Sandwich

A sandwich is any type of food (typically meat, cheese or egg) placed between two slices of bread.

English sandwiches. By 溜池ゴロ

 HISTORY

The oldest documented sandwich was made in the 1st century BC by the ancient Jewish sage Hillel the Elder. He is said to have wrapped meat from the Paschal lamb and bitter herbs between two pieces of flat, unleavened bread. Variants of the ‘hillel sandwich’ are still eaten by Jews today to celebrate the festival of Passover.

John Montagu, The Fourth Earl of Sandwich (November 13, 1718 – April 30, 1792), was a notorious gambler, often going from pub to pub in London on gambling marathons. To satisfy his hunger, while continuing to gamble, he ordered roast beef between pieces of bread for a snack while he was at the gaming tables; it allowed him to keep one hand free to play while he ate. This became known as the "sandwich".
The first recorded use of the word 'Sandwich' (with a capital S), was in 1762 by Edward Gibbon writing of the Beef Steak Club in London. The word was originally spelt with a capital letter as it referred to John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich's fondness for eating beef between slices of bread.

Before the Earl of Sandwich, the sandwich was just called ‘bread and cheese’ or ‘bread and meat’

The Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) were also named after the 4th Earl of Sandwich in 1778,

John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich

Fanny Murray, a mistress of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, once reputedly ate a £20 note between two slices of bread.

The verb ‘to sandwich’ was first used in 1815 to mean ‘to have a light meal’. Its current meaning to insert something between two things of different character, only began to be used in the 1860s.

The sandwich was introduced to America in 1837 in a cookbook by Elizabeth Leslie. A recipe for ham sandwiches was suggested as a main dish.

The British also invented the "toast sandwich" which is literally a sandwich with buttered toast as the filling. A recipe in the 1861 Book of Household Management by Isabella Beeton suggests adding salt and pepper to taste, and that it "will be found very tempting to the appetite of an invalid."

The Italian sandwich was invented in 1903 by Giovanni Amato, a baker, after dockworkers in Portland, Maine asked a baker to slice his bread rolls and add vegetables, meat, and cheese.

An Italian sandwich. By Arnold Gatilao from Oakland, CA, USA 

The Reuben sandwich is an American hot sandwich composed of corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing, grilled between slices of rye bread. Arnold Reuben, the German-Jewish owner of the Reuben's Delicatessen (1908–2001) in New York City created the Reuben sandwich around 1914. He is also the inventor of the New York style cheesecake.

Earl Sandwich might have 'invented' it, but until sliced bread arrived in the late 1920s the sandwich didn't catch on.

The earliest reference to a 'bacon sandwich' listed in the Oxford English Dictionary was by George Orwell in 1931.

Hot dog seller Pat Olivieri invented the famous Philly Cheesesteak sandwich in the 1930s. Cheese was added to Oliveri's original recipe by his restaurant manager Joe Lorenza in the 1940s.

The word butty (a reference to the fact that butter is often used in British sandwiches) is common in some northern parts of England as a slang synonym for "sandwich".

"Sarnie" is a similar colloquialism for a sandwich. The first mention of a 'bacon sarnie' was in the Daily Express on August 21, 1986.

A Bacon Butty or Bacon Sandwich. By Davidwnoble 

FAMOUS PEOPLE AND SANDWICHES

The only novel by Jane Austen containing the word 'sandwich' is Mansfield Park. She wrote in chapter 7: "It was all in harmony; and as everything will turn to account when love is once set going, even the sandwich tray,  and Dr. Grant doing the honours of it, were worth looking at."

During his famous transatlantic flight, Charles Lindbergh survived on four home-made sandwiches and half a glass of water.

Whilst working on a novel Ernest Hemingway survived solely on peanut butter sandwiches.

Astronaut John Young smuggled an illegal corned beef sandwich on board the Gemini 3 spacecraft in 1965. For this, he was given the first reprimand in NASA space mission history and his snack remains the only contraband sandwich to ever make it into space.

Elvis Presley once flew from Graceland to Denver and back in one night just to buy a Fool's Gold Loaf - a hollowed out loaf of bread filled with a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jam and a pound of bacon. It has an estimated 8,000 calories.

