{"id":269548,"date":"2024-12-02T15:01:10","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T20:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=269548"},"modified":"2024-12-06T09:45:34","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T14:45:34","slug":"how-the-great-cranberry-scare-of-1959-set-off-a-thanksgiving-panic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2024\/12\/02\/how-the-great-cranberry-scare-of-1959-set-off-a-thanksgiving-panic\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Great Cranberry Scare of 1959 set off a Thanksgiving panic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From History.com<\/a>: “On November 9, 1959\u2014just two-and-a-half weeks before Thanksgiving\u2014the U.S. secretary of Health, Education and Welfare made a startling announcement: some cranberries grown in the Pacific Northwest may have been contaminated by a weed killer that could lead to cancer in rats. This meant that cranberry sauce, a popular staple of Thanksgiving dinners, might not be on the menu anymore. Thus began the cranberry scare of 1959, a crisis that temporarily crashed the cranberry market and sent Americans scrambling for alternative fruit-based dishes for Thanksgiving (Life magazine provided a few interesting suggestions, including pickled watermelon rind).”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why we probably won\u2019t find aliens anytime soon<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Scientific American<\/a>: “Are we alone in the universe? The answer is almost certainly no. Given the vastness of the cosmos and the fact that its physical laws allowed life to emerge at least one place\u2014on Earth\u2014the existence of life elsewhere is effectively guaranteed. But so far, despite generations of looking, we haven\u2019t found it. In that time, however, we\u2019ve arguably learned enough to declare that, while we may not be alone, the interstellar gulf between us and our nearest neighbors effectively puts us in an isolation ward. This doesn\u2019t mean we should stop looking\u2014only that we should manage our expectations and prepare for a long and lonely voyage through space and time before meeting them, either virtually or physically.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Study says great apes may have cognitive foundations for language<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Popular Science<\/a>: “You see a cat chasing a mouse. You probably don\u2019t realize it, but as soon as you catch sight of this scene unfolding, your brain makes a key distinction between the cat and the mouse: It identifies who\u2019s chasing, and who\u2019s being chased. This capacity to distinguish between the \u201cagent\u201d (the entity performing an action) and the \u201cpatient\u201d (the entity upon which that action is being performed) is called \u201cevent decomposition,\u201d and it\u2019s long been thought that it was unique to humans. However, a new study published in PLOS Biology on November 26 suggests that this is not the case: great apes (specifically gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans) also seem to track events in the way that we do, distinguishing between agent and patient.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why they celebrate American Thanksgiving in this city in the Netherlands<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From The Smithsonian<\/a>: “The story of early America\u2014 told again and again this time of year\u2014usually goes like this: the Pilgrims took off in the Mayflower from Plymouth, England, to dock at Plymouth Rock, in 1620, in what would one day become Massachusetts. One bit that\u2019s often skipped over is the period in which many Pilgrims lived and worked in the city of Leiden, in the Netherlands, ahead of their voyage to the new world. But in Leiden, the connection is still strong enough that every year, on the day of American Thanksgiving, people gather in a 900-year old church known as Pieterskerk to celebrate the perseverance and good fortunes of the early American settlers.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why there’s an almost invisible wire stretching all the way around Manhattan<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From the New York Post<\/a>: “Being Jewish in Manhattan comes with strings attached. Orthodox Jews are allowed to push baby strollers and carry prayer books on the Jewish Sabbath thanks to a loophole made of fishing line that stretches some 18 miles on utility poles around the city. The line forms a nearly invisible enclosure, called an eruv in \u00adHebrew. Jews are prohibited from doing these simple tasks outside on the Sabbath, but carry them out in the confines of the eruv because it symbolically turns a public space into a private one. Every Thursday, two Hasidic rabbis drive along the border of the eruv to conduct pre-dawn inspections. If they spot a break, they report it immediately to a maintenance crew that dispatches repair workers. Yearly upkeep is divided among Orthodox synagogues in Manhattan and amounts to about $100,000.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From History.com: “On November 9, 1959\u2014just two-and-a-half weeks before Thanksgiving\u2014the U.S. secretary of Health, Education and Welfare made a startling announcement: some cranberries grown in the Pacific Northwest may have been contaminated by a weed killer that could lead to cancer in rats. This meant that cranberry sauce, a popular staple of Thanksgiving dinners, might … <\/p>\n

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