Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, Rediscovered.

Today, let's go back to the fall of 1787. It had been a long week after an exhausting summer.

On September 14th, delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia put down their quill pens.

They had just completed the final draft of the U.S. Constitution, which they would sign three days later.

It was a Friday night, and one delegate named George Washington promptly went on the bender that began America.

The founder's unofficial watering hole was called City Tavern, located four blocks from Independence Hall.

That night, Washington was the guest of the light horse of Philadelphia, the volunteer cavalry

troops that had crossed the Delaware and had spent an infamous winter at Valley Forge.

The first troop, as a unit came to be known, could fight, and boy could they drink.

Just listen to their tab from the end of the night. Fifty-four bottles of Madeira

wine. 60 bottles of Claret. 22 bottles of Porter, 12 bottles of beer, and eight

bottles of cider and seven bowls of punch, both of which were probably alcoholic.

In all, according to the itemized bill for the evening from the troops' archives,

more than 45 gallons of booze were served to 55 men who also got dinner, fruit, relishes, and olives.

The nine musicians and seven waiters ran up their own liquor bill,

21 additional bottles of wine that the troop gladly paid for.

There was a charge for cigars and candles

and another charge for all the wine glasses they broke that night.

Professor Gordon Lloyd of Pepperdine University found a summary of the group's bar tab

while combing through boxes of old papers at Philadelphia's Independence Hall.

And he added up the bill.

It came to 89 pounds, four shillings, and two pence. That's about $15,400 in today's money.

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