Thursday, January 17, 2008

Old School: Botanist Edition (aka "The Green Issue")

Ahh…it’s National Hot Buttered Rum Day. Couldn’t be a better day for it, either. In Baltimore, the sky is oppressively gray. I wish it would just go ahead and snow.

In other “today in history news”, January 17th is the saint’s day for St. Anthony the Abbot, patron saint of pigs and butchers. In other words, Hugh Fearnley-Whittinstall’s Christmas.

Possibly in piggy protest, today’s births and deaths are largely of a vegan variety. Get ready for it – it’s a long list with a lot of botanists. There’s German botanist and botanical glossarist Leonhard Fuchs (born 1501), Swiss botanist and plant classification developer Gaspard Bauhin (born 1560), English botanist and literal originator of “species” (the word, not the, well, species) John Ray (died 1705), inventor and farmer and statesman extraordinaire Benjamin Franklin (born 1706), “Father of America Horticulture” Peter Henderson (died 1890) and everybody’s favorite greens-eating sailor Popeye (“born” 1929).

Talk about green.Oh yeah, and for the carnivores out there: today in 2001, Norway lifted its ban on whale meat exports. Mmmmm…

Thanks, as always, to foodreference.com.

No comments:

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails