Dela-Facts

Welcome to the Thresher Pub

Where Fisher and Bird spin their yarns...

The Delaware Bay region is home to the largest population of the American horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus). Horseshoe crabs are among the world's oldest creatures. They are estimated to be at least 300 million years old. The earliest horseshoe crab species were crawling around the Earth's shallow coastal seas for at least 100 million years before the dinosaurs arrived. In the spring they come ashore to lay their eggs, which are a major source of food for migratory birds heading northward. During the egg laying period, the beaches become completely covered with these prehistoric relics, and in the days before chemical fertilizers, farmers would cart them off to plough into their fields to enrich the soil.

http://www.lhup.edu/mkhalequ/Oceanography/OceanTrip-02F/Oceanography%2520Field%2520Trip%2520-%2520Fall%25202002.htm

Many have read the comics, seen the TV shows and movies, and yet never realized that Metropolis, the home of the infamous super-hero Superman, is actually located in the Diamond State. (Source: Atlas of the DC Universe)

With the Thresher Pub’s official historian: John Thomas

The State of Delaware is so small that the Delaware State Forest is actually located in Pennsylvania.

http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/forestry/stateforests/delaware.aspx

In the 19th century Delaware was named the Peach State because of its formerly prolific peach production. The peach flower is still the state’s official flower though the hey-day of the peach growing industry was wiped out with the trees by a blight in the 1930’s.

Cab Calloway, musical star of stage, screen, radio, and phonograph, retired to the Masonic Home in Hockessin, Delaware, where he resided until his death in 1994. He endowed a high school of the performing arts in Wilmington, which is named for him.

FENCE VIEWERS

In Delaware, State law provides for appointment of fence viewers in every hundred. They are the judges of the sufficiency of fences, to protect others from strayed animals; they award damages to persons whose property, when properly fenced, has been injured by the strayed stock of others.

The law states: "The Court of General Sessions (now the Superior Court) shall annually appoint not more than eight nor less than five persons in each Hundred to be fence viewers, who shall be the sole judges of the sufficiency of any fences, of the charges of making or repairing partition, or other fences, and how borne, and of damages by animals trespassing."

Fence viewers are allowed $8 a day and seven cents a mile for travel to and from any point of dispute. The chairman, who is the first person named on the list issued by the court, receives an additional $1 a day.

From THE DELAWARE CITIZEN (Liberman and Rosbrow, 1952)

Further reading: “The Zen of Fence Viewing” by Seymour Picketts

The Crows’ Nest: According to Delaware Online: in less enlightened decades past, before the court ordered paradigm shift ending race based laws, the only part of Rehoboth Beach open to African Americans was a spit of land, less than 50 yards wide, at the northern most end of the town’s beach — known as, The Crows’ Nest for the Jim Crow laws which mandated it.

FENCE VIEWERS

From THE DELAWARE CITIZEN (Liberman and Rosbrow, 1952)

Further reading: “The Zen of Fence Viewing” by Seymour Picketts

Spaced Out Industry

International Latex Corporation, in the state capital of Dover, has been making pressure suits and helmets for high altitude airplane flight since the 1950’s and space suits for NASA’s Apollo and Space Shuttle programs since 1961.

ILC is developing an Inflatable Lunar Habitat and developed, designed, and built the impact bags for the Mars Pathfinder Mission in conjunction with Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

On July 4, 1997 Mars Pathfinder successfully landed on Mars while being cushioned by ILC’s airbag system. In the same year the Zeppelin company flew its first airship in more than 50 years utilizing an envelope structure developed and manufactured by ILC Dover in their semi-rigid airship and produced two more structures for Zeppelin over the next 4 years.

In 2003 Twin Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, successfully landed on Mars using ILC impact bags to cushion their landings.

In 1967 Jim Bird worked for ILC off and on for about a year in the Textile Printing Lab.

In 1978 Mike Fisher worked at ILC for about six weeks with a piping contractor.

Famous Cake…

The seven foot tall wedding cake for the marriage of Tiny Tim (of "Tip Toe Through the Tulips" fame) and Miss Vicki was baked and built by the Three Little Bakers of Wilmington, Delaware. Their bakery was located in Wilmington's Little Italy.

The ceremony of “Tiny Tim” Khaury and Miss Victoria "Vicki" May Budinger (who was only 17-years-old at the time) aired on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 1969.

