Because of general food shortages during World War II, the British were encouraged to "Dig On For Victory" and grow their own fruit and vegetables.
Because of rationing, the British people were forced to rustle up dreary meals from spam, powdered egg (eggs were rationed to one person per week) and home-grown vegetables.
Food was often very scarce in occupied Europe and many went hungry. Luxuries such as shellfish and venison disappeared, everyday foods like fresh vegetables, oranges and bananas became unobtainable.
In the United States, rationing meant the government limited each American to 28 ounces (1.75 lbs) of meat per week plus restricting the amounts of butter, cheese, eggs and sugar each household was permitted. As a result sales of convenience and prepared foods increased in both the UK and US and techniques of dehydration extended to eggs and other foods.
Oven meals, in which all the meal was prepared in the oven at one time, became popular because they conserved fuel.
Three special-purpose rations came into general use in World War 1 for the American soldier.
(1) The trench ration to be used during trench warfare consisted mainly of canned roast beef, corned beef, salmon, and sardines plus potatoes and white bread which could be either prepared as a hot meal, or eaten straight out of the can.
(2) The reserve ration, was carried by a soldier on his person for when regular food was
unavailable. A typical pack consisted of a one-pound can of corned beef, two half pound tins of hard bread, and some sugar, and salt.
(3) The "iron" ration, was a packaged unit of concentrated food carried by the soldier in an pocket sized can to sustain life during emergencies when all other sources had run out. It consisted of three cakes of a mixture of beef powder and cooked wheat and three small chocolate bars.
Also in their ration packs was chewing gum which they would share around with their French and British allies. As a consequence the gum was popularised in Europe.
The limited and standardized diet of meat, potatoes, and white bread served to American soldiers during World War I played an important role in uniting American food tastes into a more traditional British style.
Vitamins are organic substances, which if absent or deficient in the diet, lead to various characteristics and disturbances. Many act as coenzymes, small molecules which enable enzymes to function effectively.
HISTORY
Scurvy is a potentially fatal disease that makes the gums bleed, teeth fall out and legs swell up. It particularly affected seamen on long voyages in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. By the 1560s Admiral Hawkins had become aware of the value of "sower oranges and lemons" against scurvy (vitamin C deficiency). Soon afterwards the East India Company started supplying its crews with lemon water and oranges to counteract the disease.
In the middle of the 1900s, a Dutch physician and pathologist, Christiaan Eijckmann observed that the incidence of beriberi (a disease prevalent in the East) increased with a diet consisting entirely of white rice, from which he deduced that whole rice contained a preventive factor. In 1911 the Polish chemist Casimir Funk (February 23, 1884 – November 19, 1967) who was working at the Lister Institute in London isolated this factor. He discovered that the anti-beriberi substance in unpolished rice was an amine (an organic compound containing nitrogen).
Funk proposed that the amine be named "vitamine" short for "vita amine" ("vita" being Latin for life) to indicate a group of compounds considered vital for life. This term soon came to be applied to the accessory factors in general even when it was later discovered that many vitamins do not contain amines at all. Because of its popular use, Funk's term continued to be applied, but the final letter e was dropped.
Casimir Funk
In 1913, Elmer McCollum and Marguerite Davis discovered the fat-soluble vitamin A and water-soluble B, renamed later vitamins A and B after long research on rats at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
In 1921 scientists proved rickets was caused by lack of vitamin D. The discovery of the cause of rickets coincided with increased understanding of vitamins – particularly A and D.
An irrational belief developed about vitamins, that they could be used as a cure for anything. Before long manufacturers capitalized on this and soon a whole collection of vitamin pills and other concoctions were being sold to the general public.
During World War II, a lot of fruits high in vitamin C were becoming increasingly unavailable in the UK. In turn, the British government started encouraging the growth of blackcurrants by home gardeners, since they are incredibly high in vitamin C and were well suited to the British climate.
Children growing up during the Second World War were prone to catching rickets. Margarine was fortified with vitamin D during this period to try to prevent the disease.
The actressJane Fonda was arrested in 1970 after allegedly kicking a policeman when she was found carrying a large amount of what appeared to be pills. All charges were dropped after the pills were identified as vitamins.
FUN VITAMIN FACTS
Properly kept, vitamins remain stable for four years.
The thirteen vitamins required by human metabolism are: vitamin A, vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9 and B12, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E and vitamin K.
B vitamins are a group of eight vitamins. They have an important job in the metabolism of cells. Vitamin B can be found in meat, milk, whole grains and fresh vegetables.
Vitamin B12 is sensitive to acid and can be easily destroyed by the acid in the stomach. However, the body has developed a mechanism to protect Vitamin B12 from acid while it travels through the stomach. Saliva contains a substance called haptocorrin (also known as R protein), which binds to Vitamin B12 and protects it from the acid in the stomach. The Vitamin B12-haptocorrin complex then travels through the stomach and into the small intestine, where the Vitamin B12 is finally released and absorbed by the body. This process allows Vitamin B12 to be protected from acid and allows for its efficient absorption and utilization by the body.
Vitamin C is found in fresh fruits, berries and vegetables.
Fruits and vegetables are a source of vitamins
Most animal and plant species are able to generate Vitamin C on their own. Humans (and related species), Guinea Pigs and Capybaras are among the few that can't.
It takes about seven strawberries to equal the amount of vitamin C in one orange.
One-third pound stalk of broccoli contains more vitamin C than 204 apples.
Begonias are rich in vitamin C and have been used to prevent scurvy when citrus fruits were not available.
Vitamin D is not really a vitamin, but a hormone that starts synthesis with sunlight. It can greatly affect your sleep quality and many other bodily functions.
Dark-skinned people living in cold countries are six times more at risk of developing vitamin D deficiency.
The sun does not provide vitamin D. It synthesizes the vitamin D already in your body.
Redheads produce more Vitamin D than other haircolors, meaning they don't suffer as much from not being in the sun.
Mud packs owe their popularity to the vitamin E in mud which revitalises the skin.
There are eight forms of Vitamin E, E1 to E8. Vitamin E can be found in vegetable oils and it is often added to lotions and creams for the skin.
Vitamin K isn't named according to the alphabet like most other vitamins because the initial discoveries were reported in a German journal, in which it was designated as Koagulationsvitamin.
Vitaminwater is basically sugar-water, to which about a penny's worth of synthetic vitamins have been added. A bottle of vitaminwater contains 33 grams of sugar, making it more akin to a soft drink than to a healthy beverage.
50 Cent made most of his money not from rapping, but from an investment in Vitamin Water - He made ten times more than he ever made rapping.
Vegetarianism is the practice of not eating meat or fish. Some vegetarians eat or drink animal products, like milk, eggs and honey - those who don't are called vegans. Vegans also often will not use animal products like leather, but many vegetarians do.
HISTORY
Vegetarianism probably first featured in connection with religious purification rituals; for instance a vegetarian ideology was practised among religious groups in Egypt around 3,200 BC, with abstinence from flesh based upon their reincarnation beliefs.
Advocacy of a regular fleshless diet began around 500 BC in India through the teachings of Buddhism and Hinduism. These religions condemn the taking of animal life to obtain food because of their belief in the rebirth of the soul in animal bodies.
In the eastern Mediterranean the philosophical teachings of the philosopher Pythagoras included advocating a diet which precluded meat (it is not known if he ate fish) in relation to the gluttonous excesses of his fellow Greeks.
In ancient times non-meat eaters were generally known as Pythagoreans or adhering to the "Pythagorean System". The word "vegetarian" to describe non-meat eaters wasn't coined until the mid-19th century.
Pythagoras Advocating Vegetarianism (1618-1630) by Peter Paul Rubens (below) was inspired by Pythagoras's speech advocating vegetarianism in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Romangladiators and legionnaires ate a vegetarian diet consisting of three-quarters carbohydrates, mainly from wheat or barley.