RECORDS

The most expensive individual sandwich was purchased in 2004, when a woman sold her 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich with the image of the Virgin Mary on it for $28,000 on eBay. An online casino called GoldenPalace.com placed the winning bid.

In 2008, an attempt in Iran to beat the record for the world's biggest sandwich failed when the impatient crowd ate the giant snack before it was measured.

The largest sandwich ever made was made by Wild Woody's Chill and Grill, Roseville, Michigan in 2009. It weighed 5,440 lbs.

The world's most expensive sandwich is Serendipity's "Quintessential Grilled Cheese" made with Caciocavallo Podolico cheese, a rare Italian variety made from the milk of free-ranging cows fed a diet of fennel grasses and wild strawberries, with a truffle spread and gold flakes. It retailed in 2016 for $214 (£132).

The record for eating corned beef sandwiches is 20 eight-ounce sandwiches in 10 minutes. It was set by competitive eater Joey Chestnut in 2012. Chestnut also holds the record for grilled cheese sandwiches: 47 in 10 minutes.

Joey Chestnut stuffed 25 1/4 ice-cream sandwiches into his mouth on June 4, 2017, at Petco Park in San Diego to set his 44th world record. This broke the previous record of 24 ice cream sandwiches, which was set by Matt Stonie in 2016.

The world’s most expensive fish finger sandwich cost £187 to make and included sweet caviar, edible violets, saffron mayonnaise and edible gold leaf encrusted fish fingers. Birds Eye asked former Savoy hotel head chef Peter Lack to create it to commemorate the Queen’s 90th birthday.

The world's largest peanut butter and jelly sandwich, made in Grand Saline, Texas, weighed 1,342 pounds.

CONSUMPTION 

Around 12 billion sandwiches are eaten every year in the UK. – which means the British each eat over 230 sandwiches annually.

Sandwiches account for 50% of bread consumption in the UK; whether bought or made-at-home.

According to research at the Smithsonian Magazine, 50 percent of Americans 20 years or older eat at least one sandwich every day.

The average American will have eaten 1,500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by the time they leave school.

Ham is the No. 1 sandwich eaten in U.S. households.

FUN SANDWICH FACTS

The United States Department of Agriculture says the official definition of a sandwich is: “at least 35% cooked meat and no more than 50 percent bread”.

Subway serves about 5,300 sandwiches every 60 seconds, which means roughly 320,000 sandwiches are served every hour.

There are about 37 million sandwich combinations available on a Subway menu.

It would cost about $1,500 to make a sandwich entirely from scratch, including growing the vegetables, killing the chicken, and so on.

Chicken breast sandwich. By Tmannya 

Paddington Bear keeps a marmalade sandwich under his hat in case of emergencies.

In 1996, a teacher in Italy was suspended for passing students exam answers hidden in salami sandwiches.

Andy George of the video series How to Make Everything spent $1,500 and six months making a single sandwich completely from scratch. He did absolutely everything from making his own cheese to harvesting his own wheat. George made his own salt and grew sunflowers from which he collected their seeds to extract fat for the oil. In order to do the latter he needed a press. So he built one.

Burritos are legally considered sandwiches in New York, but not in Massachusetts.

The word taco is the Mexican equivalent of the English word sandwich. The tortilla, which is made of corn or wheat, is wrapped or folded around filling that is usually made of spiced beef, pork or fish.

The Japanese sweet snack called "English toast" is neither English nor toast. It consists of two slices of white bread, covered with a layer of margarine, sprinkled with sugar and put together.

Sources Daily Express, Fox News, QI: The Third Book Of General Ignorance by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, James Harkin and Andrew Hunte, Food For Thought by Ed Pearce

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Sandcastle

A sandcastle is a type of sand sculpture resembling a miniature castle. Good sculpture sand is somewhat dirty, having silt and clay that helps lock the irregular-shaped sand grains together.

By Matthew Harrigan 

On February 10, 2017 Indian sand artist Sudarsan Pattnaik broke the record for the world's tallest sandcastle. His creation was 14.84 metres (48 ft. 8 inches) tall and the base had a circumference of 530 ft.

