Of course now I will have to dig out my old VHS tape of “The Vicar of Dibley” tonight and rewatch this scene where Alice is reading from a very old Bible, and where the vicar hastily intervenes before Alice comes to the word “succor.” That bit starts at minute 2:00.
This reminds me of the day the Philippines moved the International Date Line and thereby skipped 31 December 1844.
The Spanish had “discovered” the Philippines by sailing west from Spain. For three hundred years, the archipelago was administered via the Viceroyalty of New Spain (i.e., Mexico) and hence it made sense to follow the dates coming from the west. Meanwhile, the Portuguese, British, Dutch, and French colonizers all sailed east to Asia and therefore all of their Asian colonies and possessions were a day ahead of the Spanish.
After Mexican independence in 1821, the Philippines came to be administered directly from Spain. With increasing trade with her Asian neighbors, the Governor-General of the Philippines decreed that it would be more advantageous to switch from American day reckoning to Asian day reckoning and so Monday 30 December 1844 was followed immediately by 1 January 1845.
The s-f thing also leads to at least one ambiguity of meaning in Shakespeare. In The Tempest, when Ferdinand has decided to marry Miranda and settle on the island, he says “So great a father and a wiſe / would make this place a paradise”. He’s probably saying that Prospero would be a great father and a wise [father], but it also makes sense for him to be saying that Prospero is great, and so is Miranda.
The article you cite itself points out that there is no evidence that there were any actual riots against the change. Historians have looked and failed to find any.
The world’s largest concentration of gold is at 33 Liberty Street in New York City, stored at the Federal Reserve Bank. The Fed doesn’t own any of it, but stores it for the U.S. and other governments ( for a fee if course).
There are currently 6000 tons of the precious metal there, about 3 percent of all the gold ever mined.
I mentioned this once on the SDMB almost a year ago, but here’s the random fact. Anni-Frid of the band ABBA was born in a lebensborn. It was a program run in various camps by the Nazis during World War II, not just in Germany but in some other countries like Sweden. It had pregnant women who were married to, engaged to, dating, raped by, etc. German men, who were soldiers and perhaps other German men also. The idea was to breed as many Aryans (in the sense that Nazis used the term, which was completely different from the correct sense) as possible. The Nazis claimed that they made sure that the parents were Aryan. Anni-Frid was born in a lebensborn in Sweden. When she was about a year old, the war ended. The babies born there and their parents suddenly became very unpopular. Anni-Frid, her mother, and her mother’s mother moved to Norway, where she eventually joined ABBA.
I mentioned this once on the SDMB almost a year ago, but here’s the random fact. Anni-Frid of the band ABBA was born in a lebensborn. It was a program run in various camps by the Nazis during World War II, not just in Germany but in some other countries like Sweden. It had pregnant women who were married to, engaged to, dating, raped by, etc. German men, who were soldiers and perhaps other German men also. The idea was to breed as many Aryans (in the sense that Nazis used the term, which was completely different from the correct sense) as possible. The Nazis claimed that they made sure that the parents were Aryan. Anni-Frid was born in a lebensborn in Norway. When she was about a year old, the war ended. The babies born there and their parents suddenly became very unpopular. Anni-Frid, her mother, and her mother’s mother moved to Sweden where she eventually joined ABBA.
I still got one thing wrong, so it should have been:
I mentioned this once on the SDMB almost a year ago, but here’s the random fact. Anni-Frid of the band ABBA was born in a lebensborn. It was a program run in various camps by the Nazis during World War II, not just in Germany but in some other countries like Norway. It had pregnant women who were married to, engaged to, dating, raped by, etc. German men, who were soldiers and perhaps other German men also. The idea was to breed as many Aryans (in the sense that Nazis used the term, which was completely different from the correct sense) as possible. The Nazis claimed that they made sure that the parents were Aryan. Anni-Frid was born in a lebensborn in Norway. When she was about a year old, the war ended. The babies born there and their parents suddenly became very unpopular. Anni-Frid, her mother, and her mother’s mother moved to Sweden where she eventually joined ABBA.
TIL “proper” restaurant etiquette indicates there is no “bread course”; it is intended to be set aside and eaten along with your first course.
I don’t know how valid this is, but it’s what I was told, and I’m not sure I agree. Then why is it always served first, and not with the first course, if they’re intended to be eaten together?
Whereas I’ve heard that fancy restaurants don’t even serve bread at all, except in so far as it’s an ingredient in some other dish. In a good restaurant, you don’t need filler.
In less-fancy restaurants, practically speaking, they bring it out first because they can, and it makes the service seem quicker while you’re waiting for the parts they have to actually cook on order.
That’s true, but it’s also true that restaurants in the U.S. tend to conform to expectations of American customers. Their expectation is to get bread before their meal. Even fancy restaurants try to please customers with this little treat in my experience.
What was “etiquette” a hundred years ago can easily - and usually properly - be discarded.
P. S. I’ve never been to a super-fancy restaurant, but statistically speaking a rounded 0% of Americans have so “etiquette” don’t mean no nothing.
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