Lucky
Lucky
The Maundy Monday Newsletter - This Week in History March 18 - March 24.
Welcome back, my Okay History friends!
I hope you had a wonderful St. Patrick’s Day. I had my fill of Guinness, the zero-alcohol version, corned beef and cabbage, and a delicious Guinness chocolate cake. I leaned into all of my Irish and Irish American stereotypes.
Willie Mosconi celebrated quite a few St. Patrick’s Days in his life. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on a hot June day in 1913. His father, Joe, owned a pool hall, and the family lived upstairs.
Joe was adamant that his son Willie never learn the game of pool for he thought it would ruin his life. Instead, he wanted his son to become an actor. Did anyone ever tell Joe there was a wide range of more stable professional careers Willie could have been steered toward?
As luck would have it, Willie was a pool player prodigy (Triple P) and would sneak around his father to shoot pool. If you are going to be a prodigy at something, why not pool? In any case, Willie Mosconi would become the greatest pool player ever, and on March 20, 1954, he set the record for running the most consecutive pool balls without a miss.
During an exhibition in Ohio, Willie showed off his skill by running 526 consecutive balls. Who oversaw counting? No idea. Why was someone keeping track? It’s Willie Freaking Mosconi we are talking about here. Why is this a focus of this week's Maundy Monday Newsletter? It’s a slow week in history, friends.
When I was in the 7th grade, my oldest brother brought home a pool table from college and put it in the basement. Everyone who went to college in the 80s owned a pool table. They handed them out at orientation.
Despite having the opportunity to play pool whenever I wanted, I never took the game—or is it a sport? However you want to categorize pool, I wasn’t very good at it. I’d be lucky to run five consecutive balls. Instead of being the second-best pool player of all time, I am Substack's 210th most popular history writer.
Okay, let's highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events celebrate their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here's what I got:
An asteroid approached Earth on March 18, 2004. The space Rock we named 2004 FH came within 27,000 miles of Earth, making it the 11th closest asteroid on record. It was 30 meters in diameter, making it the fourth-largest asteroid on record. Don’t worry; there’s still a 2.7% chance another asteroid, named 99942 Apophis, will hit Earthy by April 2029.
Llyod Gaines disappeared on March 19, 1939. Gaines sued the University of Missouri Law School for not admitting him due to his race. The school instead offered him cash to attend another school in a different state. The Supreme Court ruled in Gaines vs. Canada that The Show Me State needed to be The Shut Up State and let Gaines in. Unfortunately, Gaines disappeared a few weeks after the decision and is presumed dead.
Steve Borden was born on March 20, 1959. The professional wrestler known as Sting would have a long and storied rassling career beginning in 1985 until his recent retirement on March 3, 2024. He “won” a bunch of titles in the wrestling world and overcame addiction to steroids, alcohol, and other bad stuff. The guy is known for painting his face. That’s all I got.
As I mentioned earlier, this week was short on milestone history events when I’m telling you about pool players and asteroids that may hit us and professional wrestlers. If you are interested in what I wrote about this week for the past few years, you can find them here:
I want to apologize for missing my Friday deadline with the election ranking. We should be good to go for this week. It’s not going to be as busy, and beginning on Friday, Anonymous will take me on one of her spy missions, where we will use her friend’s wedding as a cover. Should be fun!
I hope you have a good week. Thanks for reading.
Okay,
Chris
Well, now I know who the greatest pool player who ever lived was...