“You are going to lose this World Series and you are never going to win another World Series again. You are never going to win a World Series again because you insulted my goat.”—Billy Sianis

Bar owner Billy Sianis of Chicago was asked to leave Game 4 of the World Series between the Chicago Cubs and the Detroit Tigers at Wrigley Field on this date in 1945 because fans were complaining about the smell of his companion beside him: his goat.

Now, Mr. Sianis’ bar was called the Billy Goat Tavern, so he had been his own advertisement for years: He cultivated a goat-like goatee and he frequently brought a goat with him wherever he traveled in Chicago.

He always paid for two seats at any game he attended, one for himself and one for the goat. Before Game 4, he was allowed to parade on the field with the goat, who wore a sign that read, “We got Detroit’s goat.” (Seen above. Mr. Sianis is wearing a topcoat and goatee.)
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The Ten Commandments, the film directed by Cecil B. DeMille—his second film telling the story of Moses, the Exodus, and how Moses received the commandments—opened in theaters 60 years ago today. It was DeMille’s last film of his career and his biggest: it cost more to make than any other film up to that point, and when one accounts for inflation, it remains one of the top 10 highest grossing films of all time.

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Alonzo T. Cross received a patent (No. 232,804) for the final design of his stylographic pen on this date in 1880. It employed a spring to prevent ink inside the chamber from leaving the pen until the nib is pressed against a surface.
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Work on Mount Rushmore National Memorial began on this date in 1927. Gutzon Borglum, a sculptor from Idaho whose monumental works had made him noteworthy (a six-ton marble head of Abraham Lincoln had been exhibited in the White House during Theodore Roosevelt’s tenure), and several hundred workers started blasting granite from the the face of the mountain, where George Washington’s visage now rests.

Borglum died in May 1941 with the project unfinished—he intended to carve more than the presidents’ faces, but funding dried up after his death and his son suspended the work in its “unfinished” state at the end of that year. Over fourteen years, four-hundred workers drilled holes in the granite and exploded dynamite caps to loosen the rock face to fulfill Borglum’s monumental vision of a monument.
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