Silk and the creatures that create it.

¨ Male silkworm moths have such a keen sense of smell they can detect a sexy female moth 10.5 km away.

¨ Members of the silkworm moth family have been raised in China since 2697 BC, where the methods are silk production had been a closely guarded secret. Anyone caught removing these insects from China was executed. However, in 55 AD two monks hid some silkworm moths in their canes and smuggled them to Constantinople.

¨ The careful attention to the rearing of silkworms determines the quantity and quality of the silk. So concerned were the ancient Chinese that any worm out of synchronization with the rhythm and transformation of the majority of worms would be buried or fed to fish to avoid any variation in the silk produced.

¨ One silkworm can spin a thread almost a kilometer long.

¨ It takes about 110 domestic silkworm cocoons to make a man’s tie and 630 cocoons to make one silk blouse.

¨ More than 25,000 cocoons are needed to make a pound of silk.

¨ It takes about 4.5 kilograms of mulberry leaves for silkworms to be able to manufacture .45 kilograms of cocoons, which can be spun into silk thread over 160 kilometers long.

¨ Bombyx mori, a silkworm moth, has been cultivated for so long that it can no longer exist without human care. Because it has been domesticated, it has lost the ability to fly and needs to be hand fed.

¨ Louis Pasteur saved France’s silkworm industry. When the industry in southern France was dealt a staggering blow by a disease that was killing the silkworms, the call for help went out for Pasteur – no one but Pasteur. Pasteur’s solution on locating a tiny parasite infecting silkworms and the mulberry leaves that were fed to them was drastic, but rational: destroy all infested worms and infected food. It was done. It worked. The silk industry was saved.

¨ It takes about ten pounds of mulberry leaves to enable silkworm caterpillars to manufacture one pound of cocoons – which can be spun into a silk thread more than 100 miles long.

Jakarta Post. Saturday, November15, 2008

When it’s all beers and skittles

• Beer as all alcoholic drinks, is made by fermentation caused by bacteria feeding on the yeast cells, then defecating. This bacterial excrement is called alcohol.
• In 1962, Iron City beer was the brand used to test market the concept of tab opening aluminum cans. By 1970, over 90 percent of all beer cans were self-opening.
• Centuries ago in England, pub visitors used a novel innovation that enabled them to get their beer served quickly. They used mugs with a whistle baked into the rim, the whistle being used to summon the barmaid. It has been suggested this practice gave birth to the phrase “wet your whistle.”
• During the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, beer was often a nutritional necessity and was sometimes used in a medicinal setting. It could be flavored with almost anything, from the bark of fir trees to fresh eggs and thyme. Everyone drank beer, including children.
• Most saloons were owned by the breweries by the 1900s. The bartenders earned US$10 to $15 per week, with Sunday bringing in the most business.
• Beer was not sold in bottles until 1850; it was not sold in cans until 1935.
• Pennsylvania outlawed free lunches in 1917 to prevent taverns from giving free sandwiches to customers who bought beer to drink with them. This led some shopkeepers to sell sandwiches and give away the beer.
• President Theodore Roosevelt took more than 500 gallons of beer with him on an African safari.
• The world’s strongest beer is Samuel Adams’Triple Bock, which has reached 17 percent alcohol by volume. To obtain this level, however, they had use a champagne yeast.
• There is an Egyptian beer, called bousa, that is brewed from millet and has been a favorite drink of many for 3,000 years. Modern Ethiopia has a version made from wheat.
• One brand of Chinese beer reportedly includes in its recipe “ground-up dog parts”.
• Germany serves beer ice cream in popsicle form. Its alcoholic content is less than that found in “classic” beer.
• A beer lover is called a cerevisaphile.
• A labeorphilist is a collector of beer bottles.
• In Bangladesh, $5 will buy a beer of a first-class train ticket for cross-country trip.
• In the mid 1970s, Australians were the third biggest beer drinkers in the world (behind Germany and Belgium). Now they don’t even get into the top 10.
• If a young Tiriki man offers beer to a woman and she spits some of it into his mouth, they are engaged to be
  married.
• Among the Bagonda people of Uganda, the several widows of a recently deceased king have the distinctive honor of drinking the beer in which his entrails have been cleaned.
• The Chagga people of Tanganyika believe that a liar will be poisoned if he or she consumes beer mixed with the blood of a recently sacrificed goat.Beer is mixed with saliva and blood for a drink that is shared when two Chagga men become blood brothers.

  

There’s plenty of food for thought

• The French eat over 200 million frogs a year


• Italy leads the world in pasta consumption with 28 kilos eaten per person per year. Venezuela comes second with 12.5 kilos consumption per person annually.


• The literal meaning of the Italian word linguine is “little tongues”.


• A common custom in Spain is to eat one grape for each of the last 12 seconds of every year for good luck.


• The ancient Greeks thought that if they ate parsley, they would not get drunk.


• Bakers in ancient Rome were required to bake their names into loaves of bread.


• The Bagel gets its name from the German for “stirrup”.


• A piece of French toast that was partially eaten by Justin Timberlake sold on eBay.


• What was margarine was initially called Butterine when it was first marketed in England.


• Cottage cheese was developed after a long camel ride by an Arab trader, who found that milk he was carrying in goatskin bag had turned.


• Oyster were a major part of life in New York in the late 1800s. They were eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner; they were pickled, stewed, baked, roasted, fried, scalloped and used in soups, patties and puddings. Oystering in New York supported large numbers of families, and oyster theft was a prevalent problem.


• A bowl of lime Jell-O, when hooked up to an EGG machine, exhibits movement which is virtually identical to the brain waves of a healthy adult man or woman.


• Potatoes were banned in Burgundy in 1910 because it was said, “frequent use causes leprosy”.


• Of all the potatoes grown in the United States, only 8 percent are used to make potato chips. Special varieties referred to as “chipping potatoes” are grown for this purpose.
  In ancient Egypt a man placed his right hand on an onion when taking an oath. Its round shape symbolized eternity.


• The old myth that eating carrots will improve eyesight is true. Carrots contain carotene which our body converts to vitamin A. Vitamin A is necessary for the production of visual purple, which helps you see in the dark. Without vitamin A, you could develop night blindness.


• All bananas start out as female flowers on a banana tree. The male flowers don’t amount to anything.


• The liquid inside of young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma.


• Tabasco Sauce is made by fermenting vinegar and hot peppers in a French oak barrel which has 7.5 cm of salt on top is aged for three years until all the salt is diffused through barrel.


• Heinz catsup leaves the bottle at a rate of 25 miles per year.


• It takes 40 minutes to hard boil an ostrich egg.


• Marshmallows were once used to celebrate Easter in China.


• A one kilogram packet of sugar has about five million grains of sugar.


• The first bubble gum flavors ever produces were wintergreen, vanilla and cassia.


• It takes the same amount of time to age a cigar as it does wine.


• According to the King James Version of the Bible, the fruit Eve gave to Adam in the Garden of Eden was the fruit of “the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” (Genesis 2:17)