With the help of 45 students, Sudarsan Pattnaik built the sandcastle on the beach at Puri, Odisha in India in an attempt aimed at promoting world peace and raising awareness about the art, The sculpture was made entirely by hand. Sudarsan and the students from his Sudarsan Sand Institute spent nine days in total piling up the vast amount of sand and then carving the structure.

Later in 2017 on September 1, German tour operator and travel agency Schauinsland-Reisen GmbH broke Sudarsan's record for the world’s tallest sandcastle, after building a 6.68 m (54 ft 9 in) sculpture. 

Skulptura Projects GmbH broke Schauinsland-Reisen GmbH 's record for the world’s tallest sandcastle, after building a huge 17.65 m (57 ft 1 in) sculpture in Binz, Germany on June 5, 2019. A team of 12 sculptors and 8 technicians took 3.5 weeks working 8 hours a day to complete the sandcastle. 

The small seaside town of Blokhus in Denmark broke Skulptura Projects's record when Skulpturparken Blokhus built a sandcastle measuring 21.16 m (69 ft 5 in), on July 2, 2021. Built using 4860 tonnes of sand, the castle is a model of the virus wearing a crown as the creator wanted it to represent the power of the Coronavirus over the world. 

There are sand-sculpture contests for adults that involve large, complex constructions. The largest sandcastle made in a contest was 18 feet tall; the owner, Ronald Malcnujio, had to use several ladders, each the height of the sandcastle. His sculpture consisted of one ton of sand and 10 litres of water to sculpt.

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg first discussed the idea of Indiana Jones while building a sandcastle on the beach.

More Americans have been killed by sandcastles since 1990 than by sharks. Research by a top physician revealed that people falling into holes dug in the sand had accounted for more fatalities in the US since 1990 than shark attacks - 16 as opposed to 12.

Sandal

The distinction between sandals and other types of footwear can sometimes be fuzzy.  The common understanding is that a sandal reveals most or all of the foot (especially the toes) to view while an enclosed shoe hides it.

Anthropologists believe that humans have been making and wearing shoes for more than 12,000 years to protect their feet from sharp rocks. Prehistoric man protected his feet by grabbing what was handy – bark, grass, large leaves and tying them to the sole with vines. In hot countries this developed into the sandal made from woven palms, grass fibers, animal hide or a slab of flat wood. The prehistoric man attached them to his feet with "thongs".

Esparto sandals from the 6th or 5th millennium BC found in Spain.

The oldest known sandals were discovered in Fort Rock Cave in the American state of Oregon; radiocarbon dating of the sagebrush bark from which they were woven indicates an age of at least 10,000 years.

The Ancient Egyptians wore sandals woven from plaited papyrus leaves. In time, they started designing different shoes for different purposes. For example, some of the sandals were made with upturned toes to give the wearer additional protection. These improvements upon the sandal created a need for shoemakers, and the ancient Egyptians became the first shoemakers in the world.

Egyptian leather sandals more than 3,300 years old can be in museums today.

Pair of ancient leather sandals from Egypt. Daderot

The craftsmen of ancient Greece created artistic sandals. They were the most common type of shoes that women, who spent most of their time at home, wore.

The Greek sandals featured a multitude of straps with which they securely fastened to the foot. The top of the sandals were usually made of colored leather. The soles were crafted from cattle skin, of even better quality and made up of several layers.

The Romans wore sandals laced round the leg. They considered their footgear to be a badge of rank and used to carve their sandals with elaborate designs.

Roman soldiers wore heavy hobnailed sandals as they marched across Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia.

In the marriage ceremony of the Incas, the couple was considered officially wed when they took off their sandals and handed them to each other.

The modern flip-flop descends from the Japanese zōri, which became popular after World War II when American soldiers brought them back home. They caught on in the 1950s during the postwar boom. As the flip-flop became adopted into American popular culture, they were redesigned and changed into the bright colors that are familar today.

Wearing sandals with socks is considered by many to be a faux pas. The V&A Museum in London has a 1,500-year-old pair of socks designed to be worn with sandals.

