Dairy Queen doesn’t sell ice cream.
Dairy Queen makes a lot of popular frozen treats — Blizzards, sundaes, and cones, to name a few — but none of them are technically ice cream. The company’s soft serve products, though delicious, don’t meet the Food and Drug Administration guideline mandating that “ice cream contains not less than 10% milk fat.”

Because Dairy Queen’s products are made with only 5% milk fat, they’re required to be called something else. That’s why you won’t actually see the words “ice cream” at your local DQ or on the website, which is careful to use specific wording.

Soft serve and similar confections made with lower milk fat used to be classified as “ice milk” by the FDA, but new regulations in 1995 resulted in three other categories instead: reduced-fat, light, and low-fat ice cream. Dairy Queen products fall under the banner of “reduced-fat ice cream,” which is legally distinct from “ice cream” proper — and isn’t the catchiest term when trying to sell frozen desserts. Frozen yogurt, meanwhile, is made of yogurt rather than cream and hasn’t been sold at Dairy Queen since the chain discontinued the frozen yogurt-based Breeze in 2000.

Joan Crawford’s stage name came from a public contest.
Like many classic Hollywood stars, Joan Crawford was known by a stage name rather than her real name. Born Lucille Fay LeSueur, the future Oscar winner made her silver-screen debut in 1925’s Lady of the Night under her birth name. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which had signed her to a $75-a-week contract, saw potential in the starlet but feared her name would be a hindrance; Pete Smith, the head of publicity at MGM, thought her surname sounded too much like the word “sewer.”

So the upper brass at MGM landed on a novel solution: a contest run in the fan magazine Movie Weekly, which offered between $50 and $500 for coming up with a new name for “a beautiful young screen actress.” The perfect name, according to MGM, “must be moderately short and euphonious. It must not imitate the name of some already established artiste. It must be easy to spell, pronounce, and remember. It must be impressive and suitable to the bearer’s type.”

The winner, as fate would have it, wasn’t Joan Crawford; it was Joan Arden, which was already the name of an extra who threatened to sue MGM. And so the second-place winner was chosen instead, not that the new Joan Crawford was happy about it — she initially hated the name before making the most of it.


Crawford accepted her Oscar from bed.

After a string of hits in the late 1920s and early ’30s, Crawford’s luck so reversed itself that she was deemed “box-office poison” in TIME magazine by the end of the decade. Her comeback wasn’t fully solidified until she took the title role in 1945’s Mildred Pierce, which resulted in her sole Academy Award — not that she was expecting to win. Believing Ingrid Bergman would take home the Oscar for The Bells of St. Mary’s, Crawford was disinclined to attend any ceremony where she wouldn’t be victorious and opted to feign illness. Upon learning she’d won, however, she put on her makeup, invited members of the press to her bedroom, and accepted the statuette from the comfort of her own bed.

Jeremiah Johnson.
John Garrison Jeremiah Johnson was born in 1824 in Little York, New Jersey. In 1846 he enlisted in the Navy; after beating an officer to a pulp, he deserted and fled west.

In Alder Gulch, Montana, he became a gold prospector and called himself only John Johnson. Later, he worked as a lumberjack, a trapper, and in other more or less legal jobs. It was hard not to notice him, because of his two meters of height, his 120 kilos of muscles, and his frequent outbursts of anger and fury.

In 1847 he married a Flathead Indian. Shortly afterward, his wife was killed by the Crow, an enemy tribe. If only they had never done it. Johnson began the hunt for the Crow. His revenge would go on for 25 years. And it would be terrible. According to historian Andrew Southerland, "He killed and scalped more than 300 Crow Indians. And he ate the liver of each one." Hence the nickname. Johnson's is a disdain: the Crows believe that without a liver you can't go to the green pastures.

"Liver Eater" becomes the terror of the Indians. In 1863, captured by the Blackfeet, he is about to be sold to the Crows. But he escapes after tearing the leather ties with his teeth. After killing the Indian guard, he cuts off his leg with a large knife. He takes it with him and eats it during the long escape in the snow: 300 kilometers to a friend's shack.

He then enlists in the Union Army, where he fights bravely. There is also time to make peace with the Crows, who become "blood brothers". But in the Indian wars "Dapiek Absaroka", the Crow killer, as he is known among the Indians, will massacre Sioux and Blackfeet. In the 1880s he is sheriff in Red Lodge, Montana. He will die in 1900 in a hospice for war veterans.

The main character of the western film “Red Crow: You Will Not Have My Scalp” was modeled on his life. To play him, director Sidney Pollack chose (guess what?) the angelic face of Robert Redford.
The movie was released in Italy with the title, "Red Crow You Will Not Have My Scalp". It was released in the US with the title, “Jeremiah Johnson. “

Around the time of the film’s release I found Johnson’s grave at the VA Cemetery in Los Angeles where he was buried after dying at VA Hospital.

A few weeks later a group of high school students had themselves legally declared his “next of kin” since he had no known relatives.

They had his body reburied in the Rocky Mountains near Cody, WY at an outdoor museum of Western buildings such as Butch Cassidy’s first hideout. Robert Redford attended the burial.

Today July 18th, 1984

Twenty-one people are shot to death at McDonald’s
James Oliver Huberty opens fire in a crowded McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro, California, killing 21 people and wounding 19 others with several semi-automatic weapons. Minutes earlier, Huberty had left home, telling his wife, “I’m going hunting…hunting for humans.”

