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National Daiquiri Day

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national daiquiri day

Hemingway statue at El Floridita

Today is National Daiquiri Day. Although conflicting legends abound, the most likely origin story credits an American engineer named Jennings Cox with inventing the drink.

In 1898, Cox supervised an iron mining operation in a town off the coast of Cuba called Daiquiri. Every night, he and his crew gathered at a local bar after work.

One evening, when the bar ran out of gin, Cox blended Bacardi with sugar and lime and named it after the Daiquiri mines.  It quickly became a staple in Havana.

In 1909, the U.S.S. Minnesota docked in the area. Captain Charles Harlow brought junior medical officer Lucius Johnson with him on a tour of the 10-year-old Spanish-American battlegrounds. They met Cox at Daiquiri and enjoyed his creation.

Johnson brought the recipe to the Army and Navy Club in Washington, D.C., where it became a favorite — except during Prohibition, of course. By the 1940s, the daiquiri had become a fixture in bars across the country.

National Daiquiri Day falls just two days before the birthday of Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961). The author immortalized the cocktail in his novel, Islands in the Stream: “This frozen daiquiri, so well beaten as it is, looks like the sea where the wave falls away from the bow of a ship when she is doing thirty knots.”

He’s also quoted as saying, “Don’t bother with churches, government buildings or city squares, if you want to know about a culture, spend a night in its bars.”

He certainly followed his own advice. El Floridita, a bar Hemingway frequented in Havana, Cuba, has immortalized him with a life size statue. The bartender there, Constantino Ribalaigua, created a doubly strong, sour version of the cocktail for the writer, who was diabetic and apparently worried more about the toxic effects of sugar than alcohol.

The following is based on that recipe, according to A. E. Hotchner, who documented his stay at the author’s home in Cuba in his book entitled Papa Hemingway.

Papa Doble
Ingredients:
3 oz Bacardí Carta Blanca
Juice of 2 limes
½ oz grapefruit juice
6 drops of Maraschino liqueur

Preparation:
Blend all ingredients with crushed ice and serve in an ice-cold coupe glass.

Whether you like your daiquiris sweet, strong, or virginal, raise a glass and have a happy National Daiquiri Day–or evening, if you prefer. Cheers!

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Rube Goldberg Day

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Today is Rube Goldberg Day. On July 4, 1883, Reuben Garrett Lucius “Rube” Goldberg was born in San Francisco, CA. In his 87 years on the planet, he was a cartoonist, engineer, inventor, author, sculptor, and scriptwriter.

He is best known for his cartoons depicting absurdly complex contraptions used to perform simple tasks. One such device was an intricate system, triggered by the movement of a spoon, that would automatically mop one’s upper lip after taking a sip of soup, as seen in the following commemorative stamp.

rube goldberg day

“Self-Operating Napkin” US Stamp, 1995

As an engineer and inventor, Goldberg often brought these cartoons to life. In 1930, he wrote and made a cameo appearance in the film Soup to Nuts, which featured some of his innovative machines and starred the men who would later become known as the Three Stooges.

In 1948, Goldberg was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his political cartoons. Few knew his work had aroused such anti-Semitic hatred during the war that he had insisted his sons change their surnames. They chose the last name George, and it has remained the family name ever since. Their children run a company called RGI (Rube Goldberg Incorporated) to honor their grandfather’s last name.

rube goldberg day

Goldberg was a founding member and the first president of the National Cartoonists Society, the namesake of its Reuben Award, given to the Cartoonist of the Year. He is the inspiration for various international competitions, known as Rube Goldberg Machine Contests, many of which are sponsored by his descendants through RGI.

He is also immortalized in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Rube Goldberg
adjective Rube Gold·berg \ˈrüb-ˈgōl(d)-ˌbərg\
: accomplishing by complex means what seemingly could be done simply ; also : characterized by such complex means

Happy Rube Goldberg Day!

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June 15 is Magna Carta Day

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magna carta dayMagna Carta Day, explained in the style of Jeff Spicoli:

In 1215, the king of England was a total wad, so a bunch of rich baron dudes got together and decided his divine right was bogus, so they drew up some cool rules they called the Great Charter until somebody said it sounded way more righteous in Latin. They took it to the king on June 15th and told him, “Sign it, or you’ll never party again,” which was a gnarly scene for a minute, but then he signed it. 

The Pope was not cool with that and said, “Later, dudes!” and kicked all the baron guys out of the church. But none of it matters anyhow because Julius Caesar’s calendar was a mess so we use a different one now, which means the Carta got signed on June 8th, but then, like, did it even happen?

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June 14 is Pop Goes the Weasel Day

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pop goes the weasel day

Today is Pop Goes the Weasel Day, celebrating the rhyme we’ve known since childhood and the tune that sticks in our heads every time we hear it played on an ice cream truck. But what does the song mean? pop goes the weasel dayThe short answer is that it’s probably nonsense verse made popular (no pun intended) because children enjoyed shouting, “Pop!” It’s believed to have originated in the 1700s in England, but the first official version of the song wasn’t published there until the 1850s. Within a few years, it jumped the pond and appeared in Boston and New York newspapers.

The British version had many variations but usually shared these basic verses:

Half a pound of tupenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle.
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.

Every night when I get home
The monkey’s on the table,
Take a stick and knock it off,
Pop! goes the weasel.

Up and down the City Road,
In and out the Eagle.
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.

The first verse seems to refer to cheap rice and treacle, a molasses-based syrup. Several British slang dictionaries agree that “monkey” represented £500, a tidy sum in those days. The Eagle most likely refers to the name of a pub on City Road in London. Today it displays a plaque endorsing this interpretation of the verse.

Is “Pop Goes the Weasel” about a dad who takes the money meant to put better food on the table and heads to the pub to drink it away? Maybe, maybe not. What does any of this have to do with a weasel, and why does it pop? Theories abound:

  1. It refers to a dead weasel. Weasels pop their heads up when alarmed. Apparently, things did not go well for this one.
  2. A “Spinner’s weasel” is a spoked reel that measures yarn and makes a popping sound to indicate the desired length, usually a skein, has been reached.
  3. In English (usually Cockney) rhyming slang, “weasel” is short for “weasel and stoat,” which stands for “coat, ” usually a fancy one to wear to church on Sunday.
  4. “Pop” stands for “pawn.”

This leaves us with a dead rodent, a woman—sorry to reinforce gender norms, but that’s how it was—working her fingers to the bone spinning yarn and/or a man who spends so much on beer that he has to pawn his coat on Monday morning, then work all week so he can buy it back to wear on the following Sunday.

Soon after “Pop Goes the Weasel” arrived in the U.S. in the 1850s, it began to evolve. Today, its lyrics vary but tend to contain some permutation of the following:

All around the mulberry bush,
The monkey chased the weasel.
The monkey thought ’twas all in good sport,
Pop! goes the weasel.

A penny for a spool of thread,
A penny for a needle—
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.

Jimmy’s got the whooping cough
And Timmy’s got the measles.
That’s the way the story goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.

Even if we can’t agree on the words and their meanings (or lack thereof), we all remember bits of that first verse, and the tune is universal. What does it remind you of? We think of warm summer days playing tag and running after the ice cream truck.

Happy Pop Goes the Weasel Day. And to all you weasels: Let’s be careful out there.

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