Crabs and Beer!

On this day in 1411, King Charles VI granted a monopoly or the ripening of Roquefort cheese to the people of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, as they had been doing for centuries.

According to legend, Roquefort cheese was discovered when a youth, eating his lunch of bread and ewes’ milk cheese, saw a beautiful girl in the distance. Abandoning his meal in a nearby cave, he ran to meet her. When he returned a few months later, the mold (Penicillium roqueforti) had transformed his plain cheese into Roquefort.

In 79 AD, Pliny the Elder praised the cheeses of Lozère and Gévaudan and reported their popularity in ancient Rome; in 1737, Jean Astruc suggested that this was a reference to an ancestor of Roquefort. The theory was widely taken up, and by the 1860s was being promoted by the Société des Caves.

By 1820, Roquefort was producing 300 tonnes a year, a figure that steadily increased throughout the next century so that by 1914 it was 9,250. In 1925, the cheese was the recipient of France’s first Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée when regulations controlling its production and naming were first implemented. In 1961, in a landmark ruling that outlawed imitation, the Tribunal de Grande Instance at Millau decreed that, although the method for the manufacture of the cheese could be followed across the south of France, only those cheeses whose ripening occurred in the natural caves of Mont Combalou in Roquefort-sur-Soulzon were permitted to bear the name Roquefort.

Roquefort-sur-Soulzon

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Revised…

Back when newspapers still had editors and the editors had fun…

Today is the birthday, in 1945, of Gordon Waller, British singer, songwriter, guitarist with Peter and Gordon who had the 1964 UK & US No.1 single ‘A World Without Love’. Waller died aged 64 of a heart attack on 17 July 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdx6lLvvRyg

Today is the birthday, in 1906, of Josephine Baker, an amazing woman. She was an American and French dancer, singer, and actress. She was the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture.

During her early career, Baker was among the most celebrated performers to headline the revues of the Folies Bergère in Paris. Her performance in its 1927 revue Un vent de folie caused a sensation in the city. Her costume, consisting only of a short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace, became an iconic image and a symbol both of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties.

Baker was celebrated by artists and intellectuals of the era, who variously dubbed her the “Black Venus”, the “Black Pearl”, the “Bronze Venus”, and the “Creole Goddess”. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, she renounced her U.S. citizenship and became a French national after her marriage to French industrialist Jean Lion in 1937. She adopted 12 children, whom she referred to as the Rainbow Tribe, and raised them in France.

Baker aided the French Resistance during World War II, and also worked with the British Secret Intelligence Service and the United States Office of Strategic Services, the extent of which was not publicized until 2020, when French documents were declassified. After the war, she was awarded the Resistance Medal by the French Committee of National Liberation, the Croix de Guerre by the French military, and was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour by General Charles de Gaulle.

She refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States, and is also noted for her contributions to the civil rights movement. In 1963, she spoke at the March on Washington at the side of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Baker was the only official female speaker. While wearing her Free French uniform emblazoned with her medal of the Légion d’honneur, she introduced the “Negro Women for Civil Rights”. Rosa Parks and Daisy Bates were among those she acknowledged, and both gave brief speeches.

In her speech, one of the things Baker said:

“I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens, and into the houses of presidents and much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad. And when I get mad, you know that I open my big mouth. And then look out, ’cause when Josephine opens her mouth, they hear it all over the world…

Baker in her banana costume,Folies Bergère revue Un vent de folie, 1927, photo by Lucien Waléry

Baker in uniform, 1948

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Today is the birthday, in 1951, of American singer–songwriter Deniece Williams, who had the 1978 US No.1 & UK No.3 single with Johnny Mathis ‘Too Much Too Little Too Late’, and the 1984 US No.1 & UK No.2 single ‘Let’s Hear It For The Boy’. Worked as a backing singer with Stevie Wonder’s group Wonderlove. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI7YHZVc7mM

On this day in 1763, Ojibwe capture Fort Michilimackinac from the British by diverting the garrison’s attention with a game of lacrosse, then chasing a ball into the fort.

