All posts in History

Base­ball, in this day and age, can seem to take an eter­nity to watch. Espe­cially if you’re going into the 8th with a 0–0 tie on your hands. But the longest base­ball game in major league play was played between the Chicago White Sox and Mil­wau­kee Brew­ers at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The game started on May 9, 1984, and because of MLB rules, the teams had to quit play­ing at 12:59 am of May 10, so the teams came back the next day to fin­ish what they’d started the day before. All in all, the game lasted 8 hours and 6 min­utes, with a final score of 7–6 in 25 innings. The White Sox won, by the way, on a home run by right fielder Harold Baines. The short­est MLB game on record took place on Sep­tem­ber 28, 1919 between the New York Giants and the Philadel­phia Phillies at the Baker Bowl in Philadel­phia. It took the Giants only 51 min­utes to beat the Phillies, 6–1.¹

1. This infor­ma­tion can be found almost any­where on the Inter­net, but for more infor­ma­tion you can check out the amaz­ingly com­pre­hen­sive Base­ball Almanac. [↩]

Ha! Just kid­ding! Mar­garet Spellings is the cur­rent Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion and isn’t pres­i­dent. Come on, silly, what were you thinking?

So…how does the Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion skip all of that run­ning for Pres­i­dent and the elec­tion and just become Pres­i­dent of the United States? Why, have every­one in front of you in the line of pres­i­den­tial suc­ces­sion die! Want to know the cur­rent line of suc­ces­sion?¹ Well, here it is -

1. Vice Pres­i­dent of the United States and Pres­i­dent of the Senate
2. Speaker of the House of Representatives
3. Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate pro tem­pore²
4. Sec­re­tary of State
5. Sec­re­tary of the Treasury
6. Sec­re­tary of Defense
7. Attor­ney General
8. Sec­re­tary of the Interior
9. Sec­re­tary of Agriculture
10. Sec­re­tary of Commerce
11. Sec­re­tary of Labor
12. Sec­re­tary of Health and Human Services
13. Sec­re­tary of Hous­ing and Urban Development
14. Sec­re­tary of Transportation
15. Sec­re­tary of Energy
16. Sec­re­tary of Education
17. Sec­re­tary of Vet­er­ans Affairs
18. Sec­re­tary of Home­land Secu­rity³

1. I got this list from info­please. [↩]
2. The Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate pro tem­pore is the second-highest-ranking offi­cial of the United States Sen­ate and the highest-ranking sen­a­tor. The cur­rent Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate pro tem­pore is Sen­a­tor Robert Byrd (D-West Vir­ginia). [↩]
3. On March 9, 2006, Pres­i­dent George W. Bush signed HR 3199 which renewed the Patriot Act and amended the Pres­i­den­tial Suc­ces­sion Act to include the Sec­re­tary of Home­land Secu­rity in the line of suc­ces­sion after the Sec­re­tary of Vet­er­ans Affairs. [↩]

The Moon­Pie, the del­i­cacy of choice for work­ing men across Amer­ica dur­ing the first half of the 20th Cen­tury, was cre­ated in 1917 by Earl Mitchell while work­ing his ter­ri­tory of Ken­tucky, Ten­nessee and West Vir­ginia for The Chat­tanooga Bak­ery of Chat­tanooga, Ten­nessee. As the story goes, Mr. Mitchell was vis­it­ing a com­pany store that catered to the coal min­ers of the sur­round­ing area when he engaged some of them in con­ver­sa­tion. While chat­ting with them he asked what they might enjoy for a snack dur­ing a gru­el­ing, filthy day of min­ing. They told Mitchell that they wanted some­thing that would be solid and filling.

“About how big?” Mr. Mitchell asked them. At the time the moon was ris­ing, so a miner held out his hands, fram­ing the moon in them and said, “About that big!”

He headed back to the bak­ery after mak­ing his rounds and saw some of the work­ers dip­ping gra­ham crack­ers into marsh­mal­low and lay­ing them on win­dow sills to harden. With a con­cept for the per­fect work­ing man’s snack, he added another cookie and a coat­ing of choco­late and sent them back for the work­ers to try. When the response they got was favor­able he sent sam­ples around with their other sales­peo­ple, too. The Moon­Pie was a hit.

The usual way to enjoy a Moon­Pie in the 1950’s was with an RC Cola, which, when cou­ple with a Moon­Pie, cost about 10 cents. RC was pre­ferred since the RC bot­tle was a lit­tle larger than that of Coca-Cola. The two became insep­a­ra­ble and was often referred to as “The Work­ing Man’s Lunch.“¹

1. The info for this piece came from the maker of one half of the Work­ing Man’s Lunch — The Chat­tanooga Bak­ery. [↩]