Sandals are traditionally removed to symbolize the presence of holy ground. Because shoes tread through dust and dirt, they are symbolically dirty to Muslims; thus, they are taken off before entering holy places like mosques. This Muslim custom reflects the attitude that shoes, dirty as they are, should not desecrate holy places. This same attitude appears in the Old Testament. Both Moses before the burning bush (Exodus: 3:5) and Joshua before the “Commander of the Lord's army" (Joshua. 5:15) were instructed to remove their sandals, for they stood on "holy ground."

When he was feeling ostentatious Gandhi wore sandals, though he generally went barefoot.

The chances of getting a fungal infection on the feet, such as athlete's foot, is lower when wearing a sandal rather than an enclosed shoe, and wearing sandals may be part of treatment for a fungal foot infection.

The Statue of Liberty wears a size 879 sandal.

Sources Comptons Encyclopedia, So That's why Bible, Thomas Nelson Inc

George Sand

George Sand (real name Aurore Lucie Dupin) was a French Romantic novelist and feminist, noted for her numerous love affairs with such prominent figures as the writers Prosper Merimée (1833) and Alfred de Musset (1833–34), the composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin (1838-47) and her last love, the engraver Alexandre Manceau (1849–65).

Sand, as photographed in 1864 by Nadar

EARLY LIFE

Aurora Dupin was born in Paris on July 1, 1804. She was left in the care of her grandmother, Marie-Aurore de Saxe, Madame Dupin de Francueil, and mother after her father died.

Aurora spent much of her childhood by her grandmother's estate, Nohant, in the French province of Berry. She later used the setting in many of her novels.

Seeking to escape conflict with her grandmother and mother, Aurora entered the Convent of the Dames Augustines Anglaises, Paris, at 14, spending two years there before re-joining her grandmother in Nohant.

CAREER

Aurora Dupin was less than 5ft tall and dark haired. She was notorious for wearing trousers, smoking cigars and taking a man's name. Her refusal to act like a "real woman" made her  popular among the artists and intelligentsia of her time and helped ignite the woman's revolution.

Aurora Dupin never wrote in the daytime. She did all her writing between 10.00pm and 5.00am.

A liaison with the writer and then-lover Jules Sandeau heralded Dupin's literary debut. They began writing some articles under the name "J. Sand" then published together the novel Rose et Blanche (1831) under the same pseudonym,

Dupin consequently adopted, for her first independent novel, Indiana (1832), the pen name that made her famous – George Sand. The story of an unhappy wife who struggles to free herself from the imprisonment of marriage, it made her an overnight celebrity.

George Sand by Charles Louis Gratia (c. 1835)

As well as her novels, Sand authored literary criticism and political texts, in which she sided with the poor and working class as well as women's rights.

Sand was passionate in her endorsement of radical socialism and an ardent republican. When the 1848 Revolution began, Sand started her own newspaper, which was published in a workers' co-operative.

RELATIONSHIPS AND BEHAVIOR

On December 10, 1822, at age 19, George Sand married François Casimir Dudevant (1795 – 1871), the illegitimate son of Baron Jean-François Dudevant, a French military officer, and his mistress, Augustine Soulé.

Casimir Dudevant, Sand's husband, in the 1860s

George Sand and Dudevant had two children: Maurice (1823–1889) and Solange (1828–1899). The latter married the artist Auguste Clésinger in 1847.

In early 1831 Sand left her husband and entered upon a four- or five-year period of "romantic rebellion." In 1835 she was legally separated from Dudevant.

Sand's reputation came into question when she began sporting men's clothing in public. She adopted the full works: shirt, trousers, jacket, tie, top hat. Sand  justified this by claiming the male apparel was far sturdier, more comfortable and less expensive than the typical dress of a noblewoman at the time. Probably the only reason she got away with it was because she was such a famous writer.

Also scandalous to many of her upper class contemporaries was Sand's smoking tobacco in public and her rowdy sense of humor.

In 1837 George Sand was introduced by Franz Liszt to Frédéric Chopin, who was six years younger than her. They embarked on a relationship, which lasted a decade.

Un hiver à Majorque (A Winter in Majorca) is an autobiographical travel novel that describes the period that Sand and Chopin spent on that island in 1838-9.

Their relationship continued for a decade but they separated in 1847 for various reasons. When Chopin died of tuberculosis two years later, George Sand, was notable by her absence from his funeral.

