July 19th is National Daiquiri Day. Supposedly at the turn of the 20th century Jennings Cox, an American mining engineer, was working in the iron-mining town of Daiquiri on the coast of Cuba. While entertaining fellow Americans, Cox ran out of gin and mixed together the only ingredients he could find – rum, sugar and lime juice – thus inventing the daiquiri. I’m not sure the cocktail deserves a national holiday; but since July is Social Wellness Month, Family Reunion month and National Share A Sunset With Your Lover Month - cheers!
Although the first parking meter was installed in 1935, it didn’t become a national holiday. The parking meter was invented by lawyer/journalist Carl Magee in response to a parking problem in downtown Oklahoma City. City Officials were concerned that cars parked for weeks at a time were hurting business. A case contesting the legality of the 150 meters was quickly settled in the city’s favor and surprisingly stores on metered blocks saw increases in business. In 1941 there were 140,000 parking meters nationwide. Now there are millions. As for Magee, he left his 2 jobs and started a parking meter company. Obviously, he was ready for “change”.
Change is needed in labeling extra-virgin olive oils because they’re not all what they claim. To qualify, these oils can’t be rancid or contain other oils. Lab testing at the University of California/Davis found more than two-thirds of the 14 randomly selected, imported, major brands didn’t pass their tests. For example, oxidation tests tell whether oils are old or spoiled and fatty acid tests determine if other oils are present – such as soybean or sunflower. New U.S. regulations will conform to international standards; and starting in October 2010, all olive oils will be subject to random sampling – putting the “oil” in foil.
During WWII the British government put out the rumor eating carrots provided see-in-the-dark vision. British intelligence didn’t want Germany to know about the newly developed radar technology that was helping them shoot down enemy planes. Instead, the government publically said that one of its RAF pilots attributed his amazing accuracy to eating carrots. Then there’s spinach. Popeye’s big muscles were mistakenly attributed to eating spinach because of a German study saying spinach contained 10 times more iron than it actually contains – a mistake not corrected until 1937. It seems eating our words can sometimes be as good as eating our vegetables.
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