Posts Tagged ‘animal crackers’
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better”*…
Further, in a loose fashion, to yesterday’s post: The Most Observed Animals and Plants (as reported on iNaturalist), from Randall Munroe and his wonderful xkcd (@xkcd.com)
* (attributed to) Albert Einstein
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As we keep an eye out, we might recall that it was on this date in 1964 that US disc jockeys were sent boxes of animal crackers wrapped in promotional material touting The Animal’s second single, “The House of the Rising Sun,” which had just entered the UK charts. The gambit worked (though, of course, it didn’t hurt that the song was, as Cashbox described it, “a haunting, beat-ballad updating of the famed folk-blues opus that the group’s lead delivers in telling solo vocal fashion”); the tune reached #1 on U.S. pop charts.
“Agriculture changes the landscape more than anything else we do”*…
From the USDA, a (zoomable) map of which crops are grown where in the U.S.: “Cropscape.”
* Michael Pollan
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As we contemplate cultivation, we might note that today is National Animal Crackers Day. Small crackers/cookies baked in the shape of animals, they were imported from England to the U.S. in the second half of the 19th century. then produced domestically by a number of bakers starting in the 1870s.
But by the turn of the century, several of those bakeries had merged to become the National Biscuit Company, which began to produce a branded version, “Barnum’s Animals,” featuring animals from the Barnum and Bailey Circus. While earlier animal cracker were sold to merchants in bulk (to be sold to customers from barrels), Nabisco’s were packaged in a colorful, circus-themed box with a string that allowed it to be hung from a Christmas tree. Initially retailing for 5 cents a package, they were– and remain– a huge hit.
Some of “Barnum’s Animals”
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