National Guacamole Day

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

  • 1851 Herman Melville’s novel ‘Moby Dick’ was published. Captain Ahab’s search for the white whale.
  • 1863 Leo Hendrik Baekeland was born. He was a chemist who invented Bakelite, the first plastic that did not soften when heated. Those black plastic knobs on stoves were made of bakelite.
  • 1865 Prosper Montagne was born. Montagne was one of the great French chefs of all time. He is mainly remembered as the creator of ‘Larousse Gastronomique’ (1938), a comprehensive encyclopedia of French gastronomy.
  • 1889 George S. Kaufman was born. A playwright, he wrote ‘The Man Who Came to Dinner,’ and the script for ‘Cocoanuts’ for the Marx Brothers.
  • 1889 Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Jane Cochran), began her successful attempt to beat the record of Jules Verne’s fictional Phileas Fogg to go ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’. Bly was a U.S. newspaper reporter and completed the journey in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds.
  • 1922 The BBC officially began  daily radio broadcasting with the 6 p.m. news.
  • 1964 Nic Dalton of the music group ‘Lemonheads’ was born.