Barrels are traditionally made of oak, by a cooper, hence the common surname of people named for their trade. A cask can be of any size, and is a barrel only if it is a specified 32 gallon size and*** proportion,*** . Their characteristic shape arose from a practical need to roll them, and change direction while rolling, in order to effortlessly move them…
The Bowthorpe Oak in Lincolnshire is thought to be over 1,000 years old.
Whiskey is a distilled alcoholic beverage created out of fermented grain mash. While different kinds of grains may be used, such as barley, corn, rye or wheat, all of them are aged to perfection in wooden barrels generally made out of charred white oak.
Tom Baker, the English actor best known for his role as the fourth Doctor in Doctor Who, lived in the town of Rye in East Sussex from 1974 to 1981.
Although now 2 miles from the sea, Rye was in medieval times a sea port in confederation with the “Cinque Ports”. The five ports (cinque in Norman French) are Hastings, New Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich.
Rye, together with Winchelsea, form the “Antient Towns”, and then there are seven “Limbs” being Lydd, Folkestone, Faversham, Margate, Deal, Ramsgate, Brightlingsea and Tenterden.
The Confederations’ aim was originally to share trade and defense benefits but is now entirely ceremonial.
Sir Robert Menzies, on his retirement from the role of Prime Minister of Australia in 1966, was appointed Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. The position had been vacant since the death of Sir Winston Churchill the previous year.
Menzies was succeeded in the role by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.
Ken Kesey’s first Acid Test was held at the San Jose Filmore on January 3, 1966.
The bear in the Hoppity Hooper cartoons (created by Rocky and Bullwinkle creator Jay Ward) was named Fillmore.
Will Lee, who played Harold Hooper (known as Mr. Hooper) from the beginning of Sesame Street in 1969 until his death in 1982, was blacklisted during the McCarthy era.
Burma is the world’s largest producer of Sesame Seeds, from a plant that has been domesticated for more than 3,000 years and is important for the high quality and content of its oil.
In 1989 “Burma” became “Myanmar”. The renaming remains a contested issue. Many political and ethnic opposition groups and countries continue to use “Burma” because they do not recognise the legitimacy of the ruling military government or its authority to rename the country.
When I first heard of 'Burma Shave" signs, I had no idea what the hell they were. I just googled it, and found out they were not put up in New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada (deemed to have insufficient road traffic), and Massachusetts (eliminated due to that state’s high land rentals and roadside foliage). So I missed out on a piece of Americana because I grew up in Boston? DAMN!
The true origin of the musical riff known as “Shave and a haircut, two bits” is apocryphal, but it is known to have been part of multiple songs in 1899 including Charles Hale’s “At a Darktown Cakewalk”. The words seem to have come from the 1939 song “Shave and a Haircut - Shampoo!” by Dan Shapiro, Lester Lee, and Milton Berle. In Mexico, the associated lyrics are "Chinga tu madre, cabrón", which you can look up.
It has never been determined with any certainty who wrote the famous novel “Treasure of the Sierra Madre”. It is widely presumed that “B. Traven” was the German writer Otto Feige, but almost nothing is known about his real life. The Sierra Madre is such a formidable mountain range, that to this day there is only one road that follows a pass through a thousand miles of the length of the range.
The Hustons are the only family with three generations of Oscar winners. John Huston won for directing Treasure of the Sierra Madre, in which his actor-father Walter Huston starred, and John’s daughter Anjelica Huston won for her performance in Prizzi’s Honor.
John Macarthur was an early settler who was instrumental in establishing the wool industry in Australia. He argued that wool would be an appropriate commodity for the young colony of New South Wales, since it would not perish on the long voyage back to the markets of Europe, and would offer high value per unit of weight.
For centuries, voyages at sea were made under canvas sails. The word “canvas” derives from “cannabis”, because the heavy fabric was woven primarly from hemp, a member of the cannabis family. But more modern canvas was made from flax, and later cotton duck.
The country that produces the greatest amount of cotton is China. Australia ranks eighth in the world.
The Confederacy embargoed its own cotton, hoping to force Britain and France to support it in exchange for cotton. Instead, the European powers found other sources of cotton, notably from Egypt and India.
The island of New Britain lies within the Bismarck Archipelago, and is part of Papua New Guinea. Rabaul was formerly its largest town, until it was almost totally destroyed by volcanic ash in 1994.