1950s: At the age of twenty, Al Kaline bats .340 in 1955, becoming the youngest player ever to win the American League batting championship.

Today: Barry Bonds hits his 72nd seasonal homer and rewrites baseball history by surpassing Mark McGwire's recent record, the best on the books since Roger Maris.

1950s: Playwright Arthur Miller writes The Crucible, a play that on the surface deals with the Salem witch trials of the seventeenth century and on another level criticizes the McCarthy communist witch hunts.

Today: The Vatican scrambles to respond to the fervor of public opinion in the wake of allegations of criminal sexual misconduct perpetrated by Catholic priests against young boys.

1950s: Democrat John F. Kennedy, a devout Roman Catholic, begins campaigning for the presidency, bringing the issue of religion to the political forefront.

Today: Robert F. Kennedy's eldest child, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Maryland lieutenant governor...