The wedding was the highest rated episode of Johnny Carson's 30-year run on The Tonight Show until it was unseated by Carson's final episode on May 22, 1992.

The Three Little Bakers had been a well known vaudeville act called the Acromaniacs and consisted of brothers Hugo, Italo (Al) and Nino (Nick) Immediato. The Acromaniacs stopped performing and opened their Wilmington bakery after Nick suffered a serious back injury during a performance. The Acromaniacs also appeared on TV talent showcases with Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason, Perry Como, Sid Caesar, Kate Smith, Dinah Shore, and Mike Douglas. Their previous show business connection probably led to their selection to create the cake.

Delaware, the second smallest state in the Union, is home to the world’s largest frying pan, which was produced by Mumford Sheet Metal Works in Selbyville, Delaware, in 1950. It measures 10 feet in diameter and holds 180 gallons of oil and 800 chicken quarters. Made for the annual Delmarva Chicken Festival, it was retired in 1998 ( replaced by a smaller, Teflon lined pan) after frying over a hundred tons of chicken. Above is then Governor Elbert Carvel at the pan’s Christening.

The First Broiler House

In 1915, chickens and coops were used primarily for the eggs that they could produce. Chicken was considered a delicacy.

In February of 1923, an Oceanview, Delaware housewife, Celia Steele had the novel idea of raising entire flocks of broilers (young chickens) and selling them while still young enough to ask a premium price. She started with a flock of five hundred birds that sold for sixty-two cents a pound.

Wilmer Steele, Celia's husband, was a member of the U.S. Coast Guard stationed at the Bethany Beach Life Saving Station. He was a local from Baltimore Hundred, and noticed that his wife's success with her experiment was impressive. In 1924, he spent his off duty time assisting Celia, and they raised over one thousand birds and sold them for fifty-seven cents per pound (the equivalent of close to $15.00 per pound in today's economy). According to one historian, by 1927 the Steele farm had the capacity for over 25,000 broilers. After 1935, the Steele family owned seven farms and could produce over 250,000 broilers.

Thus developed part of the modern food production economy. As many historians have noted, industry and agriculture are the same thing in Sussex County; in 1941, 24 million chickens were produced. By 1944 this had increased to over 60 million per year. In 2002 the number of broilers sold from Sussex County was 223,678,004.

Sussex County Delaware is not only the home of the first broiler house but continues to rank as the number one broiler producing county in the United States.

The Nation’s First Divided Highway

At the dawn of the automobile age, Delaware had few paved roads. Travelers found most of Kent and Sussex counties impassable during bad weather. In 1908 Thomas Coleman du Pont, a descendant of E. I. du Pont, two-time U.S. Senator and a visionary engineer offered to build a modern highway the length of the state and donate it to Delaware’s citizens. He envisioned a grand boulevard with separate north- and southbound lanes, trolley lines, and pathways for horse-drawn vehicles. While other philanthropists started schools, libraries, parks, and hospitals, Coleman du Pont said, "I will build a monument a hundred miles high and lay it on the ground." He was close. The DuPont Highway measured 96.7 miles.

Coleman du Pont paid nearly $4 million of his own money toward its completion, even after turning the project over to the newly created Delaware State Highway Department. Although only a two-lane road as finally completed in 1924, the Du Pont Highway pioneered modern roadway construction. Farmers and merchants in southern Delaware benefited most from the new highway that directly linked them to northern markets. Encouraged by the highway’s success, the newly formed State Highway Department began paving other roads throughout the state and by the 1930s Delaware led the nation in highway construction.

In 1933 the State Highway Department completed widening the Du Pont Highway between Dover and Wilmington, making it the world’s first divided highway.

The First American Christmas Seal Was Designed and Sold In Delaware

In 1907 Wilmington, the tuberculosis sanatorium was a small shack on the banks of the Brandywine River in Delaware. Joseph Wales, one of the doctors serving the hospital thought his cousin Emily Bissell might be able to raise some much needed money since she was active in the American Red Cross in Wilmington. To overcome peoples’ preconceived notion that TB was a death sentence and a hopeless cause she suggested the sale of small seals, during the Christmas season, to raise funds for fighting TB. She sat down and sketched a design. On December 7, 1907, the first seals were sold at a table in the corridor of the Wilmington post office. The campaign raised over $3,000.