Happy birthday, my fellow West Virginians!

For those of you not fortunate enough to be raised here, West Virginia became a state on June 20, 1863, the only state to be formed from one of the Confederate states during the Civil War. As we say here, we're the only state that succeeded in seceding. The differences between the eastern, flat landed, slave-holding portion of Virginia and the western, mountainous, poorer parts of that state meant that the western Virginians had been trying to separate from Virginia from the early 1800s.

Today is our sesquicentennial, our 150th birthday. So raise a glass to the state that brought you Jerry West and Sam Huff, John Chambers (CEO of Cisco) and Alex Schoenbaum (founder of Shoney's Restaurants), Don Knotts and Soupy Sales, Lawrence Kasden and Morgan Spurlock, Herb Morrison (radio reporter of the Hindenburg disaster) and Hoda Kotb, Pearl Buck and John Knowles, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Booker T. Washington, Stonewall Jackson and Chuck Yeager, Robert Byrd and Cyrus Vance, Homer Hickam and Jon McBride, John Forbes Nash and James Rumsey, Mother Jones and Walter Reuther, Nancy Hanks and Anna Jarvis (founder of Mother's Day), and the whole Hatfield clan.

Happy birthday to us all!