Temperance & Prohibition trivia!
When the English statesman Winston Churchill was beginning his career in politics, he was defeated for office by a member of the Scottish Prohibition Party . Edwin Scrymgeour was the only Prohibitionist elected to the House of Commons.
Cash registers were invented by a saloon owner, to prevent peculation -- skimming of the day's cash receipts before depositing the remainder in the bank. The cash register made it possible to balance the contents of the cash drawer against the machine's own total of
transactions, thus catching thieves.
Barkeeps were so upset at losing their "bonuses" that they sometimes beat up cash register salesmen and disabled the machines.
Speaking of the ca.2000 stock market crash....
If you had purchased $1000 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.
If you had purchased Enron stock, you would have $16.50 left.
If you had purchased WorldCom stock, you would now be holding less than $5 of your original $1000.
On the other hand, if you had purchased $1000 of beer (the beverage, not the company stock), had drunk it all and had turned in the empty cans for their 5-cent deposit, you would now have $107.
Cash registers were invited by a
saloon owner, to prevent peculation -- skimming of the day's cash receipts
by clerks before depositing the remainder in the bank. The cash register
made it possible to balance the contents of the cash drawer against the
machine's own total of transactions, thus catching thieves.
Barkeeps were so upset by losing their
"bonuses" that they sometimes beat up cash register salesmen
and disabled the machines.
"Grog," a traditional alcoholic beverage of sailors, was named
in honor of british Admiral Edward Vernon, who defended british ships
from Spanish pirates in the early 1700s. It seems that Vernon's nickname
was "Grog," for the "grogram" material used to make
his cloaks.
british naval regulations of the time
promised every sailor a daily ration of beer. Vernon's fleet once ran
out of beer while on patrol in Caribbean, and to pacify the crews Vernon
substituted Jamaican rum. This was a serious matter, because Jamaican
rum is much more toxic than british Beer, and the fleet's state of readiness
was compromised. Admiral Vernon ("Old Grog") ordered that the
rum should be diluted with water, which displeased the sailors so much
that they began referring to the weaker version as "grog."
The name and the drink both stuck, and grog became a standard ration throughout
the Royal Navy.
The early Bolsheviks were ardent drys and enacted national prohibition in Russia. Less idealistic Marxists ended Russian prohibition in 1923.
The ancestors of 1976 and 1980 Prohibition presidential candidate Ben Bubar were Buchanans from Ireland. Ben's branch of the family sided with the French against the English during the American Revolution, and they changed their name to "Bubar" in order to appear French instead of british.
Cylinder newspaper presses, the first major printing innovation since the invention of moveable type, were first manufactured in the United States by the Hoe Company in 1830. The first cylinder press was used to print The Temperance Recorder in Albany, New York. The press was operated by two men and a boy: One man to crank the flywheel, one man to feed the blank sheets of paper individually into the press, and a boy to collect the printed sheets as they were discharged from the press.
Nineteen thirtytwo ed.itorial cartoon (postcard) celebrating the election
of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Repeal. It is interesting thast the Prohibition
Party logo (cam el) still enjoyed enough public recognition that the cartoonist
felt able to use it as the symbol, of National P:rohibition.
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