We have a great week of facts for you. Everything from the 1919 World Series scandal to the Day of Six Billion, six billion people that is. Oh, and there are a few great books too…. Care to join me?

October 8, 2001: U.S. President George W. Bush announces the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security.

War has always led to a change in any society. For Americans after 9/11 and the start of the ‘war on terror’, this was Homeland Security. To see the how other societies may have been affected by non-peaceful times, check out World History of Warfare by Christon I. Archer, John R. Ferris, Holger H.  Herwig, and Timothy H.E. Travers.

October 9,1919:  Black Sox scandal where the Cincinnati Reds “win” the World Series.

    Eight baseball players were banished from baseball, despite being found innocent in court. Most famous among them was Joseph Jefferson Jackson or “Shoeless Joe”. For a closer look into his perspective, the innocence he proclaimed until his death, check out Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball, by Harvey Frommer.

October 10, 1967: The Outer Space treaty, signed by more than 60 countries, enters into force.

Now I’m not exactly sure what the outer space treaty is, but to me it sounds like it could have come straight out of the pages of Miles J. Breuer’s,  The Man with the Strange Head and Other Early Science Fiction Stories. 

October 11, 1906: San Francisco public school system clashes with Japan by ordering Japanese students to be taught in racially segregated schools.

It is no secret that the U.S. has often made it hard for minorities to receive fair and equal treatment under the law. Racially segregated schools are no exception, and have often been one of the more pervasive tools. Yet athletics has often been the forerunner in pushing those boundaries.Wally Yonamine: The Man who Changed Japanese Baseball, by Robert K. Fitts, is one of these remarkable stories. To see how he helped alter the roles of Japanese in sports, check it out at UNP.

  October 12, 1999: The Day of 6 billion. The sixth billion human is born in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

Well 6 billion is a lot of people! I think to fit all those people in one place, it would have to be a “wide open” place. Ok yeah, that’s my segue into The Wide Open: Prose, Poems, and Photographs of the Prairie, by Annick Smith and Susan O’Connor. It probably wasn’t smooth, but the book is still good. Check it out!

Ok readers, you can find these books and more at the University of Nebraska Press website. Join us Tuesday for a little trivia. Have a great weekend guys!