National Chopstix Day

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

  • 1617 Prospero Alpini died. An Italian physician and botanist, he is said to have introduced coffee and bananas to Europe and to have been the first to artificially fertilize date palms.
  • 1685 Charles II, king of England, died. Known as the ‘Merry Monarch.’ Tea was introduced to England during his reign. On December 23, 1675, he issued a proclamation suppressing Coffee Houses. The public response was so negative that he had to revoke it on January 8, 1676.
  • 1796 John Stevens Henslow was born. This British clergyman and botanist was a mentor of Charles Darwin. To help get farmers to apply scientific methods, he gave lectures on the fermentation of manure. He also showed Irish farmers how to get starch from rotten potatoes during the potato famine of 1845-1846.
  • 1865 A horse meat banquet is held at the Grand Hotel in Paris.
  • 1898 Rudolf Karl George Friedrich Leuckart died. A German zoologist and pioneer in the modern study of parasites. He showed that trichinosis was caused by a worm-like parasite.
  • 1985 Perrier introduced Perrier with ‘a twist of lemon’ – its first new product in 125 years.

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