This week in 1922, the birthday of Kurt Vonnegut.
He wrote some of the most striking and acclaimed novels of his time, like Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five and Breakfast of Champions.
But before he became a literary giant, he tried his hand at something more small-scale: a board game.
This was in the early 1950s.
Vonnegut had published his first novel, but it hadn’t sold well.
And writers have to eat, so he tried out a few non-writing jobs to pay the bills, like public relations and briefly running a Saab dealership.
But he also put his creativity to work on a game he called GHQ, or General Headquarters.
It’s sort of a 20th Century update on chess: each side has a set of military pieces that can move across the board in unique ways, trying to capture the other side’s headquarters.
He had high hopes for a big board game windfall, but no game company purchased the rights.
Fortunately, Vonnegut did eventually make it big as a writer, though it’s interesting that the guy who came up with this military-themed board game went on to write some of the most passionately anti-war books ever written.
In fact, he was working on one of those antiwar books, The Sirens of Titan, at the same time he was trying to pitch his board game.
Fast forward to 2012.
Game designer and historian Geoff Engelstein had heard about a Kurt Vonnegut board game, and he got permission to go through the writer’s papers at Indiana University.
That’s where he found the original instructions and sketches for GHQ.
He worked with Vonnegut’s family and bookstore chain Barnes and Noble to bring this long-lost board game to store shelves.
But in true Vonnegut fashion, if you play the game and lose, you can’t get mad – you just say “so it goes.”
Today in 2017, an unusual team-up for a cause in Argentina.
McDonald’s was holding an annual event in which it gave all the proceeds from that day’s Big Mac sales toward helping children with cancer.
They got an assist from the country’s Burger King franchises, who decided to declare “A Day Without Whoppers.”
If a customer tried to order a Whopper, they said, please instead go to McDonald’s today and buy a Big Mac for charity.
Kurt Vonnegut’s Lost Board Game Is Finally for Sale (Open Culture)
Burger King embraces McDonald’s charity in ‘Day Without Whopper’ in Argentina (The Drum)
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