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America Wanted to Nuke the Moon and Other Weird History

Khalid Elhassan October 15, 2020 32 min

United States - List of nuclear weapons tests of China — Nuking the Moon. Stillness in the Storm

2. Weird Incentives for a Weird Team

Alston All Stars shortstop Joseph Guzzardo. Death Row All Stars

The Alston All Stars’ team captain, George Saban, had to come up with incentives that were tailored to his weird collection of players. During team practice, following some poor plays from shortstop Joseph Guzzardo, the convict captain and warden’s friend let everybody know the consequences of screw-ups. As the team’s star player and death row inmate Joseph Seng described the pep talk in a letter he wrote from prison:

“Mistakes on the field would not be tolerated … He [Saban] told us that prisoners who make errors that cost the team a game would have more time added to their sentence. Winning would lead to reduced time and stays of execution“. In his capacity as bookie, Saban also made sure that this information was communicated to the town’s gamblers, so they would know that the players were playing for their lives.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.