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Looking ahead to Edwin Drake day

Sunday is the anniversary of my relative Edwin Drake drilling the first successful oil well at Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859.

Though a decent engineer, Drake was not a good businessman. So his descendants were not burdened with the curse of inherited wealth.

Ahem.

But he did pretty much sound the death knell for commercial whaling. For that reason alone, he deserves to be remembered.

* This story was originally published as a post from the blog "The Slice." Read all stories from this blog