Joe's Daily U.S. History Lesson -- June 20

JUNE 20 -- 1863 -- West Virginia joins the United States; 2015 Binghamton, NY owns biggest mashed potato plate; 1947 Bugsy Siegel assassinated

JUNE 20 1863 – Happy Birthday West Virginia. This is the only state created by carving out territory from another state, without that state’s permission. On October 24, 1861, in a public referendum, voters overwhelmingly supported the creation of the new state, to be called Kanawha. The following month, a convention at Wheeling changed the name to West Virginia.

A hundred years later, a Beckley newspaper suggested the name of the state be changed to either Kanawha or Lincoln because so many people believed West Virginia was the western part of Virginia, and not a separate state.

In 1928 Minnie Buckingham Harper of Welch became the first black woman legislator in the U. S. She was appointed by the Governor to the House of Delegates to fill the vacancy caused by the death of her husband.

On January 26, 1960, Danny Heater of Burnsville High School scored 135 points in a high school basketball game, earning him an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records. The first brick pavement in the U. S. was laid in Charleston in 1870 by a private citizen at his own expense.

Each October several hundred parachutists jump 876 feet from the New River Gorge Bridge near Fayetteville on Bridge Day,

West Virginia’s largest single-day event, which attracts about 100,000 spectators. Automobile traffic is rerouted for the event, which has been held since 1980. The bridge is the second highest in the United States, behind the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado. Four people have died during Bridge Day jumps, the most recent in 1987 and 2006. Bridge Day was canceled in 2001 because of fears of a terrorist attack.

Finally last fact about West Virginia, • In November 2014 18-year-old Samira Blair was elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates, becoming the youngest elected lawmaker in the United States. She trounced her 44-year-old opponent 63 percent to 30 percent. She beat a two-term incumbent in the primary when she was still 17 years old, too young to vote for herself.

2015 – Three high school juniors in New York dish up the biggest mashed potato plate ever. Jason Lin, Colin Stockdale, and Tyler Hubeny and d Evan Armstrong presented 2,641 lb. of smashed spuds, for a fundraiser at the Union-Endicott High School in Binghamton, NY on this day in 2015. This potatoes posse, which by the way was about the size of a walrus, raised over a thousand dollars. 1975 – Jaws is released. This Stephen Spielberg movie about a man-eating shark that terrorized swimmers in a fictional beach in Jersey shocked America so badly no one wanted to get in the water all summer.

True story! Jaws has been labeled one of the best and scariest movies of all time according the New York Times, Bravo network, Chicago Film Critics Association, Empire magazine, and more.

1947 – Bugsy Siegel goes down. Bugsy was a Jewish American mobster He was known as one of the most infamous and feared gangsters of his day. Siegel was one of the founders and leaders of Murder, Inc. and was a bootlegger during the Prohibition. After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, he turned to gambling, moved to Las Vegas, and handled and financed some of the original casinos.

On June 20, 1947, Bugsy was sitting at his girlfriend’s house in Beverly Hills reading the LA Times, when an assailant fired at him through the window with a 30-caliber military M1 carbine, hitting him many times, including twice in the head. No one was charged with the murder, and the crime remains officially unresolved.