That’s right: today, Aug. 1, marks the County of Orange’s 130th birthday. Though as you can see from the much-too-small cake above that county officials actually celebrated the event on July 30. How they managed to cut that cake into 18,000 slices–one for every county employee–is beyond us.
“From the Orange County Sheriff’s Department Deputies to our OC Health Care Agency Blue Shirt Homeless Outreach Teams, all 18,000 County employees and Orange County Employees Association members are an integral part of serving you successfully every day,” 1st District Supervisor Andrew Do said in a July 30 newsletter. “Thank you for 130 years and here’s to another great 130 years!”
The vote to incorporate, though controversial (the cost to taxpayers was the biggest issue, according to reporting at the time), wasn’t close. In fact, those voting to form the county won by a six to one margin, according to the June 5, 1889 San Francisco Examiner (isn’t Newspapers.com just wonderful?)
“The only opposition was at Anaheim, Fullerton and Fairview,” the Examiner reported. “Out of nearly 3,000 votes in the county the anti-divisionists polled less than 500.”
Others celebrating their 130th birthday this year include the Statue of Liberty and the corpses of Charlie Chaplin, Thomas Hart Benton, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Adolf Hitler. Happy birthday to everyone (well, except for Hitler’s corpse)!
Anthony Pignataro has been a journalist since 1996. He spent a dozen years as Editor of MauiTime, the last alt weekly in Hawaii. He also wrote three trashy novels about Maui, which were published by Event Horizon Press. But he got his start at OC Weekly, and returned to the paper in 2019 as a Staff Writer.