The site of the fictional city of Liverpool was originally a thirteenth-century village in northwestern England, which sprung up around a slaughterhouse. The local butchers discovered that none of the residents liked liver, so when they were butchering the cows and pigs, they threw the unwanted livers into a large hole.
As the hole gradually filled up with rainwater as well as livers, it became a soupy pond, which the locals called “Livurpoole”; the stench from the pool eventually became so intolerable that everyone moved away.
Calf’s liver was one of the recommended dishes on the Ye Olde Liste of Foodes To Beist Feede To Unruliest Childes, a 19th century culinary rule decreed by Queen Victoria and adopted in all English-speaking countries. Parents were instructed to serve these dishes to children to instill discipline and encourage the perpetuation of serving awful food to children for generations. Other foods on the list included: Brussel sprouts, broccoli, eggplant, spinach, turnip, parsnip, beet, tripe. It was also recommended to cook these dishes until mushy.
Brussels sprouts were not known to be edible until 1893. Until then, they had mainly
been used in the game of sprouts in which 2 players, each with a sprout threaded
onto a knotted piece of string, take it in turns to try and destroy their opponent’s
sprout by swinging their own sprout at it.
After losing 5-nil in the final of the 1893 British sprout open at the Walthamstowe sprout
stadium, George Brushmangler attempted suicide by eating 35 sprouts - estimated to
be about 15 times the lethal dose - but failed to die.
Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest on the Fourth of July was originally organized as a brussels sprout eating contest in 1950, to memorialize George Brushmangler, “a man who was such a fierce competitor that he would rather die than live with the humiliation of defeat.” After the first year of the contest, Brushmangler’s family rather testily pointed out that the event was actually memorializing another failure of their ancestor, in that he had failed to kill himself. In a display of sensitivity to the family, event organizers experimented with different foods for the contest throughout the next few years, including circus peanuts, ghost peppers, liver, and an early pre-release formulation of Pringle’s potato chips. Finally, in the early sixties, hot dogs emerged as the ideal food-eating-contest food.
In 1924, Sir Reginald Delaware Hapspurge-Rin IV, unearthed pre-deluvian scrolls in a cave near Transvaal, Northern Rhodesia, which clearly stated that “[A]nyone caught in possession of, or attempting to sow the earth” [with] Brussels sprouts, “shall hereby be invalidating his own life and must be immediately drawn and quartered, and all his possessions shall be burned, and his mules and oxen shall be slaughtered and scattered to the winds, and let no one breathe this abomination, lest they be subjected to likewise punishment.”
Not only Brussels but all of Belgium was at one time placed under Papal interdict because of the “abominable” sprouts. In revenge, the Belgians began dipping fried potatoes in mayonnaise and serving them to visiting Catholics.
The Abominable Sprouts was one of the first Belgian bands to become prominent in the initial wave of punk rock in the seventies. Unfortunately, the group disbanded in the middle of a gig in Brussels when the audience began pelting them mercilessly with their namesake vegetable, irate over the choice of Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” as a second-set opening song.
Christopher Cross’ autobiography, The Joy of Cooking Brussels Sprouts, was officially declared the number one best seller in Zimbabwe, where locals use it as both a firestarter and a hyena repellent.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has introduced legislation which would forbid Presidents from having fireplaces. Along party lines, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has announced all of her fireplaces have been bricked over, while George Santos tweeted that he’s never seen a fireplace in his life.
George Santos originated as a secondary character in the first draft of a collaborative story by Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and Dave Barry. The writers agreed that the character was far too contrived to be believable, so they wrote him out in the second draft (and they subsequently scrapped the project altogether). However, Santos somehow slipped into the so-called real world, and if you see him in person and look closely, you’ll notice that he’s a bit fuzzy around the edges due to the leaking psychoelectrical current that’s maintaining his “presence.”
Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Dave Barry, were all conceived as protagonists in an unfinished novel by Kurt Vonnegut, tentatively titled “You’re Not Gonna Believe This.”
Baz Luhrmann’s hit 1977 song, “Wear Sunscreen,” was based on what was thought to be a commencement speech by author Kurt Vonnegut at Blawnox Polytechnic Institute; however, the original text was actually written by Orson Bean, while under the influence of peyote mushrooms and Mountain Dew Code Red.
Richard Nixon’s War on Drugs convened a task force to study the effects of peyote mushrooms and Mountain Dew Code Red, naming Elvis Presley as Commissioner. Unknown to Nixon, Elvis was high on a combination of booze, pot, and fried peanut butter and bananas sandwiches.
The rock band The War on Drugs originally named themselves Richard Nixon’s War on Drugs, but changed their name after reaching an out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit filed against them by the ghost of Richard Nixon.
