What Was the World Like the Last Time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series?

I did this last year with the New York Mets and the Kansas City Royals and since tonight is the first off night of the World Series I figured today would be a great day to do it for these two teams. We’ll start with the Chicago Cubs who have not won a World Series since the 1908 season. The world must have been a completely different place back then, no? Let’s hit the high spots from the year 1908 and see what the world was like the last time the Chicago Cubs won a World Series.

1908 was a leap year, which I always find interesting since 2016 was also a leap year, and it also marked the first time a long-distance radio message was sent from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Paris also held the first around-the-world car race that year as contestants began a race from New York to Paris in February of that year.

The 1908 Olympics were held in London with the Summer Olympics happening in July and the Winter Olympics happening in October.

Henry Ford produced his first Model T automobile at the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit, Michigan on September 27, 1908.

William Howard Taft defeated William Jennings Bryan in the 1908 election after Theodore Roosevelt declined to run for a third term.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were supposedly killed in Bolivia on November 6, 1908.

The University of Pittsburgh was organized in 1908. So was Madison College, the precursor to James Madison University.

Grover Cleveland passed away.

And the Chicago Cubs won back-to-back World Series championships… and their last… until maybe 2016.