Alcoholica Esoterica: A Collection of Useful and Useless Information As It Relates to the History andC onsumption of All Manner of Booze

Did you know...

• that the word bar is short for barrier? Yes, that’s right—to keep the customers from getting at all the booze.

• that Winston Churchill’s mother supposedly invented the Manhattan?

• that the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock because the sailors on the Mayflower were running low on beer and were tired of sharing?

• that you have a higher chance of being killed by a flying Champagne cork than by a poisonous spider?

• that the Code of Hammurabi mandated that brewers of low-quality beer be drowned in it?

• that beer was so popular with medieval priests and monks that in the thirteenth century they stopped baptizing babies with holy water and started using beer?