Happy Birthday, West Virginny

Today is the 144th birthday of the Great State of West Virginia. It seems like only yesterday that West Virginia was just a little pup of a state, split from Virginia thanks to that little conflict known as the Civil War. Today, West Virginia is all grown up and Open for Business thanks to the governor. Let's look at a few historical facts about the great state, shall we? These are all supposedly true:

• The first brick street in the world was laid in Charleston, West Virginia, on October 3, 1870 on Summers Street between Kanawha Boulevard and Virginia Street.
• The first patent for a soda fountain was granted in 1833 to George Dulty of Wheeling, West Virginia.
• Mother's Day was originated in Grafton, West Virginia on May 10, 1908 by M. Anna Jarvis. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Mother's Day as a national holiday to be celebrated on the second Sunday in May.
• West Virginia has the second lowest cost of living rate in the United States.
• Bruce Hardwood Floors in Beverly, West Virginia has the world's largest hardwood flooring plant.
• The first spa open to the public was at Berkeley Springs, West Virginia (then Bath, Virginia) in 1756. Berkeley Springs has more massage therapists than lawyers and is the only place in the United States to boast, "George Washington bathed here."
• West Virginia University played the University of Pittsburgh in the first football game ever broadcast on the radio in 1921 on KDKA.
• The pepperoni roll was invented in the 1920s by Guiseppe Argiro, owner of the Country Club Bakery in Fairmont, WV. The first pepperoni rolls were sold to coal miners working near Fairmont.
• The first organized golf club in the U.S. was opened in 1884, when Oakhurst Links was constructed in White Sulphur Springs, WV.
• The first political speech broadcast over radio in the U.S. was given by the Democratic nominee for President, John W. Davis, in 1924. Davis broadcast his speech from the front yard of his home in Clarksburg, WV.
• On June 20, 1863, West Virginia became the 35th state in the union, the only state born out of the cauldron of the Civil War and formed as a result of a Presidential Proclamation.

Happy Birthday, West Virginia. Today you turn 144 but you don't look a day over 135!