May 28
A Clarification for Steve
Steve (is he back from Africa?) B. wrote to point out, as an offended southerner, that the Mason-Dixon line refers very specifically to the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Of course Steve is correct in the exact sense (ref. Wikipedia), but not in the colloquial sense:
From 1820 onward the name Mason-Dixon Line came in general colloquial usage to mean the boundary between the free states and the slave states. It therefore included not only the original Mason-Dixon Line as surveyed by Mason and Dixon but also that part of the Pennsylvania/Ohio border from the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania to where the Ohio river crosses this border, the route of the Ohio River from that point to where it flows into the Mississippi, the eastern, northern and western borders of Missouri, and the 36 degrees 30 minutes parallel westward from the southwestern corner of Missouri
… so I stand by my colloquial usage :)
from http://www.johncletheroe.org/usa_can/usa/mas_dix.htm
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