stuffyouwantedtoknow

[stuffyouwantedtoknow]

Why do we put crushed peanuts on ice cream?

I had to know: why and when did we start putting crushed peanuts on our ice cream? The answer proved highly elusive.

I started off by searching:

Where did peanuts originate?

Peanuts are indigenous to South America, and were carried to Europe in the 1700s by Spanish explorers. From there, they were spread to Africa and Asia.

Today, China produces around 34% of the world’s peanut supply.

I did discover that there is a tradition in the American South of putting salted peanuts in Coca-Cola.

Interesting, but not the information I was looking for.

I decided to look into the history of the ice cream sundae and hit Wikipedia up for the details.

It turns out, there’s no agreement on where exactly the ice cream sundae originated. It seems to have appeared in the U.S. in the early 1900s, when soda fountains were popular, but there’s a variety of competing claims for where the ice cream sundae was first invented.

I also found out the Australians are going around calling ice cream floats ‘spiders.’

Though the classic ice cream sundae does not have crushed peanuts, many variations mention peanuts or other nuts as possible toppings. But alas, no further information on the history of peanut topping was to be found on Wikipedia.

So I did a Google search for:

History of ice cream toppings

I went down a little history of sprinkles rabbit hole:

and discovered that sprinkles also have a somewhat nebulous origin story! They evolved from nonpareils, but exactly who invented them first is unknown. Rainbow sprinkles appeared first, however, with chocolate arriving in the late 1800s.

But still, no mention of peanuts.

I had a suspicion at this point that peanuts as an ice cream topping was likely an American invention. Peanuts have a long history in the U.S. so it seemed reasonable that people would have started tossing them on ice cream.

George Washington Carver was a notable American inventory who came up with 300 different uses for peanuts (as well as important agricultural methods like crop rotation, but we’re focused on peanuts here), so I found a list of these uses, hoping to find ‘ice cream topping’ among them.

Alas, it was not.

Undeterred, I went back to my search for ‘history of ice cream toppings’ and read through an article on the history of ice cream cones.

In this article, I stumbled across a mention of pecans being used to make ice cream cones in the early days of their manufacture. Perhaps peanuts had served a similar purpose?

So I searched:

Peanut ice cream cone

Nothing.

So I searched:

History of peanut ice cream cone

There was still not a lot to go on, but one article described the invention of the Drumstick ice cream cone in 1928 when someone dropped an ice cream into a vat of chocolate by accident, fished it out, and put it down on a counter covered in crushed peanuts (? I guess that seems plausible?)

Not quite, but a mention of peanuts and ice cream together that might give me another path of exploration.

I searched for:

1920s candy peanuts

There were a number of popular candies in the 1920s which included peanuts, but by this point it was late and I decided to go to bed.

So we may never know where putting crushed peanuts on ice cream came from. We’ll just have to accept that it’s a delicious mystery.

This has been Stuff You Wanted To Know.

[stuffyouwantedtoknow]

Searched: Why do we say people are blood relatives?

I wanted to know why blood was considered the crucial item in being biologically related to someone.

Also searched:

“What is the origin of the term blood relative”

“Consanguineous origin”

————

From Wikipedia: “Mythic references to blood can sometimes be connected to the life-giving nature of blood, seen in such events as childbirth”

Wikipedia didn’t give any specifics around these mythic references.

Historically, blood was recognized by many religions as being very important for life. There are references to blood as the life of people and animals in Leviticus, as part of European pagan rituals, and elsewhere.

See the ‘Cultural and religious beliefs’ section of the article below:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood

In addition, blood corresponds with infancy and the season of spring in a unified model of humourism and Empedocles’ four basic elements.

See ‘Unification of humorism with Empedocles model’ in this article:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism

I also learned the word ‘consanguineous,’ which means blood related, so that’s fun. I wasn’t able to find a satisfying origin for it, though, only information on its Latin roots and that it was first used in print in the early 1600s.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consanguine

https://www.etymonline.com/word/consanguinity

[stuffyouwantedtoknow]

Searched: Were there killings in the past similar to mass shootings?

So I Googled this because I wanted to know if there were historical precedents for dealing with mass killings. I wanted to know if the recent rise in mass shootings was really unique to our time period, or if similar things have been happening throughout history. And when I say history, I mean real history, like pre-1900.

Enter the Google search:

No satisfactory results on the first page :|

So here’s what I found:

Mass shootings can be categorized as ‘rampage killings.’ Wikipedia has a list:

Most of the killings on this list took place after 1900, but there’s more than a few references to killings in the 1800s.

This list is way too long for my lazy ass to go all the way through, so here’s some info on school massacres and workplace killings:

Most listed are from the 1900s and 2000s, but there is William Stewart who, in 1828, killed 7 of his crew onboard the Mary Russell.

There are two other killings from the 1800s in the ‘disgruntled workers’ list, and six on the ‘killings involving soldiers’ list.

There are no killings before 1900 in the ‘school massacres’ list.

All of the pre-1900s killings on these lists took place in the 1800s, which is still kind of close to the present day considering all of human history.

If we look at the list of familicides in Europe, we find seven pre-1800, in the 1500 and 1600, and one in 1725.

There weren’t any pre-1800 killings listed for the US and Asia.

————���—

And that’s as far as I got on that. If you read through any more of these Wikipedia articles, or have additional sources, drop a comment below.

This has been Stuff You Wanted To Know.

[stuffyouwantedtoknow]

Searched: stitch 360 video in after effects

This video will hook you up with mad 360 video stitching skills:

Best and most up to date (as of March 2019) tutorial I’ve found so far. Make sure to watch the whole thing so you know how to render and add metadata with Media Encoder.

[stuffyouwantedtoknow]

Searched: house of the rising sun pop cover

Saw somebody cover ‘House of the Rising Sun’ on The Voice in exactly the way you would expect someone to cover ‘House of the Rising Sun.’ They didn’t get through.

In short, there’s a huge void of quality pop covers of this song. This is probably the best one:

And Dolly Parton comes through with a solid cover:

https://youtu.be/GdqOiCvNXBQ

My search eventually veered into electronic/house/dubstep covers and these were the best ones:

So if you’re a musician, hit me up with your best pop/house/dance cover of ‘House of the Rising Sun.’