." She accepted her award at the Academy Awards ceremony at the Coconut Grove, a nightclub in Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel, where she was seated in the segregated section at the rear of the room. Though her win was played as a sign of progress for ...