Happy National Pecan Sandy Day!

Today’s Five Facts about Pecans

  • If the body does not get enough zinc, it may have difficulty producing testosterone – a key hormone in initiating sexual desire in both men and women.  Pecans provide nearly 10 percent of the recommended Daily Value for zinc.
  • It would take 11,624 pecans, stacked end to end, to reach the top of the Empire State Building in New York City.
  • Texas adopted the pecan tree as its state tree in 1919.  In fact, Texas Governor James Hogg liked pecan trees so much that he asked if a pecan tree could be planted at his gravesite when he died.
  • Albany, Georgia, which boasts more than 600,000 pecan trees, is the pecan capital of the U.S.  Albany hosts the annual National Pecan Festival, which includes a race, parade, pecan-cooking contest, the crowning of the National Pecan Queen and many other activities.
  • Pecan trees usually range in height from 70 to 100 feet, but some trees grow as tall as 150 feet or higher.  Native pecan trees – those over 150 years old – have trunks more than three feet in diameter.

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

1626 A large Codfish, split open at a Cambridge market, is found to contain a copy of a book of religious treatises by John Frith.

1868 Christopher Nathan Sholes of Wisconsin patented a mechanical writing machine, called a type-writer. It was as large as a desk, made of black walnut and had black and white keys. He signed a deal with the Remington Arms company for its manufacture in 1873. It was Remington who turned it into a more practical machine. Chefs could now type their recipes so others could read them (only Doctors have more illegible handwriting than Chefs).

1894 Alfred Charles Kinsey born. Alfred Charles Kinsey is famous for the two books his Institute for Sex Research published, ‘Sexual Behavior in the Human Male’ (1948) and ‘Sexual Behavior of the Human Female’ (1953). However, he was also a world authority on the taxonomy of gall wasps, and author of ‘Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America’ (1943).

1964 Arthur Melin of the Wham-O company (of Frisbee fame) patented the hula-hoop. Great exercise.

1969 Warren E. Burger is sworn in as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

1982 A record low temperature of -117 F was recorded at the South Pole

1993 John Wayne Bobbitt does not appreciate his wife Lorena’s expertise with a kitchen knife.

2005 The Lucky Pierrot restaurant chain in northern Japan began serving deep fried Whale Burgers, made with minke whale meat.  The meat is from whales that Japan kills for “research purposes” and then sells the meat. The International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling in 1986. Japan has said it will double its annual “research cull” of minke whales to 935 for 2005.