For many centuries in the medieval era, Christian monks, hermits and ascetics forsook flesh eating as cruel, gluttonous and expensive. However, by the 13th century though many monks still lived in austere circumstances, not so many were vegetarians. For instance Saint Dominic, the founder of the Order of the Dominicans ate sparingly often just a couple of egg yolks but his diet did often include a small piece of fish.
In 1339 the Pope conceded that the monks might continue to eat meat provided that only half their number did so at a time, the other half maintaining a vegetarian rule.
From the 13th to 17th centuries when meat was largely a scarce and expensive luxury for the rich, an open vegetarian ideology was a rare phenomenon. Indeed by the beginning of the 18th century it was common to torture animals before killing them in the mistaken belief it improved their taste in the cooking process.
With the Enlightenment there arose a new assessment of man's place in the order of creation and moral objections were raised at the mistreatment of animals. In parallel with this many radical Christians were giving the cause of non-flesh eating great impetus in Britain including John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who believed in its health aspects.
The Bible Christian Church was founded by the Reverend William Cowherd in Salford, NW England in 1809. He saw vegetarianism as a form of temperance. To join the church, members had to sign a pledge that committed them to abstaining from meat eating. One of his followers a Martha Brotherton, published the first vegetarian cookbook, Vegetable Cookery, in 1812.
Two others of the Reverend William Cowherd's followers, the Reverend James Clark Reverend and the William Metcalfe emigrated to the United States in 1817 with 39 other members of the Bible Christian Church and formed the nucleus of a vegetarian movement in America. By the 1830s vegetarian communes were evident in the USA.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word vegetarian was first used in 1842. The word should not be confused with the word "vegetable"; it is derived from the Latin "vegetus", meaning "whole, vigorous, active."
The Bible Christian Church took the lead in establishing the first national Vegetarian Society. The initial meeting to bring like-minded people together was held in the less-than-aptly named Ham Common. A second meeting was held on September 30, 1847, at Northwood Villa, home of the Hydropathic Institute in Ramsgate, Kent. Joseph Brotherton, the husband of Martha Brotherton, was invited to chair the historic meeting, and the Vegetarian Society was born.
Society notice (1890)
By the end of the 19th century, vegetarian restaurants were becoming increasingly popular in London, offering cheap and nutritious meals in respectable settings.
In 1994 controls of export of British beef to Europe were imposed due to fears of contamination from BSE. Such health scares contributed to the increasing amount of consumers turning to vegetarian options.
In 2014, the Indian town of Palitana became the first city in the world to be legally vegetarian. It has outlawed, or made illegal, the buying and selling of meat, fish and eggs, and also related jobs or work, such as fishing and the rearing of animals for food. Palitana, which is located in Bhavnagar district, Gujarat, India is a major pilgrimage centre for Jains.
FAMOUS VEGETARIANS
Daniel, a Jewish exile in Babylon in the 6th century BC and a member of the royal household refused to eat meat. This was because the food being offered to him was "non-kosher" and may have been slaughtered as part of pagan religious rites. As a consequence Daniel, along with three others opted for a vegetarian diet and amazed the chief official by appearing healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food.
Bible Illustrations by Sweet Media
Pope Gregory I (c540-604) who introduced the Gregorian chant into Christian church services, refrained from eating the flesh of animals. From his mid-thirties, as befitting his ascetic lifestyle, he ate only raw fruit and vegetables.
Bruno of Cologne (1030-1101), along with six companions, founded the Carthusian order in the isolated valley of Chartreuse, near Grenoble in SE France. There they lived as hermits, eating only vegetables and coarse bread.
In 1115 Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), a son of a French baron, entered Citeaux monastery
along with twenty-seven of his relations including four of his brothers. He had elected to withdraw from riches to live a life of extreme austerity and a diet of cooked beech and herbs.
