Joe DiMaggio did not get a hit on this date in 1941. Too bad, if he had his consecutive game hitting streak would have been 73. As it was, he hit safely in 56 consecutive games up to this date — and 16 after. (44 is the best by anyone else.)
At AmericanHeritage.com a couple years ago, John Steele Gordon told a famous good DiMaggio story:
[This story] story concerns his brief, disastrous marriage to Marilyn Monroe. Monroe was a film actress, used to working in front of cameras and technicians, not audiences. After their wedding, DiMaggio and Monroe went to Korea to entertain the American troops fighting there against the Chinese communists. There were perhaps 5,000 soldiers on the air-base runways waiting to greet them, and when they stepped out of the plane, the soldiers started cheering. Monroe, startled by the ovation, turned to her husband and said, “I bet you’ve never heard such cheering, Joe.” DiMaggio, who had brought a sold-out Yankee Stadium screaming to its collective feet more times than he could count, just said quietly, “Oh, yes I have.”
Then he beat her.