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Five Facts bout Escargot:

  1. Escargot – French – An edible snail, especially one prepared as an appetizer or entree.
  2. The French consume 40,000 metric tons of snails each year.
  3. Heliculture is the science of growing snails for food.
  4. Snails have been eaten as food since at least ancient Roman times. Apicius, the author of the oldest surviving cookbook (1st century B.C – 2 century A.D.) has a recipe for snails in his cookbook.
  5. Restaurants serve about 1 billion snails annually.

Today’s Food History

  • 1686 Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was born. He developed the Fahrenheit temperature scale, and invented the mercury thermometer.
  • 1883 R.I.P. Gabriel Gustav Valentin. This German-Swiss physiologist was the first to discover the digestive activity of pancreatic juice. (Oh Boy!).
  • 1883 The Brooklyn Bridge opened. It took 14 years to build at a cost of $18 million, and was the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time.
  • 1893 The Anti-Saloon League was founded by Howard H. Russell at Oberlin, Ohio.
  • 1929 The first Marx Brothers film, ‘Cocoanuts’ premiered.
  • 1941 Robert Allen Zimmerman was born.
  • 1945 The first Food-O-Mat was installed in a Grand Union Company store in New Jersey
  • 1976 In Paris, two California wines won top honors at a blind wine tasting by the best of France’s wine experts. The French were shocked, and the wine world was changed forever.
  • 2007 R.I.P. Kelly Jo Dowd. She was one of the original ‘Hooters’ Girls’ at the first Hooters’ restaurant which opened in 1983 in Clearwater Florida.