Leonardo Da Vinci was a devoted vegetarian, a nearly-unheard of practice at his time . His love for animals was such that he would often purchase caged birds just to release them.
Benjamin Franklin became a vegetarian at 16, in part because he could save half of what his brother paid him, to buy more books. Franklin also declared the consumption of meat to be "unprovoked murder."
After a few years of vegetarianism, despite his dislike of their aroma, Franklin’s liking for fish tempted him back to eating flesh.
The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was a strong advocate of vegetarianism. Shelley wrote several essays advocating a vegetarian diet, "A Vindication of Natural Diet" and "On the Vegetable System of Diet".
His wife Mary Shelley was also an ethical vegetarian and strong advocate for animals. One can see references to vegetarianism in her writing. For example, in her novelFrankenstein, the 'monster' was a vegetarian.
Sylvester Graham (July 5, 1794 – September 11, 1851) was an American Presbyterian minister who preached nutrition and wanted to reform the eating habits of America and the world. Graham reached this conviction as the result of a bout of sickness he suffered. On his recovery, he gave much thought to the influence of diet on man's state of health and he became an advocate of vegetarianism stressing the advantage of eating a sufficient amount of roughage. The minister embarked on a campaign to induce people to eat cereals and bread baked from coarse grain. Preferably, he suggested, the bread should be stale, as this would aid digestion.
Sylvester Graham developed Graham bread a natural, whole grain bread, which proved successful. It was the first internationally consumed bread.
Vegetarian s'mores made with graham crackers
In 1887 an 18-year-old South African Indian Mohandas Gandhi was sent to London to study law at the University College. He had vowed to his mother that he would observe vegetarianism but at first he struggled and his friends warned him that it would wreck his studies as well as his health. Fortunately for Gandhi he came across a vegetarian restaurant and he was able to feed himself amply rather than nearly starving himself.
Later in his life, the vegetarian Gandhi would not even pluck fruit from a tree as he felt this was too violent a gesture. He relied on gathering fruit once it had fallen to the ground. At one time he reduced his daily food to four ingredients, wheat, vegetables, a little oil and fruit but he became very ill. So he added to his diet goat's milk and salt.
FUN VEGETARIANISM FACTS
A 1992 market research study conducted by the Yankelovich research organisation concluded that "of the 12.4 million people in the US who call themselves vegetarian, 68% are female and only 32% are male.
In 1971, 1 percent of U.S. citizens described themselves as vegetarians. By 2015, another Harris Poll National Survey found that 3,4% Americans ate a solely vegetarian diet.
A 2018 study by comparethemarket.com found that approximately 14% of British people are vegetarian.
India is the country with the largest number of vegetarians. In fact it has more vegetarians than the rest of the world put together. According to the 2006 Hindu-CNN-IBN State of the Nation Survey, 31% of Indians are vegetarian, while another 9% also consume eggs (ovo-vegetarian).
A vegetarian thali from Rajasthan, India. By Raveesh
Since India has over 400 million vegetarians, every packaged food or toothpaste in India must have a mark to distinguish whether it is vegetarian or non-vegetarian. The vegetarian symbol is a green square with a green dot in the center while the non vegetarian is the same in red.
Kangatarianism is a vegetarian diet with the addition of kangaroo meat as a choice. It has environmental benefits because indigenous wild kangaroos require no extra land or water for farming and produce little methane.
Cats can go blind and die if forced onto a vegetarian diet.
John Lennon was the only Beatle who didn't become a full-time vegetarian.
The term “vegan”, for someone refraining from eating or using any animal products, was coined in 1994 by Vegan Society founder Donald Watson.
Watson explained the word by saying he suggested it “because veganism starts with vegetarianism and carries it through to its logical conclusion.” Actually the word Vegan already existed. In the mid-1940s a vegan was simply a non-dairy vegetarian. It was Watson who extended it to including abstinence from animal products such as leather and honey.
