And you thought fruitcakes lasted forever! This Christmas pudding is 111 years old! It was one of 1000 such treats sent to British troops fighting in the Boer War, was never consumed, and is now on its way to the National Museum of the Royal Navy. More about the superannuated pud in this Daily Mail article.
That picture is a closeup of a part of a much larger illustration that appeared in a British newspaper just weeks after the surrender of Germany in 1945. The illustration represents the hundreds of warships that were lost by the Royal Navy in the Second World War. John Ptak writes about this image and its sobering impact at his blog Ptak Science Books, and also offers a large black-and-white poster of the image for purchase, as well as the original print itself.
UPDATED: For historical comparison’s sake, check out today’s post from Ptak about the remaining Japanese fleet from the same newspaper/artist a few weeks later.
Britain has always taken a back seat to other countries, especially France and Italy, when it come to cheese, but did you know that there are 700 varieties of cheese made in the U.K.? Only 14 of them rise to the level of AOC-style designation, but it’s not unusual for artisanal cheeses to be as good or better than traditional styles. This BBC article talks about the growing public appreciation for cheese in the U.K. and the resulting explosion of cheese-making throughout the country.
Speaking of British traditions…for centuries, British sailors were issued a daily tot of rum as part of their rations. The rum was typically added to water and called “grog”, since the water wasn’t particularly palatable. Crews would even mutiny if their grog was withheld. The Royal Navy continued this tradition until 1970, if you can believe that, and the final issue of rum was ceremonially served to RN sailors as “The Black Tot”. The last of that specific stock of rum is now being sold, having been kept in storage all these years (just in case, I guess…you never know when they might need a flagon or two), at the rather steep price of £599 for a pint…although you do get a nifty replica of the copper cup used on ships to measure out the rations.
On our vacation to Cape Cod earlier in the summer, we took Charlotte to her first-ever drive-in movie at the Wellfleet Drive-In. There are so few working drive-in movie theaters left that we figured it might be a once-in-a-lifetime thing for her. I was tickled that when the screen finally lit up one of the very first things they showed was a real 1950s ad for the concession stand just like the one in the YouTube clip above. This recent Serious Eats post has a handful of some of the better known ones, and if you go to the webpage for that YouTube clip, you will notice a slew of similar nostalgic bits of drive-in ephemera. Sadly, the actual concession stand food was still just as shitty and overpriced as it ever was, but at least she can say she got to have the experience.
This is called the “Toast-E/R”, and it lets you make your breakfast a little more exciting by pretending that you are defibrillating your bread into toasty deliciousness. It’s a project from designer Shay Carmon, so don’t rush on over to Target to try and buy one just yet, but don’t you just want it like RIGHT NOW?
The three great traditions of the Royal Navy were “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash” (not to be confused with The Pogues’ album of the same name).
Now, the BBC reports that the RN has traded in flogging for blogging. The commander of the HMS Somerset, Cdr. Rob Wilson, received approval from the Ministry of Defense to keep a blog of the ship’s current tour. While the U.S. Army goes out of its way to squash blogs from soldiers in Iraq who are critical of the war, the MoD gave the ship’s captain a free hand to write about ship life “warts and all”.
The Royal Navy didn’t end the daily tot of grog until 1970, but Wikipedia reports that sailors are allowed one extra can of beer a day as compensation.
As for the sodomy, well…
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