There are so many stories how a mixture of alcoholic drinks got the name “cocktail.” One story says the name had been derived from conquetier, a kind of cup used in serving the mixture. Another story was that the mixture began as a toast to the cock which had the most tail feathers left after a cockfight. It is said however that in 1776 at a bar in Elmsford, New York, the bar was artistically decorated with cock tail feathers. A customer ordered a glass of the mixture and the barmaid gave him the drink with a cock tail feather thrust in it.
The multimillion business and renowned donuts began as an idea of a young school boy in England named Hanson Gregory. It actually started as rounded cakes made by his mother and it appeared to him too bulky at the middle. So what he did is he convinced her mother to remove the middle or the center before mixing the dough. Since then this cake has become a favorite snack all over the world.
Christmas was directly adopted from a heathen festival observed on December 24 and 25. The festival was in honor of the son of the Babylonian queen, Astarte, and Chaldeans called it “yule day” or “child day.” The Christmas tree we now use every December was well-known in pagan times and was very common. A legend was told that on the eve of the festival (December 24), the yule log was cast at a tree, from which divine gifts appeared.
Now this one is for Ripley's Believe it or Not! The first know firemen actually did not put out a fire but started it. During that time, a fireman's job in the morning in a coal mine was to go to the pit before his fellow workers did. Wrapping his whole body with wet rags and carrying a burning candle, he set to fire any “fire damp,” an explosive mixture of air and methane that has penetrated through the seam during the night. Because the fire he started rendered the pit safe for the other workers, the name fireman soon attributed to people who saved people and property from fires.