Vegan paella
The DJ and voice actor Casey Kasem was a devout vegan, supported animal rights and environmental causes, and was a critic of factory farming. He initially quit voicing Shaggy in the late 1990s, after being asked to voice Shaggy in a Burger Kingcommercial, returning in 2002 after negotiating to have Shaggy become a vegetarian.
Veganism is protected under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Tupperware are plastic containers with airtight lids used for food and drink storage.
Tupperware containers from 2011 By OttawaAC
Earl Silas Tupper (July 28, 1907 – October 5, 1983) was a New Hampshiretree surgeon and plastics innovator, who founded the Tupperware Plastics Company in 1938. Tupper spent a lot of time experimenting with polyethylene, a new material used primarily for insulation, radar, and radio equipment. From these experiments he invented the first Tupperware bowls—called Wonderbowls in 1946. Tupper pioneered an innovative sales method, "Tupperware Parties", in which friends and neighbors gathered in a home where Tupperware products were demonstrated and sold. Brownie Wise, a former sales representative of Stanley Home Products, developed the strategy. Tupper was so impressed that Brownie Wise was made vice president of marketing in 1951, a position unusual for a woman in the 1950s: Wise soon created Tupperware Parties Inc. Within Wise’s first year as vice president, Tupperware orders surpassed $2 million, thanks in large part to her influence among the women who sold the plastic containers.
A Tupperware party in the 1950s, as shown in a company advertisement
The key to the Tupperware method of food preservation lay in the process of closing the lid and reopening a small portion to let out any remaining air. However, the process wasn’t easy for everyone, such as people with disabilities. To resolve this, Tupperware introduced its Instant Seals line in the 1960s, featuring containers that could be closed with the push of a finger. The tennis star Billie Jean King grew up poor and her mom sold Tupperware to pay for their daughter's tennis competitions. After falling-out with Wise, which resulted in her dismissal in 1958, Tupper sold his ownership interest in the Tupperware Company for $16 million to Rexall. Shortly afterward, he divorced his wife, bought himself an island off the coast of Costa Rica, and gave up his U.S. citizenship to avoid taxes.
Tupperware launched its CrystalWave line in the early 1990s for the visually impaired. This includes Braille on the bottom of containers to indicate volume. In 2013, the top marketplace of Tupperware was Indonesia with sales of over $200 million from 250,000 sales persons. Source MentalFloss
In Tudor England cereals were the staple foodstuffs for the poor, occasionally accompanied by a few vegetables such as beans, peas and turnips and very exceptionally meat. Breadflours milled from barley, rye or wheat, were baked into loaves. At the main midday meal, pottage might be flavored with bacon and thickened with eggs. The pottage often made with peas might contain cabbage or spinach to give it extra nutritive value and bread would often be used as a thickener and as an accompaniment. A smaller supper was taken around 5.00 in the afternoon. The average Englishman was better fed than his fellow European citizens were. Standard food for the middle classes included beef, mutton, pigeon and oysters sometimes cooked in pastries and puddings. English beef and mutton was believed to be the best in Europe.
William Brooke, Baron Cobham, and his family at the dining table, 1567
Due to the warmer climate after several centuries of colder weather, a greater volume of food was being produced during the Tudor period. To eat well meant to eat a lot. Greater body weight was a sign of wealth and good health during a time where famine was always a threat.
The tooth in vertebrates is a hard structure in the mouth, used for biting, crushing or tearing at food, and in defense and aggression.
In humans the first set, the milk teeth, appear from age six months to two-and-a-half years, and number 20.
The permanent dentition starts from the sixth year onwards. Adult humans have 32 teeth of three different-types (incisors, canines and molars).
Pixiebay
HISTORY
Our hunter-gatherers ancestors had much better dental health than us. Cavemen had relatively straight teeth and crooked teeth are a modern phenomenon.
The ancient Chinese, Egyptians and Mayans all experimented with artificial teeth screwed into the jawbone, but modern implants began in 1965.
