National Fried Pie Day

also: National French Fried Clam Day

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

  • 1878 The first telephone was installed in the White House in Washington, D.C. Alexander Graham Bell installed it himself. Rutherford B. Hayes was president.
  • 1885 Dr. Pepper is sold for the first time.
  • 1886 Rex Stout, American crime writer was born. More than 70 of his novels and stories feature the fictional gourmand/gourmet detective, Nero Wolfe. Archie Goodwin, the detective’s assistant, described him as weighing “one seventh of a ton” (about 286 pounds). Shad Roe and Duck were two of Wolfe’s favorites, and he also consumed copious amounts of beer. Stout also published ‘The Nero Wolfe Cookbook’ in 1973.
  • 1936 The first patent was issued for a commercial scale hydroponic system for plant culture (a ‘hydroponicum’). Ernest Walfrid Brundin and Frank F. Lyon received the patent on the system they had set up the previous year.
  • 1944 Eric Bloom of the music group ‘Blue Oyster Cult’ was born.
  • 1990 British and French workers digging the Channel Tunnel from their respective countries drilled through a final piece of rock and shook hands,  22.3 km from the UK, 15.6 km from France.
  • 1999 The Russian Duma passed an animal rights bill that prohibits people from eating their pets.