A hundred years ago the typical American breakfast was still suited to the dietary requirements of the farmbelt, with bacon or sausage, fried mush, boiled coffee, and a slice of pie for dessert - despite the fact that America was moving to the factory and the office. At the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a facility founded by the Seventh Day Adventist Church, people from around the world came to get healthy with exercise programs and a vegetarian diet of grain-based foods.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and William Keith Kellogg, sons of the physician in charge of this health resort, worked to develop easily prepared (and easily chewed) breakfast foods. Willie Kellogg left the sanitarium to focus on selling corn flakes, the product he came up with in 1906. He wasn't the first, C. W. Post had been a patient at Battle Creek and started his own breakfast empire based on Postum (he railed against the evils of coffee) and Grape Nuts.
At Twisted History we try not to get out of bed before noon, and the official breakfast is a slice of apple pie with several slices of Tillamook Medium Cheddar. And I think about going back to an older English breakfast tradition, a raw onion and a pint of ale. But I haven't gone quite that far in my historical enthusiasm!
1348 - Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, issues the Golden Bull establishing Charles University at Prague.
1541 - Spanish founder of the Jesuits Francis Xavier, 35, and three friends set sail from Lisbon, Portugal for Goa. They became the first Roman Catholic missionaries to travel to India.
1953 - Swedish diplomat Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjold was elected as the second Secretary General of the United Nations, a post he held until his death in a plane crash while on a peace mission 18 September 1961.
1964 - IBM introduces the System/360 computer family, spanning almost the entire performance range of IBM's existing line of computers and incorporating micro-electonics for the first time in IBM's history.
World Health Day, 190 member countries of the World Health Organization - First observed in 1948, the day focuses on a specific global health issue each year on the anniversary of the constitution of the WHO. This years theme: Be a Life Saver. Be a Blood Donor. Blood Saves Lives!
1506 - Francisco do Yasu y Javier, Basque missionary known in English as Saint Francis Xavier, friend of Ignatius Loyola and cofounder of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) in 1534. Missionary to Goa, India, Malacca, Japan, and finally bribed a ship captain to smuggle him into China where he immediately was stricken with fever and died on 3 December 1552.
1860
- William Keith Kellogg (portrait at right), U.S. industrialist
and philanthropist, invented corn flakes in 1906. The W. K. Kellogg signature
on corn flakes boxes from Battle Creek, Michigan was a response to frequent
imitators. Moved to California in 1924 to raise Arabian horses, ranch
became home to Cal Poly Pamona in 1949, which also ended up with his art
collection. Died 6 October 1951.
1893 - Irene Castle, US dancer, trendsetter, animal welfare advocate. In the early 1900s Irene Castle and her husband, Vernon, were America's most renowned dance team. Created Turkeytrot, Castle Walk, and Hesitation Waltz. Died 25 January 1969.
1931 - Daniel Ellsberg, US government advisor and researcher. Leaked "The Pentagon Papers" to the New York Times in 1971, Nixon's plumbers bugged his psychiatrists office.
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
- Oscar Wilde
The breakfast of champions is not cereal, it's the opposition.
- Nick Seitz
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