The Curse of Billy Penn was an alleged curse used to explain the failure of major professional sports teams based in Philadelphia to win championships since the March 1987 construction of the One Liberty Place skyscraper, which exceeded the height of William Penn's statue atop Philadelphia City Hall.
The curse apparently ended on October 29, 2008, when the Philadelphia Phillies won the 2008 World Series, a year and four months after a statuette of the William Penn figure atop City Hall was affixed to the final beam during the June 2007 topping-off of the Comcast Center, currently the tallest building in the city.
Read more about Curse Of Billy Penn: Origins of The Curse, The Curse Lifted, Decoration of Penn
Famous quotes containing the words curse of, curse, billy and/or penn:
“It is the curse of a certain order of mind, that it can never rest satisfied with the consciousness of its ability to do a thing. Still less is it content with doing it. It must both know and show how it was done.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“There are lone figures armed only with ideas, sometimes with just one idea, who blast away whole epochs in which we are enwrapped like mummies. Some are powerful enough to resurrect the dead. Some steal on us unawares and put a spell over us which it takes centuries to throw off. Some put a curse on us, for our stupidity and inertia, and then it seems as if God himself were unable to lift it.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
““Although I’d lie lapped up in linen
A deal I’d sweat and little earn
If I should live as live the neighbours,”
Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“the pomp
Of pain swells like the Indies, or a plum”
—Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989)