September 1 · This Day in America
At six in the morning, a streetcar rolls down a ramp on Boylston Street and disappears into the earth. More than a hundred passengers are aboard the first train; before the day is out, more than a hundred thousand Bostonians will take the three-and-a-half-minute ride through a tunnel under their own downtown. The Tremont Street subway is the first of its kind in the Western Hemisphere — born not of grand vision but of a simple, very American frustration: the streets above were hopelessly clogged with traffic. So they went underground. The engineering was bold, the idea contagious. New York would follow, then the world. And the bones of that 1897 tunnel are not a museum piece. Commuters on Boston's Green Line still rattle through it every single day, riding the same dark mile their great-great-grandparents marveled at.
Source: www.massmoments.org
Also on this day · 1971
In Pittsburgh, manager Danny Murtaugh posts nine names — Stennett, Clines, Clemente, Stargell, Sanguillen, Cash, Oliver, Hernandez, Ellis — and for the first time in major-league history, every starter is Black or Latino. Murtaugh said he just played his best men. The players noticed mid-game. The Pirates won 10–7, and went on to win the World Series. Both Pittsburgh papers were on strike; the milestone ran almost unremarked.
Source: sabr.org