November 1, 1957: The Mackinac Bridge Opens

November 1, 1957: The Mackinac Bridge opens, finally providing a road connection between Michigan's Lower and Upper Peninsulas. (Peninsulii?)

This makes it far easier for people in the UP -- "Yoopers" -- to go down to Detroit, Ann Arbor or East Lansing to see their home-State teams. Previously, it was easier for them to drive across the UP, and down the west coast of Lake Michigan, to Green Bay, Milwaukee, Chicago and Minneapolis.

Example: With the bridge, from Sault Sainte Marie, it's 346 miles down the "Mitten" of Michigan to Detroit. Without it, a Tigers, Lions or Red Wings fan (the Pistons had just moved from Fort Wayne to Detroit) would have had to cross the Canadian border, 440 miles just to get to Toronto, and then another 244 miles to Detroit, for a total of 684 miles. In contrast, from "The Soo" to Green Bay, it was 283 miles; to Milwaukee, 400; to Chicago, 491; and to Minneapolis, 540.

Still, old habits die hard. Football coach Steve Mariucci, born in 1955 and a native of Iron Mountain, where his best friend and high school and college teammate was Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo, has said that the UP was still Packer territory well into the 1960s. As late as 2018, this was still the case for, at the least, the western half of the Peninsula.

The "Mighty Mac" carries Interstate 75 over the Mackinac Straits. It has appeared on Michigan's license plates. And that's pronounced "MACK-in-aw," not "MACK-in-ak.")

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November 1, 1957 was a Friday. Country singer Lyle Lovett was born.

The baseball season ended the month before. Football was in midweek. There were no games scheduled in the NHL. There were 2 games played in the NBA. The Cincinnati Royals beat the St. Louis Hawks, 99-92 at the Cincinnati Gardens, despite Bob Pettit's 45 points. And the Syracuse Nationals beat the Minneapolis Lakers, 113-100 at the Onondaga County War Memorial Auditorium (now the Upstate Medical University Arena) in Syracuse, New York.