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Cleopatra Lived Closer to the Computer Age than to the Pyramids, and Other Atypical History Facts

Khalid Elhassan December 30, 2019 33 min

19. Until 2016, the Cubs Had Not Won a World Series Since The Days of the Ottoman Empire

Istanbul in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. History Today

By 1945, the Cubs were already in the midst of a long title drought, having last won a World Series in 1908. In 1908, Babe Ruth had still not made his MLB debut. Teddy Roosevelt was still in the White House. Mark Twain was still alive. Russia was ruled by a Tsar. Kaiser Wilhelm II still ran Germany. A sultan still headed the Ottoman Empire. A Hapsburg emperor still ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In Vienna, a young weirdo named Adolf Hitler was chasing his dreams of becoming an artist. Archduke Franz Ferdinand was still alive, and nobody had dreamt of WWI, let alone its sequel, which had concluded only a month before Murphy was kicked out of Wrigley Field. By 1945, things had already changed drastically since the Chicago Cubs’ last World Series victory. Sianis’ dire warning became known as the “Curse of the Billy Goat”, and it took the Cubs’ already long World Series drought, and extended it another 71 years, until 2016.

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.