The fort had been built on the northern tip of the lower peninsula of the present-day state of Michigan. Built around 1715, and abandoned in 1783, it was located along the straits that connect Lake Huron and Lake Michigan of the Great Lakes of North America. The French first established a presence in the Straits of Mackinac in 1671, when Father Marquette founded the Jesuit St. Ignace Mission at present-day St. Ignace in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The French relinquished the fort, along with their territory in Canada, to the British in 1761 following their defeat in the French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years’ War. The Ojibwe in the region soon became dissatisfied with British policies, particularly their cancellation of the annual policy of distributing gifts to the Indians. On June 2, 1763, as part of the larger conflict known as Pontiac’s War, a group of Ojibwe staged a game of lacrosse outside the fort as a ruse to gain entrance. After entering the fort, they killed most of the British inhabitants. They held the fort for a year before the British regained control, promising to offer more and better gifts to the native inhabitants of the area.

Ojibwe fishermen in the St. Marys Rapids, 1901

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…and other fairy tales.

Having the right footwear is important!

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Today is the birthday, in 1944, of Marvin Hamlisch, pianist, composer, 1974 US No.1 album ‘The Sting’, US No.3 single ‘The Entertainer.’ He won four Grammy Awards in 1974, two for ‘The Way We Were’. In 1975, he wrote the original theme music for Good Morning America and co-wrote ‘Nobody Does It Better’ for The Spy Who Loved Me with his then-girlfriend Carole Bayer Sager. Hamlisch died on August 6, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaV-6qerkqI

On this day in 1495, a monk, John Cor, records the first mention of a batch of Scotch Whisky. In a Latin entry in the Exchequer Rolls John Cor is addressed by King James IV of Scotland, with the order to use “eight bolls of malt (brasium) to make whisky (aquavitae).” Historian Janet Foggie has called this the “first mention of whisky in a Scottish source”. Another historian, Mairi Cowan, referred to it as “the first written record of the distillation of whisky”

John Cor has been identified as a member of the Order of Preachers, a Dominican. Although John’s specific friary is unclear from the source itself, the twentieth-century archivist and medievalist scholar Anthony Ross claimed that it could be identified as the Blackfriars house at Edinburgh based on references in the Protocol Book of Peter Marche.

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Happy Pride Month!!!

I Will Survive! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dYWe1c3OyU

On this day in 1914, the RMS Empress of Ireland sank near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River following a collision in thick fog with the Norwegian collier Storstad. Although the ship was equipped with watertight compartments and, in the aftermath of the Titanic disaster two years earlier, carried more than enough lifeboats for all aboard, she foundered in only 14 minutes. Of the 1,477 people on board, 1,012 died, making it the worst peacetime maritime disaster in Canadian history.

Empress of Ireland departed Quebec for Liverpool and eached Pointe-au-Père in the early hours of 29 May 1914, where the pilot disembarked. She soon sighted the masthead lights of SS Storstad, a Norwegian collier, on her starboard bow at a distance of several miles. Likewise, Storstad sighted Empress of Ireland‘s masthead lights. These first sightings were made in clear weather conditions, but fog soon enveloped the ships. The ships resorted to repeated use of their fog whistles. At 01:56 local time, Storstad crashed into Empress of Ireland‘s starboard side at around midships.

Empress of Ireland lurched heavily to starboard and began settling by the stern. There was no time to shut the watertight doors. Water entered through open portholes, some only a few feet above the water line, and inundated passageways and cabins. Most of the passengers and crew located in the lower decks drowned quickly. Those berthed in the upper decks were awakened by the collision and immediately boarded lifeboats on the boat deck. Within a few minutes, the ship’s list was so severe that the port lifeboats could not be launched.

Ten minutes after the collision, the ship rolled violently over her starboard side, allowing as many as 700 passengers and crew to crawl out of the portholes and decks onto her port side. The ship lay upon her side for a minute or two, having seemingly run aground. Shortly afterwards at 02:10, about 14 minutes after the collision, the bow rose briefly out of the water and the ship finally sank.

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Today is the birthday, in 1955, of Mike Porcaro, bassist with American rock band Toto who had the 1980s Top 5 hits ‘Hold the Line’, ‘Rosanna’, and ‘Africa’. The band has released 17 studio albums, and has sold over 40 million records worldwide. Porcaro died on 15th March 2015 following a battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTQbiNvZqaY