Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Pennsylvania (28 page)
Read Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Pennsylvania Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers' Institute
A.
1865
B.
1880
C.
1914
10.
Nineteenth-century American landscaper A. J. Downing called Pennsylvania's state tree the “most picturesque and beautiful of the world's evergreens.” What is the tree's name?
A.
Douglas fir
B.
Eastern hemlock
C.
Jack pine
Answers on
page 304
.
Quarry owner William Abbot Witman Sr. built a 72-foot-tall red-and-gold pagoda in Reading in 1908 to hide the scarred hills of Mount Penn (where his quarry was located). Witman hoped that the pagoda would eventually become a luxury hotel, but there were no good roads leading to it in the early 1900s and his application for a liquor license was turned down. (No luxury hotel in the years before Prohibition could be successful without selling liquor.) So the structure sat empty. In 1910, Witman sold the building to a businessman who gave it to the city of Reading the next year. Over the years, the city used it as an office, snack bar, art gallery, and, before radio communication became common, even a news transmitterâlights on the top tier flashed different colors to signal winners of presidential elections or other events. Today, the pagoda is a tourist attraction and, in 2008, underwent a renovation.
Baseball is a game of numbers, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the City of Brotherly Love, where the Phillies have been racking up super stats since 1883
.
Times the Phillies have won the World Series: 1980 and 2008.
Official team names in the franchise's history: Quakers (1883â89), Phillies (1890â1942, 1945âpresent), Blue Jays (1943â44).
Number of times Phillies pitcher Steve Carlton won the National League Cy Young Award: 1972, 1977, 1980, and 1982.
Stadiums the Phillies have called home: Recreation Park (1883â86), Baker Bowl (1887â38), Connie Mack Stadium (1938â70), Veterans Stadium (1971â2003), Citizens Bank Park (2004âpresent).
Number of no-hitters that Phillies pitchers have thrown to date: 1885 (Charlie Ferguson), 1898 (Red Donahue), 1903 (Chick Fraser), 1906 (Johnny Lush), 1964 (Jim Bunning), 1971 (Rick
Wise), 1990 (Terry Mulholland), 1991 (Tommy Greene), and 2003 (Kevin Millwood).
Years it took before the Phillies reached their first World Series (1915). They lost to the Boston Red Sox, four games to one.
Number of pounds the costume of the team's beloved mascot, Phillie Phanatic, weighs. The tall, birdlike creature made his debut on April 25, 1978, in a game against the Chicago Cubs. The New York design and merchandising firm of Harrison/Erickson created the Phanatic as an attraction to rival the San Diego Padres' popular Chicken mascot. The Phillies were offered the costume and copyright ownership for $5,200, but in a cost-cutting move, they chose to purchase only the costume for a discount: $3,900. Big mistake. The Phanatic was so popular that five years later, the team had to pay Harrison/ Erickson $250,000 for the copyright. The Phillie Phanatic has since been voted “Best Mascot Ever” by
Sports Illustrated
and was enshrined in the Mascot Hall of Fame in 2005.
Number of wins earned by pitcher Kid Gleason in 1890. It's still a franchise record.
Home runs hit by first baseman Ryan Howard in 2006âalso the most in franchise history.
Number of home runs hit by the Philadelphia Phillies during the 2006 seasonâa Major League record.
Record number of official at-bats registered by Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins in 2007. Rollins's stellar all-around play earned him the 2007 National League Most Valuable Player Award.
Amount the Phillies paid the Pittsburgh Alleghenies to get out-fielder Billy Sunday in 1890. Sunday was a great athlete, known for stealing bases and making incredible catches in the days before fielders wore gloves. Sunday was acquired by Philadelphia to improve the team's chances of capturing the National League pennant and had already played eight years in the major leagues at the time.
But as it turned out, baseball wasn't his true callingâSunday requested a release from his contract in 1891 to accept the position of secretary of the religious department at the Chicago YMCA. The position paid considerably less than his baseball contract, but it offered the potential to do ministerial work. He later went on to become a world-famous evangelist.
Runs surrendered by Phillies pitchers during the 1930 season. The mark remains an all-time major league record. (Ouch.)
The first year the Phillies won the National League pennant.
(They also won it five more times: 1950, 1980, 1983, 1993, and 2008.)
Seating capacity of Citizens Bank Park.
