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

This map shows the general distribution of the native tribes that lived on Maryland’s lower eastern shore during Rev. Maynard Hyghcock’s time.

This map shows the “continental divide” of Delaware...rivers east of the line flow east and rivers west of the line flow west.

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

As you can probably guess from the big money one can make as a Fence Viewer, it is one of the most highly sought patronage positions in Delaware’s political graft system.

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.

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.