'A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.'

Jackie Robinson, who broke the MLB's color barrier, made his debut in 1947

In the early 1940s, Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey began scouting Negro League players to break baseball’s long-standing color barrier. Jackie Robinson was signed in 1945 and made his major league debut on Opening Day 1947 against the Boston Braves.

100 moments that shaped baseball history

Published in 2018 by baseball historian Jacob Kornhauser, this list examines the defining moments throughout more than a century of play on the field, from Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis purportedly throwing a no-hitter while on acid to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier.

'One man can make a difference and every man should try.'

- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994)

A quote by Magic Johnson

"Celebrate the life you had, not the life you could've had."

How baseball shaped Black America during Reconstruction

A cornerstone of the budding Black culture following the Civil War was baseball, with several clubs springing up in Black neighborhoods and leaders like Frederick Douglass cheering on the players, including his son, who played for a team in Washington. This detailed history of the early Black leagues unpacks how the game enhanced the upwardly mobile community—and why that fact led to the segregation of what would become Major League Baseball.

'I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.'

- Baseball legend Babe Ruth (1895-1948)

'Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.'

- Muhammad Ali (1942-2016)

'And I knew that it was better to live out one's absurdity than to die for that of others.'

-Ralph Ellison, from "Invisible Man" (1913-1994)

'Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.'

- Author James Baldwin (1924–1987)

'In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.'

- Isaac Asimov

'What each of us must come to realize is that our intent always comes through.'

- First African American Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993)

'Reputation is what others think about you. What’s far more important is character, because that is what you think about yourself.'

- Tennis champion Billie Jean King (1943-present)

'A lion never roars after a kill.'

-Coaching legend Dean Smith (1931-2015)

'Unfortunately, many people do not consider fun an important item on their daily agenda. For me, that was always a high priority in whatever I was doing.'

-Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to break the sound barrier (1923-2020)

'Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.'

- "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000)

'Voices ought not be measured by how pretty they are. Instead they matter only if they convince you that they are telling the truth.'

- Iconic singer Sam Cooke (1931–1964)

'Heroes always have their scars. Some you can see, some you read about later on.'

- Boxer George Foreman (1949 - 2025)

Talese’s story on Joe DiMaggio examined the sports star’s life post-retirement

The profile, written in the aftermath of his popular “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” similarly offered a close look at an American icon after their prime. In DiMaggio’s story, however, the Yankees player seeks to vanish into obscurity and live a quiet life, golfing and mourning his ex-wife Marilyn Monroe.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

English chemist Rosalind Franklin (1920 - 1958) on the importance of science

"Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated. Science, for me, gives a partial explanation of life."

Paul Robeson was the Harlem Renaissance's chief renaissance man

Robeson played many roles throughout his life: He was an All-American football player who was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, earned a law degree while playing in the NFL, starred in numerous films and Broadway shows, and became an outspoken advocate for labor and civil rights. His vocal criticism of US involvement in the Korean War led to his passport being voided and a protracted struggle with the US government.

'Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.'

- Polio vaccine developer Jonas Salk (1914–1995)

The legacy of America's most remarkable kid

The short life and legacy of Kevin Cooper, a 14-year-old entrepreneur from Utah with big dreams for his family and rural America, and whose accomplishments most adults don’t pull off in a lifetime.

Analyzing Billie Holiday's impact on American poetry

Although Holiday is sometimes associated with the Harlem Renaissance, the Black cultural movement of the 1920s and '30s, scholar Whit Frazier Peterson argues that her real impact in poetry was on the Black Arts Movement, the more radical Black literary movement of the '60s and '70s that featured writers like Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, and Nikki Giovanni.

What do you know about WWI's only Black fighter pilot?

This in-depth article follows the life of Eugene Bullard, a Black American nicknamed the "Black Swallow of Death" for his work in WWI. Though much of Bullard's life is known, some pieces, like what happened to Bullard's brother who vanished in the Jim Crow South, continue to escape historical record.

In 1968, two American Olympians raised their fists while the anthem played

Tommie Smith won the gold medal in the 200-meter event at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games, followed closely by his teammate John Carlos, who earned the bronze. When they stood on the winner's podium while the national anthem played, the athletes raised their fists, mirroring a popular Black Power gesture.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

Apeirophobia is an overwhelming fear of living forever, perhaps stemming from the brain's inability to conceptualize an infinite life.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Studies suggest when you sleep is as important as how much you get, and syncing with your circadian rhythms may lead to less fatigue and improved long-term health outcomes

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.