Clip of the Day

Ice Cream On-A-Stick Celebrates It’s Fifth Birthday Youngstown, Ohio 1926 It’s a Big Birthday for one of our favorite treats, and we cheer Good Humor founder Harry B. Burt, Sr. the owner of an ice cream and candy business in downtown Youngstown, Ohio for creating a smooth chocolate coating that was compatible with ice cream. The story goes, that Burt’s daughter declared the frozen samples too messy to eat. Burt Sr. borrowed a frozen wooden stick from his father’s previous invention the Jolly Boy Suckers. The stick was frozen in to the vanilla ice cream bar, thus creating the “Good Humor” bar. It wasn’t easy, it took three years and a personal trip to Washington D.C. by Burt himself with a five gallon pail of “Good Humor” bars to finally secure the exclusive rights to ”ice cream-on-a-stick.” Within days,12 chauffeur-driven ice cream trucks were selling the bars to kids all over Youngstown. The trucks all had bells, including one from Harry Jr’s. Bobsled. The white clean uniformed look of the drivers, and the unique product has been an immediate success. Expansion is going very well, and you can now buy a franchise for $ 100. Happy Birthday to Our Favorite Afternoon Treat.

In 1973, 55 year-old Bobby Riggs, a former tennis champion and # 1 player in the world played the role of male chauvinist and promoter, and challenged the top women players of the day. He claimed that the women’s game was inferior and that even at the age of 55, the top female players could not beat him. Riggs’ defeated Margaret Court the top ranked women’s player at the time in straight sets and was soon on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Finally, Billie Jean King accepted Riggs’ challenge. On September 20, 1973 Riggs and King played “The Battle of the Sexes” in the Houston Astrodome, in front of over 30,000 fans. The match was televised worldwide and an estimated 50 million viewers tuned in to the $100,000 winner takes-all battle. Playing up to the battle of sexes theme, King entered the court while carried aloft in a chair held by four bare-chested muscle men dressed in the garb of ancient slaves, while Riggs entered in a rickshaw drawn by scantily-clad models. Once the match started however, it was all Billie Jean King, as she defeated Riggs in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.

Make Way for Ducklings The Swan Boats are the harbinger of spring to native Bostonians. Famed in the stories Make Way for Ducklings and The Trumpet of the Swan, the Swan Boats are the only boats of their kind in the world! For over 120 years, the Swan Boats have appeared in Boston’s Public Garden, the first public botanical garden in the United States, established in 1837 This Boston tradition dates back to 1877 when Robert Paget was granted a boat for hire license by the City of Boston. He developed a catamaran which housed a paddle wheel arrangement that was foot-propelled. To cover the captain, Robert suggested a swan! The idea came to him from his familiarity with the opera Lohengrin. The opera is based on a medieval German story in which Lohengrin, a knight of the Grail crosses a river in a boat drawn by a swan to defend the innocence of his heroine, Princess Elsa. Robert lived only one year after the first Swan Boats were launched. His wife Julia, a young widow with four children, assumed full management of the new enterprise. In 1914, Julia's youngest son, John carried on the family tradition. The current fleet consists of six boats, the oldest of which was built by John in 1918. John and his wife Ella raised six children, all of whom spent many summers working on the boats. John’s son Paul took over the helm in 1969. The tradition, which began over 120 years ago, has grown to become a symbol of Boston and the city's unique blend of history and beauty.