PERSONAL LIFE

A cordon-bleu cook, Sand was particularly partial to chavignol, (a soft goats' milk cheese).  She was also fond of the sheep's trotters served at Magny's in Paris.

Sand sewing, from Portrait of Frédéric Chopin and George Sand (1838), Delacroix

George Sand ate her breakfast from the same bowl as her cat Minou.

In the middle and late part of the 19th century, there was a fashion for literary puppet theater in France. George Sand opened a puppet theater in Nohant in 1847, showing plays written by her son, Maurice.

DEATH

George Sand died at Nohant, near Châteauroux, in France's Indre département on June 8, 1876, at the age of 71 and was buried in the private graveyard behind the chapel at Nohant-Vic.

Source Food For Thought by Ed Pearce

Sand

Sand is a mixture of loose grains of different rocks or minerals such as granite, quartz and sand stone.

Close-up (1×1 cm) of sand from the Gobi Desert, Mongolia. By Siim Sepp

Sand consists chiefly of quartz but owes its varying color to its mixtures of other minerals.

There are seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion grains of sand in the world, according to mathematicians at the University of Hawaii.

Beach sand is crucial in the process of mixing concrete and the construction industry uses billions of tons of the granular material every year. Desert sand has the wrong chemical composition for construction.

Sand is the second most used natural resource worldwide, after fresh water.

Sand is a non-renewable resource, and its world supplies are beginning to dwindle. Beach sand suitable for making concrete is in increasingly high demand.

Handprint in beach dand

Saudi Arabia imports sand from Australia.

Sand from the Sahara is blown by the wind all the way to the Amazon, recharging its minerals. The desert literally fertilizes the rain forest.

4% of the sand in Normandy today is made up of metal particles from D-Day.

The most common type of black sand is made of volcanic minerals and lava fragments, like at Punaluu Beach, in Hawaii.

At the southern tip of the island of Hawaii, there is a green sand beach. Most beaches are made of quartz, however, the beaches of Hawaii are made almost entirely from smoothed shells. The green sand comes from the material, olivine.

There are thirty places on Earth where sand dunes can "sing," producing sounds and vibrations when the wind moves their sand particles.

Trains have sandboxes which dispense sand immediately in front of the drive wheels to give the locomotive traction on steep or slippery rails.

The town of Sandwich in South East England took its name from Saxon words meaning 'sandy place'.

Source: Thoughtco

San Marino

HISTORY

The traditional legend surrounding the founding of San Marino, portrays Saint Marinus as a Christian stonemason who fled religious persecution, founded a monastic community on Mount Titano in what is now San Marino, and eventually saw it develop into a republic. According to this legend, the republic declared its independence from the Roman Empire, on September 3, 301.

San Marino's written constitution was adopted on October 8, 1600. The Leges Statutae Republicae Sancti Marini is a series of six books written in Latin in the late 16th century, that dictate San Marino's political system, among other matters. It is considered to be the earliest written constitution still in effect of any country in the world.

The San Marino constitution of 1600

In 1861, the government of San Marino wrote a letter to Abraham Lincoln proposing an alliance and offering the American president honorary San Marino citizenship. Lincoln accepted the offer.

San Marino remained neutral in both the First and Second World Wars.

During World War II, Britain dropped 243 bombs on the neutral republic of San Marino, in the belief that it had been overrun by the Germans.

FUN SAN MARINO FACTS

San Marino is the world's oldest republic and extant sovereign state still in existence.

Its size is just over 61 km2 (24 sq mi) making San Marino the third smallest country in Europe, Only Vatican City and Monaco are smaller.

San Marino is one of three countries completely surrounded by one other country. The other two are Lesotho and Vatican City.

The country is covered by the Apennine mountain range, and it has a rugged terrain. San Marino has no natural level ground.

The highest point in the country is Monte Titano.

Mount Titano by Nickel Chromo 

San Marino has competed in 12 summer and seven winter Olympics but never won a medal.

Alessandra Perilli came closest to winning San Marino's first ever Olympic medal in the Women's Trap final at London 2012, finishing in a three-way tie for second place, but was the first to miss in the shoot-off meaning she finished fourth.

