Where Trouble Was Brewing
Jeff Gerritt, editor of the Palestine Herald-Press, won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in May. He received the award for a series of editorials revealing medical neglect and horrific deaths of county jail inmates in the paper’s own Anderson County and other county jails in rural Texas, where inmates are awaiting trial.
Gerritt had stepped out for a cup of coffee before word came that he had won one of journalism’s highest honors. The Herald-Press publisher greeted an astonished Gerritt with the news in the newspaper parking lot when he returned. “I just broke down and fell to the ground,” he said.
eBay Turns 25
The online auction site launched Labor Day weekend 1995 in San Jose, California.
Did You Know? Company founder Pierre Omidyar listed a broken laser pointer for $1. It ended up selling for $14.83—the site’s first transaction.
Bales of Benjamins
There’s enough cotton in one bale, which weighs about 500 pounds, to make about 300,000 $100 bills. The Texas High Plains produces 3.7 million cotton bales a year.
By the Numbers
More than 4,500 films have been shot in Texas since 1910.
Roll Call
The American City Business Journals compiled enrollment figures for U.S. colleges and compared the 2019 numbers to those from 2013 to determine the fastest-growing colleges in Texas.
Texas’ top five with their enrollment increase
- University of Texas: Permian Basin, Odessa 75%
- University of Texas at Tyler: Tyler 52%
- Angelo State University: San Angelo 51%
- Parker University: Dallas 46%
- University of Texas Rio Grande Valley: Edinburg 44%
Pass the Guac
Our recipes this month feature Game Day Eats. The largest crowd ever to see a football game in Texas, 110,633, was at Kyle Field in College Station on October 11, 2014, when Texas A&M University hosted Mississippi. Kyle Field is the fourth-largest college football stadium in the country with a capacity of 102,733. Our dishes may not feed quite that many.
Peace at Last
A Texan signed the peace treaty that ended World War II 75 years ago. On September 2, 1945, aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Adm. Chester Nimitz of Fredericksburg signed the treaty with Japan that ended the war.
Whitehouse Chief
Many people know Patrick Mahomes is the star quarterback for the Super Bowl-champion Kansas City Chiefs. Before that, the kid from Whitehouse, southeast of Tyler, was a record-setting QB at Texas Tech University. He turns 25 on September 17. Before enrolling at Tech, Mahomes, also a standout baseball player, was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in 2014.
