Old School Thursday: Really Random Edition

Well, happy National Soup Day. In the UK, at least, though it certainly would be appropriate in the US – not only is it freezing outside, but today is also the 19th anniversary of Campbell’s producing its 20 billionth can of tomato soup. I wonder what that number’s up to now.

But for those of us in the US, it’s actually National Strawberry Ice Cream Day. I like strawberry ice cream quite a bit, but I think the ice cream lobby maybe should have pushed for a day in the summer, don’t you?

In other news, today is full of random bits and pieces. It’s the birthday of William Prout (1785), who first classified food into carbohydrates, fats and proteins. A hundred years later today, in 1889, American Daniel Johnson was issued a patent for a Rotary Dining Table for ship use – the table and all the chairs rotated so the server could stand in one spot and the table would move so each person could be served. Not something you see every day.

Possibly most randomly, today in 1919, there was a “Great Molasses Flood” in Boston, when a storage tank burst and the city was flooded with 2 million gallons of molasses. As funny an image as that might be, 21 people died in the flood, which took six months and millions of dollars to clean up.Oh, and just to cap it off today in 1986, Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn came on the market.

Big day, huh?

UPDATE: And this is interesting. I just got an email from my friend Brad (the one who works for Ocean Spray) - he lives in Boston and said that sometimes, on hot days, you can still smell molasses in the North End. Crazy. I can't believe I'd never heard anything about this before!