On This Day
1759 – Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum and starts brewing Guinness.
Guinness (/ˈɡɪnɪs/) is a dark Irish dry stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at St. James’s Gate, Dublin, Ireland, in 1759. It is one of the most successful alcohol brands worldwide, brewed in almost 50 countries, and available in over 120.[1][2] Sales in 2011 amounted to 850 million litres (220,000,000 US gal).[1] It is popular with the Irish, both in Ireland and abroad. In spite of declining consumption since 2001,[3] it is still the best-selling alcoholic drink in Ireland[4] where Guinness & Co. Brewery makes almost €2 billion worth of beer annually.
The Guinness Storehouse is a tourist attraction at St. James’s Gate Brewery in Dublin, Ireland. Since opening in 2000, it has received over 20 million visitors.
Guinness’s flavour derives from malted barley and roasted unmalted barley, a relatively modern development, not becoming part of the grist until the mid-20th century. For many years, a portion of aged brew was blended with freshly brewed beer to give a sharp lactic acid flavour. Although Guinness’s palate still features a characteristic “tang”, the company has refused to confirm whether this type of blending still occurs. The draught beer’s thick, creamy head comes from mixing the beer with nitrogen and carbon dioxide.[5]
The company moved its headquarters to London at the beginning of the Anglo-Irish Trade War in 1932. In 1997, Guinness plc merged with Grand Metropolitan to form the British multinational alcoholic-drinks producer Diageo plc, based in London.
Born On This Day
1908 – Simon Wiesenthal, Ukrainian-Austrian Nazi hunter and author (d. 2005)
Simon Wiesenthal KBE (31 December 1908 – 20 September 2005) was a Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer. He studied architecture and was living in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Janowska concentration camp (late 1941 to September 1944), the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp (September to October 1944), the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, a death march to Chemnitz, Buchenwald, and the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp (February to 5 May 1945).
After the war, Wiesenthal dedicated his life to tracking down and gathering information on fugitive Nazi war criminals so that they could be brought to trial. In 1947, he co-founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Centre in Linz, Austria, where he and others gathered information for future war crime trials and aided refugees in their search for lost relatives. He opened the Documentation Centre of the Association of Jewish Victims of the Nazi Regime in Vienna in 1961 and continued to try to locate missing Nazi war criminals. He played a small role in locating Adolf Eichmann, who was captured in Buenos Aires in 1960, and worked closely with the Austrian justice ministry to prepare a dossier on Franz Stangl, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1971.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Wiesenthal was involved in two high-profile events involving Austrian politicians. Shortly after Bruno Kreisky was inaugurated as Austrian chancellor in April 1970, Wiesenthal pointed out to the press that four of his new cabinet appointees had been members of the Nazi Party. Kreisky, angry, called Wiesenthal a “Jewish fascist”, likened his organisation to the Mafia, and accused him of collaborating with the Nazis. Wiesenthal successfully sued for libel, the suit ending in 1989. In 1986, Wiesenthal was involved in the case of Kurt Waldheim, whose service in the Wehrmacht and probable knowledge of the Holocaust were revealed in the lead-up to the 1986 Austrian presidential elections. Wiesenthal, embarrassed that he had previously cleared Waldheim of any wrongdoing, suffered much negative publicity as a result of this event.
With a reputation as a storyteller, Wiesenthal was the author of several memoirs containing tales that are only loosely based on actual events.[1][2] In particular, he exaggerated his role in the capture of Eichmann in 1960.[3][4] Wiesenthal died in his sleep at age 96 in Vienna on 20 September 2005 and was buried in the city of Herzliya in Israel. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, headquartered in Los Angeles, is named in his honor.
FYI
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Recipes
SANDRA’S ROSEMARY-THYME-AGAVE NO-KNEAD OVERNIGHT CAST IRON BREAD
DamnDelicious
- Chicken and Gnocchi Soup December 28, 2024This post may contain affiliate links. Please see our privacy policy for details. With a creamy, velvety chicken broth, shredded chicken, veggies, and pillowy gnocchi. SO good with crusty bread! reasons to make chicken and gnocchi soup WHAT IS GNOCCHI? Is gnocchi pasta? There’s actually mixed reviews on this and it really depends on who […]Chungah @ Damn Delicious
- Red and Green Chicken Enchiladas December 21, 2024This post may contain affiliate links. Please see our privacy policy for details. Can’t decide between red or green enchilada sauce? Now you can have both and have the best of both worlds! Sometimes you need red enchiladas, and sometimes you need green. This is where I have you completely covered. Called divorciadas or […]Chungah @ Damn Delicious
RecipeTinEats
- 2024 Ultimate Christmas menu planning guide December 12, 2024Here’s a handy list of my Christmas recipes, organised by make-ahead and reheating suitability, and those best made fresh. Perfect for menu planning, especially alongside the new Christmas recipe index! I thrive on holiday menu planning. It’s like the Olympics of cooking – except less athleticism and more butter! The goal, as always, is a... […]Nagi
- Easy Christmas Cheesecake Slab – no bake! December 6, 2024This no bake Christmas cheesecake is designed for sizzling Aussie summers – no sweating over a hot oven! Designed to serve a crowd, it’s the easiest cheesecake recipe I know yet it still captures all the hallmarks of a beautiful classic baked cheesecake. Decorate with whipped cream, berries and rosemary sprigs for an effortless, pretty... […]Nagi
wikimedia
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for December 28 December 28, 2024Picture of the day Satellite picture of the Etna volcano erupting in eastern Sicily (Italy) in December 2018.
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for December 27 December 27, 2024Picture of the day The Seehornsee in the Berchtesgaden Alps. On the right the normal route to the Seehorn.
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Stump the Bookseller is a service offered by Loganberry Books to reconnect people to the books they love but can’t quite remember. In brief (for more detailed information see our About page), people can post their memories here, and the hivemind goes to work. After all, the collective mind of bibliophiles, readers, parents and librarians around the world is much better than just a few of us thinking. Together with these wonderful Stumper Magicians, we have a nearly 50% success rate in finding these long lost but treasured books. The more concrete the book description, the better the success rate, of course. It is a labor of love to keep it going, and there is a modest fee. Please see the How To page to find price information and details on how to submit your Book Stumper and payment.
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