The phrase "By the skin of my teeth" comes from the Bible verse Job 19:20, in which Job states, "I am escaped with the skin of my teeth."
Medieval peasants had reasonably healthy teeth, which didn't deteriorate much because there was no sugar in their diet. Also there was a lot of grit in the bread they ate, which ground their teeth very flat.
Muslims generally had better teeth than the Europeans because their religion told them to keep them clean. They achieved this by using a type of chewstick called a Siwak stick.
Queen Elizabeth I's teeth were turned black in her old age through eating too many sweet things. In fact black teeth were a status symbol in Elizabethan times as sugar was very expensive, costing nine times as much as milk.
In 1615 an early tooth whitening product was advertised in England. A sage and salt scrub was recommended to 'English huswives' as a way to achieve gleaming white teeth.
By the 18th century in Britain poor teeth was rife. Georgian women sometimes wore second hand teeth, fashioned into dentures, sold to them by the poor.
The Stanford Daily reported on April 12, 1928 that Mathias Blau of Chicago convinced his wife to have all her teeth pulled. He then refused to buy her dentures because it was "cheaper to feed her soup than solid food." Mrs Blau took him to court and her husband was told to get her two new sets of teeth and at least a beef steak a week.
Fluoridation of water was introduced in the USA to prevent tooth decay in 1945. Experiments have indicated that a concentration of fluoride salts of 1 part per million in tap water reduces by over half the decay of children's teeth.
British Columbia woodsman Francis Wharton shot a deer in the late 1960s but had no serviceable teeth with which to eat it so he fashioned dentures out of the deer's own teeth.
HUMAN TEETH
Though your teeth are considered part of your skeletal system they are not in fact considered bones.
Diagram of a healthy human molar. By KDS4444
Tooth enamel is the hardest substance in the human body. It's composed of mineralized calcium phosphate, which is the single hardest substance any living being can produce. Your tooth enamel is harder than a lobster's shell or a rhino's horn.
Human teeth can detect a grain of sand 1/2,500 of an inch in diameter.
Teeth are only able to experience one sensation, that being pain. When you eat or drink something too hot or too cold, or a dentist operates on your teeth, you will only experience pain because that is the only thing the nerves around your teeth respond to.
It is trendy for youth in Japan to attain uneven snaggle teeth known as "yaeba," or "double tooth."
Humans have 12 molars in total, in four groups of three at the back of the mouth. The molar, which is the farthest back in each group and is the last to appear, is called a wisdom tooth.
Wisdom teeth get their name because they emerge into the mouth when people are in their 20s, affectionately termed the "Age of Wisdom."
Wisdom tooth By Coronation Dental Specialty Group
The oldest person to grow a new tooth is American Erna Kohane, who managed the feat when she was 92 years and 144 days old in 2014.
Another American, Joyce Walen, holds the record for having the oldest baby tooth — she still had it when she was 87.
Yellow teeth are stronger, the natural color of our teeth is a light yellow color. Whitening your teeth can permanently weaken them.
People who drink three or more glasses of soda each day have 62% more tooth decay, fillings and tooth loss than others.
Kissing is good for teeth. The anticipation of a kiss increases the flow of saliva to the mouth, giving the teeth a plaque-dispersing wash.
We produce a lot of saliva just before vomiting in order to protect our teeth from erosion due the acidity of vomit.
ANIMAL TEETH
Limpet teeth have the highest tensile strength among biomaterials, outperforming spidersilk.
The animal with the most teeth is the slug. They have a flexible band of thousands of microscopic teeth, called a radula.
Slugs average approximately 27,000 teeth – one species of umbrella slug, Umbraculum, can have up to 750,000 teeth.
Opossums have fifty razor sharp teeth, the highest number of teeth found in any land mammal.
An alligator has about 80 teeth in its mouth at one time and can go through over 2,000 teeth in a lifetime.
Pixiebay
The African Elephant has only four teeth, 5 kg each.
