Scarf-ay diem…
In the U.S., “70% of all wine is drunk on the day it’s purchased.”
[Fast Company, June 2008. thanks to Dan Pink]
As we wet our whistles, we might volunteer to docent in memory of Elias Ashmole, the English antiquarian, collector, politician, and student of astrology and alchemy, who opened the first university museum– the Ashmolean– to the public in Oxford on this date in 1683.
“The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology,” as it was officially known, showcased Ashmole’s “Cabinet of Curiosities”– including the stuffed body of the last dodo ever seen in Europe… though owing to voracious moths and to the underdeveloped state of taxidermy at the time, it had rotted away to its head and a single claw by the time of “the unpleasantness with the American colonies” under a hundred years later.