Today in 1781 our country’s first president was elected.
Kind of.
And his name was Hanson.
Ok, let’s explain.
As we all know, George Washington was the first U.S. president under the U.S. Constitution, and he took office in 1789.
Back in 1781, the U.S. didn’t have that constitution yet.
Instead, there was the Articles of Confederation, and under that system the country had a president, though it wasn’t anything like the job we know today.
Back then the members of the Continental Congress elected one of their members as presiding officer for a year long term.
The “President of the United States in Congress Assembled” presided over congressional sessions, signed documents and took care of other ceremonial jobs.
The first person to hold that title was John Hanson of Maryland, though he thought the job was so tedious that he had to be talked out of resigning after just one week.
Neither he nor most of his successors are well remembered today, except for John Hancock.
But if you’re in Annapolis, Maryland sometime, there’s an exhibit at the Westin Hotel called the Hall of Presidents Before Washington.
You’ll get biographies and artifacts of each of these early figures.
If you need directions, try asking a local for the museum that’s in the neighborhood known as Presidents Hill.
No doubt there will be plenty of sports happening this weekend, be it high school, college or pro.
There’s always a lot of prep that goes into these games.
Just painting the lines on a soccer field can be a lot of work.
Except at places like the University of British Columbia.
They’re getting some help from a robot called Robby, which uses GPS to paint extremely precise lines on the field in just an hour.
Forget Washington; it’s Hanson or Huntington (Baltimore Sun)
Robby, a line-painting robot, blazes trail on UBC sports fields (GlobalNews)