Number of fans who attended Philadelphia Phillies home games in 2004, a franchise record.
Philadelphia's Mummers Parade has been an official New Year's tradition since the city started sponsoring it in 1901. But its roots go all the way back to the 1600s and Pennsylvania's earliest immigrants.
In medieval England, “mummers” were entertainers who traveled around the countryside performing folklore plays. As Europeans immigrated to Pennsylvania, they brought the mummer practice with them. Philadelphia's first Mummers Parade was an informal neighborhood gathering in the 1870s. People from all over the city showed up on South Philly's “Two Street” (Second Avenue) in costumes to celebrate New Year's Day. Today, the parade attracts more than 10,000 entrants who compete for cash prizes in four categories: Comic (spoofing modern politics), Fancy (dressing in elaborate costumes), Fancy Brigade (dressing in elaborate costumes and performing skits), and String Band (dress ing in elaborate costumes while playing in a marching band).
This onetime iron-smelting city in northeastern Pennsylvania is now the proud home of Dunder Mifflinâthe world's best-known fictional paper company
.
Town:
Scranton
Location:
Lackawanna County
Founding:
1856
Population (2008):
76,000
Size:
25.4 square miles
County seat:
Yes
Before it was incorporated as a city, Scranton was a settlement called Capouse, a variation on the spelling of Chief Capoose, who headed the local Munsee tribe. In 1840, businessmen George and Selden Scranton arrived, bought what's now the downtown area for $8,000, and opened an iron-smelting company. Before it officially became Scranton, though, the city had various other names: Slocum Hollow, Armstrong, and Scrantonia.
â¢
The city's nickname of “Steamtown” comes from Scranton's iron-smelting past. Between the mid-1800s until the end of World War II, iron mining and smelting were the city's major industries.
â¢
Scranton has one of the lowest murder rates in the country,
averaging about one per year over the last decade. There were none in 2006.
â¢
Scranton's Steamtown Marathon, held every October, attracts about 1,500 runners annually.
â¢
The NBC sitcom
The Office
is set in Scranton. (
See
page 131
.) The show is filmed on a set in California, but the scenes of Scranton in the opening credits are real, shot by star John Krasinski. The city itself welcomes the Hollywood association and even displays banners with the name Dunder Mifflin (the paper company depicted on the show) on downtown lampposts. And each fall, venues around the city (including the Steamtown Mall) host a convention for
Office
fans.
â¢
Scranton is the birthplace of Vice President Joe Biden.
â¢
Early 20th-century illusionist and escape artist Harry Houdini had no connection to Scranton (he was born in Hungary and is buried in New York), but the city is home to the Harry Houdini Museum. It's full of personal effects and exhibits detailing the magician's famous stunts. One annual event: a Halloween séance held in an attempt to contact Houdini. (So far, he hasn't answered.)
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Â
Every year, the White Thorn Lodge in western Pennsylvania hosts a nude volleyball tournament. But don't get any ideas: only members of the lodge (a private nudist club) can participate.
In the late 19th century, the tiny coal town of Lattimer was the site of one of the most violent labor strikes in American history. For the strikers, the result was deadly, but for the larger coal mining community, it actually brought some positive changes
.
I
n 1897, Lattimer was a mining town just outside of Hazleton in coal-rich Luzerne County. The Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal Company, which ran several mines in the area, had built Lattimer about 30 years earlier to support its mine there. By the late 1890s, a few hundred people lived and worked in Lattimer.
Like many mining communities, Lattimer was a “company” town. The workers lived in company-owned homes, shopped at the company-owned store (a requirement to keep their jobs), and if they were sick, they saw the mine's doctor. Typically, they paid for these things on credit, and when payday came, the mine deducted the expenses before handing over their paychecks. In many cases, the men came out behind and were constantly in debt to the company.
The miners' financial problems got worse in 1897, when the Pennsylvania General Assembly enacted the “alien” tax in an effort to raise money. The tax required employers to pay three cents per day for each immigrant on their payrolls. (American citizens were exempt.) The mine owners passed the cost on to the workers, deducting it from each man's already dwindling paycheck.
The mine bosses, fearing the growing influence of labor
unions, typically hired immigrants who spoke little or no English and had no common language among them. Their reasoning was that if its labor force were made up mostly of men who couldn't communicate with each other, let alone the larger labor movement, they would be less likely to organize. That proved to be a miscalculation.