Beavers have four razor-sharp incisors for cutting and 16 back teeth for chewing. Their front teeth never stop growing.
A guinea pigs' teeth never stop growing. They constantly have to grind them down on toys or other things.
Fish communicate with each other by rasping their teeth to make sounds in their throat.
Sloane's viperfish holds the world record for largest teeth relative to head size in a fish. It has teeth so large that it must open its mouth to make the jaws vertical before it can swallow prey.
The tongue is a fleshy muscular organ in the mouth of most vertebrates that is usually attached to the floor of the mouth. It has a thick root attached to a u shaped bone (the hyoid) behind.
Human tongue. By ArnoldReinhold
HUMAN TONGUE
Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end.
The tongue is the strongest muscle in the human body.
Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.
The tongue is covered with mucous membrane containing many nerves and also the taste buds, which distinguish salt, sweet, sour and bitter.
Taste receptors are present on the human tongue in papillae. By Saurabh R. Patil
The human tongue has more than 10,000 taste buds that replace themselves every 10 days.
The tongue direct foods to the teeth, and presses food and drink back into the throat in the act of swallowing.
Gennaro Pelliccia's holds the record for the highest insured tongue at £10 million ($14 million). Pelliccia tastes every single batch of coffeebeans made for Costa Coffee (UK) shops.
Top ice cream tasters take out tongue insurance. John Harrison of US firm Dreyer's insured his for $1 million.
Pixiebay
In humans, the tongue plays a vital role in speech.
Native German and Russian speaker's tongues naturally rest on the bottom of their mouths while English speakers tongues rest on the top.
Tibetans say hello by sticking their tongues out at each other.
Canadian Kunal Jain holds the record for the loudest tongue click, generating a sound level reading of 114.2 decibels — more than the average lawnmower (90db) and car horn (110 db).
Your tongue is germ free only if it is pink. If your tongue is white, there is a thin film of bacteria on it.
The tongue is actually the fastest healing part of the human body.
The widest male human tongue in the world belongs to American Byron Schlenker, at a width of 3.37in (8.57cm) wide. The trait runs in the family; his daughter Byron Schlenker holds the female record at 2.89in (7.33cm) wide.
ANIMAL TONGUES
In other animals the tongue may be important for other things apart from eating and communication such as lapping up water, or for grooming.
Some animals have tongues that are specially adapted for catching prey. A chameleon's tongue, for instance, is nearly twice as long as its body. To grab prey the tongue shoots out of its mouth at more than 26 body lengths per second—13.4 miles (21.6 kilometers) an hour.
Snakes have no ears so they flick their tongues in and out to pick up sound waves.
As a dog increases its exercise the tongue will increase in size due to greater blood flow. The tongue hangs out of the dog's mouth and the moisture on the tongue will work to cool the bloodflow.
Pixiebay
Giraffe tongues average around 20 inches in length. They can clean their ears with their very long tongue.
In America the first ever Thanksgiving Day was celebrated by the Mayflower colonists in 1621. It was an acknowledgement of God's provisions during the year.
When these pioneering Mayflower colonists first settled in Massachusetts the previous December, they'd faced starvation. However friendly Native Americans had shown them how to grow corn and squash and to catch the local birds, fish and shellfish. One Indian in particular, Squanto has been especially helpful as he just happened to speak fluent English. He'd picked up the pilgrim fathers' language after being carried off by visiting sailors and working as a house servant in the city of London before returning to rescue the ill-equipped, confused Pilgrims. These colonists went on to invite the Indians to a thanksgiving feast to celebrate their first successful harvest.
The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth, oil on canvas by Jennie Augusta Brownscombe (1914)
The main dishes at the first Thanksgiving are believed to have included cranberries, eel, geese, lobster, oysters, squash and…yep, pumpkin pie! When the Native Americans showed up, they brought venison.
There weren't any turkeys at the first thanksgiving. Turkeys were then just wild birds that were difficult to catch and didn't yield much meat.