In 2004, San Marino beat Liechtenstein 1-0 for its first international football win.

Source Daily Express

San Francisco

HISTORY

English sea captain Sir Francis Drake claimed the area where San Francisco is now for England on June 17, 1579. The natives thought they were gods and offered them their entire country. Drake accepted and claimed the land in the name of Queen Elizabeth calling it New Albion and staking to a post an engraved metal plate. (A National Park at San Francisco marks the approximate spot where he anchored the Golden Hind in 1579.)

San Francisco was founded in 1776 by the Spanish conquerors. It was called "Yerba Buena" which is Spanish for "Good Herb", because mint grew there in abundance.

The first documented discovery of gold in California occurred at Rancho San Francisco in 1842, six years before the California Gold Rush.

On July 9, 1846, an American naval captain occupied the settlement of Yerba Buena. Half a year later on January 30, 1847, Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco.

View of San Francisco 1846–47

The first self-service restaurants appeared in San Francisco during the 1848–1855 California gold rush. A selection of free food was placed on the counter in saloons.

Congress established the United States' second mint in San Francisco. During the California Gold Rush underway, the United States Mint in Philadelphia found itself overwhelmed with the task of turning all that gold into coins. In 1854, the San Francisco Mint opened its doors and began converting miners' gold into coins, producing $4,084,207 in gold pieces by December of the first year.

In 1859, San Francisco citizen Joshua Norton declared himself Emperor of the United States of America. The people of San Francisco went along with it, accepting his currency, paying for his meals, and even got the police to salute him in the streets.

The San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile national monuments in the United States.

Cable Car No. 13 on Powell Street

The first cable streetcar created by Andrew Smith Hallidie's invention had its initial test run on August 1, 1873 on Clay Street Hill in San Francisco. It went into operation a month later.

At the age of 15, writer, poet and civil rights activist Angelou Maya (1928-2014) was San Francisco’s first female cable car conductor.

At 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, a magnitude 8.3 earthquake struck San Francisco. The quake and resulting fires devastated the city, killing at least 3,000 people and leaving more than half of San Francisco's population homeless.

Arnold Genthe's photograph, looking toward the fire on Sacramento Street

The flag of San Francisco, depicting a phoenix rising from flames, was adopted in the early 1900s. It is often assumed to be a symbol of the city's recovery from the 1906 earthquake.

The San Francisco Municipal Railway, operator of the city's famed cable car system, opened its first line in 1912.

The Twin Peaks Tunnel in San Francisco, California begun service as the longest streetcar tunnel in the world at 11,920 feet (3,633 meters) long on February 3, 1918.

Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begun in San Francisco Bay in 1933. Its four-year construction, supervised by chief engineer Joseph B. Strauss, faced many difficulties, including rapidly running tides, frequent storms and fogs, and the problem of blasting rock under deep water to plant earthquake-resistant foundations.

For 27 years after its completion in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge had the longest main span in the world, stretching 4,200 ft (1,280 m).

A view of the Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point

At a 1945 conference in San Francisco, delegates from 50 nations signed a charter establishing the United Nations.

The first live transcontinental television broadcast took place in San Francisco in 1951, from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference.

FUN SAN FRANCISCO FACTS

With a a 2016 census-estimated population of  870,887, San Francisco is the 13th largest city in the United States. It is the second-most densely populated major American city behind only New York (among cities greater than 200,000 population).

In 2010, residents of Chinese ethnicity constituted the largest single ethnic minority group in San Francisco at 21% of the population.

San Francisco International Airport is supported by 267 columns which each rest on a steel ball bearing, allowing them to move 20 inches in any direction in an earthquake.

During the summer, rising hot air in California's interior valleys creates a low pressure area that draws winds from the North Pacific resulting in the city's characteristic cool winds and fog. The fog is less pronounced during the late summer and early fall. As a result, the year's warmest month, on average, is September, and on average, October is warmer than July, especially in daytime.

29% of San Francisco's air pollution comes from China.

San Francisco has several nicknames, including "The City by the Bay", "Golden Gate City", "Frisco", "and "Fog City".

Parking in San Francisco is so scarce that the parking spot attached to your property can add up to 100,000 to the property's value.