Kaplan's Deli was a dining institution in Chicago for much of the 20th century. Apparently they held a Food-A-Rama in Sioux Falls, Iowa on May 20, 1956 and printed matchbooks for the occasion. The biggest news of the day was the US conducting the first ever air drop of a hydrogen bomb, at Bikini Atoll.
May 20, 1956 was a bad day for baseball for the Upper Midwest teams. (Actually, except for the Braves and to some extent the White Sox, it was a bad decade for major league teams in the region). The KC A's and Milwaukee Braves all lost, and both Chicago teams dropped doubleheaders. So the "honor" of having a card pictured with the matchbook goes to Jim King, who homered off of Hall of Famer Don Drysdale today. King is largely forgotten today, but he was a pretty good slugger for some bad Cubs and Senators teams in the late 1950s and the 1960s.
Was the bikini the start of the sexual revolution? Or was it the pill?
ReplyDeleteThat's some pretty big news of the day!
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