Food
The Swedish Meatballs Controversy
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Where are meatballs from, and why does it matter? Social media users frenziedly grappled with these very questions on 29th April, 2018, when Sweden’s official Twitter account proclaimed: “Swedish meatballs are actually based on a recipe King Charles XII brought home from Turkey in the early 18th century. Let’s stick to the facts!” Does this …
The Prince Who Drowned in Wine
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Sentenced to death for treason against his brother King Edward IV, George, Duke of Clarence was executed on 18th February, 1478 – and, according to legend, chose to be drowned in a butt of his favorite tipple: malmsey wine. It was apt punishment for years of plotting against his brother alongside his father-in-law, the Earl …
The Delia Smith Backlash
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TV chef Delia Smith built a stellar career on the success spawned from her first book, ‘How To Cheat At Cooking’ in 1971. So, when she published a reboot on 15th February, 2008, it seemed a shoo-in to sell bucketloads (which it did) – but not, perhaps, attract controversy (which it REALLY did). By seemingly …
Inventing The Credit Card
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Diners Club, the world’s first credit card, was used for the first time at Major’s Cabin Grill in New York City on February 8th, 1950. Perhaps at odds with the debonair image the company went on to cultivate, the first iteration was made of cardboard, and required three signatories. Frank X McNamara claimed to have …
The Hashish Club
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Theophile Gautier’s account of ‘green jam’ cannabis consumption at the drug-addled dinner parties of the ‘Club des Hachichins’ – alongside literary figures Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac – was first published in Revue des Deux Mondes on 1st February, 1846. The Club, founded by psychiatrist Dr Jacques Joseph Moreau to establish the psychedelic effects …
McMoscow
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McDonald’s invested $50million to establish an outpost in the Soviet Union, and after 14 years of preparation, their first Russian restaurant opened in Moscow’s Pushkinskaya Square on 31st January, 1990. 30,000 residents lined up in the freezing cold to be amongst the first customers to get a taste of America – although the restaurant, at …
Who Ate All The Mayonnaise?
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Michelle “Cardboard Shell” Lesco achieved her third world record in competitive eating on 13th December, 2018 – this time for consuming the most amount of mayonnaise in three minutes. She consumed 2,448g – the equivalent of 3.5 jars, and 16,000 calories. Her previous titles were the fastest time to eat a bowl of pasta (26.69 …
Welcome To Wetherspoons
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Now a 900 strong pub chain, with an annual turnover of £1.6 billion, J.D. Wetherspoon is a big name on the British high street. But when entrepreneur Tim Martin flung open the doors of the first branch in London’s Muswell Hill on 9th December, 1979, it was known as ‘Tim’s Free House’ – and closed …
The Potato-Porting Polymath
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Renaissance Man Thomas Harriot was noted for many things – devising the theory of refraction, creating mathematical symbols including ‘greater than’ and ‘lesser than’, and being the first person to draw the Moon through a telescope. But the contribution for which he’s most remembered is bringing back the potato to Britain – an event commonly …
There’s Poison In My Pint
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Thousands of beer barrels were emptied into the streets across Lancashire on 1st December, 1900 – when it finally dawned on people that the cheap stout they’d been drinking was contaminated with arsenic. Over 6,000 members of the public were poisoned, mostly across Manchester and Salford, thanks to the practice of breweries padding out the barley …