The First Thanksgiving 1621, oil on canvas by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1899)
In Colonial times, "Thanksgiving" was a separate religious holiday that involved prayer rather than merry-making. What the Pilgrims staged was a "harvest festival," one common throughout Europe at this time of year.
A day of thanksgiving was observed in England for General Wolfe's capture of Quebec and the defeat of the French at the Battle of Minden in North Germany in the midst of concerns regarding the French navy's plans to invade England and Scotland. John Wesley wrote in his journal,
"On 29th November 1759, I believed the oldest man in England has not seen a Thanksgiving Day so observed before. It had the solemnity of the General Fast. All the ships were shut up, the people in the streets appeared, one and all with an air of seriousness, the prayers, lessons and whole public service were admirably suited to the occasion. The prayer for our enemies in particular was extremely striking. Perhaps it is the first instance of the kind in Europe. There was no noise, hurry, bonfires, fireworks in the evening and no public diversions. This is indeed a Christian holiday, a 'rejoicing unto the Lord'. The next day came the news that Sir Edward Hawke had dispersed the French Fleet."
Wesley was referring to the British admiral Sir Edward Hawke defeating the French in the battle of Quiberon Bay and breaking the power of the French fleet thus preventing any possibility of invasion.
When George Washington was elected the first President of America, he announced the first national Thanksgiving Day, held on November 26, 1789. "Both Houses of Congress", he proclaimed, "have requested me to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God especially by affording him an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."
George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation
President John Adams declared Thanksgivings in 1798 and 1799, but convinced of the need to keep church and state separate, Thomas Jefferson believed unwaveringly in the freedom of people from government coercion in religious matters. Jefferson refused to issue a Thanksgiving proclamation and gave an injunction that there should be a wall of separation between church and state.
James Madison renewed the tradition in 1814, in response to resolutions of Congress, at the close of the War of 1812.
Thanksgiving was held sporadically in America until 1863 when Sarah Josepha Hale, the author of "Mary Had a Little Lamb", suggested making Thanksgiving a more widely acknowledged holiday than it was in an effort to keep the nation from dividing over the issue of slavery. She persuaded Abraham Lincoln to declare Thanksgiving as an annual holiday on the last Thursday in November.
1863 letter from Hale to Lincoln discussing Thanksgiving
In 1930 America was reeling under the effects of the Great Depression, and the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism protested against the annual Thanksgiving claiming that in a country where thousands are without work, there could be no reason for thanksgiving. However millions ignored the protest and gathered in their homes to give praise and gratitude to God for his blessing upon their lives.
In 1939, President Franklin D Roosevelt proclaimed the next-to-last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving (rather than the last Thursday) as a way to extend the Christmasshopping season and spur economic growth. Roosevelt's opponents said the new date was disrespectful to Lincoln and called it Franksgiving. He was later forced to rescind that under pressure from Congress and the public.
Since 1947, it has been traditional for the US President to “pardon” a turkey before Thanksgiving and save it from the feast.
Thanksgiving is colloquially known as "Turkey Day." In fact, 45 million turkeys were consumed on Thanksgiving Day alone in 2022. The National Turkey Federation (NTF) estimates that Americans spent an average of $24.99 on a Thanksgiving turkey in 2022, bringing the total spending to over $1.12 billion..
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The dark meat of a Thanksgiving turkey offers a greater density of nutrients, like B vitamins and iron, than white meat.
The Turkey Drop is when a freshman college student comes home for Thanksgiving and is unceremoniously dumped by his high school girlfriend or boyfriend.
Black Friday – the day after Thanksgiving and the most profitable shopping day of the year – got its name from the old accounting practice of using red ink for debt and black ink for profit.
Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October.
According to Yahoo! Shine, the average American eats between 3,000 to 5,000 calories at their Thanksgiving dinner. It turns out the item that does the most damage to your waistline is pecan pie. Each piece is said to be worth 503 calories.