Huberty, who had a history of mental problems, lost his job in Ohio the previous year. He brought his family to San Diego and worked as a security guard until he was fired again, a month before the shootings. His wife claimed that Huberty called a mental health clinic to make an appointment for counseling but was never called back. Huberty had a love affair with guns, keeping a small arsenal in his bedroom. Neighbors described him as very angry.

Bringing several of these guns into the McDonald’s two miles from the Mexican border, Huberty demanded that the 45 patrons get on the floor. He then walked around the restaurant, calmly shooting people. He killed 20 in the first ten minutes, including four who tried to escape. There were so many shots fired that the police first assumed that there was more than one gunman inside. Firing at a fire truck that responded to the scene, Huberty also grazed one firefighter with a bullet.

An hour after the shooting began, an employee managed to escape through the basement and inform the SWAT team that Huberty was alone and without hostages. With this information, sharpshooters were told to “take him out.” A marksman sent a shot through Huberty’s chest and killed him. After making sure that he was dead, police finally entered the restaurant. San Diego Police Chief William Kolender said, “I hope to God I never see such a thing again.”

Why we can thank women for beer.

Women were the first beer brewers.
On the list of things women don’t get enough credit for, being the first to brew beer might not seem like the most important. But fermented beverages have played a vital role in human culture for perhaps almost as long as society has existed, providing nutrients, enjoyment, and often a safer alternative to drinking water before the advent of modern sanitation. Scholars disagree over exactly when beer was first introduced — although the earliest hard evidence for barley beer comes from 5,400-year-old Sumerian vessels that were still sticky with beer when archaeologists found them — but one thing has never been in question: “Women absolutely have, in all societies, throughout world history, been primarily responsible for brewing beer,” says Theresa McCulla, who curates the Smithsonian’s American Brewing History Initiative.

Just look to the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, a set of 282 laws written in 1750 BCE that gave women exclusive jurisdiction over brewing and even tavern ownership. Among the societies likely governed by those rules was ancient Sumer (modern-day southern Iraq), where The Hymn to Ninkasi (the Sumerian goddess of brewing) was composed approximately 50 years before the Code of Hammurabi. Including lines such as “Ninkasi, you are the one who pours out the filtered beer of the collector vat; it is [like] the onrush of the Tigris and Euphrates,” as well as a beer recipe, the song of praise is the first — but far from the last — known text devoted to the praise of beer.


The world’s bestselling beer is almost exclusively sold in one country.

And that country is China, the world’s largest beer market by far — the nation accounts for about a quarter of global beer sales, which is why the bestselling beer there is also the bestselling beer in the world. Snow, which costs as little as 49 cents U.S. per can, is made by SABMiller and China Resources Enterprise. Some 101 million hectoliters (about 86 million U.S. beer barrels) of the inexpensive brew were sold in 2017, more than twice as many as its closest competitor for global beer dominance: Budweiser, which sold 49.2 million hectoliters (nearly 42 million U.S. beer barrels) the same year. Despite — or perhaps because of — its ubiquity, Snow isn’t highly regarded among beer aficionados.

Bugs Bunny Is Celebrating His 85th Birthday at the Symphony.

He’s appeared in over 150 movies, starred in commercials, and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — and on July 27, he’s celebrating his 85th birthday. We’re talking about Bugs Bunny, the speedy, carrot-chewing cartoon hare who’s also the iconic Warner Bros. mascot.
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An early iteration of Bugs made an appearance in the 1938 animated short Porky’s Hare Hunt, but the bunny we recognize today was officially born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1940, when he starred in A Wild Hare and quipped, “What’s up, Doc?” for the first time.
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Fast-forward to the present, and Eric Bauza, the current voice behind the beloved bunny, tells us he loves using that signature phrase to “instantly put a smile on peoples’ faces.” This Friday and Saturday, Bauza will take to the stage at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles as part of Bugs Bunny at the Symphony, a film-and-live-orchestra touring concert in its 35th year.
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As for what Bauza loves most about voicing Bugs Bunny? “Having the opportunity to give back to a character that entertained and inspired me as a child growing up,” he says, “and who ultimately shaped who I am today.

July 9th, 1996. A family is brutally attacked on a walk in England.

Dr. Lin Russell, her two daughters, Josie and Megan, and their dog, Lucy, are all brutally attacked by a man wielding a hammer on their way home to Nonington Village, Kent, England, after a swimming gala. Forcing them to sit down in the woods, the attacker blindfolded and tied up his victims with their torn towels, and then bludgeoned them one by one. Nine-year-old Josie, the sole survivor of the vicious assault, had to relearn to speak after surgeons inserted a metal plate into her head to cover the area where her skull had been smashed. Some of her brain tissue was so damaged that it had to be removed.

Finally, on July 17 of the following year, Michael Stone, who had a record of burglary and robbery, as well as a history of drug abuse and mental illness, was arrested. He had been recognized after the broadcast of aBBC television special that included his picture and description. Asked by detectives where he was on the day of the murders, Stone replied, “I can’t remember for two reasons. One, I was badly on drugs, and two, it was so long ago.”

During the trial, several witnesses testified against Stone. One maintained that the defendant’s stepfather often beat young Michael with a hammer; several prison inmates (Barry Thompson, Damien Daley, and Mark Jennings) claimed that Stone had confessed to the murders on separate occasions; and a couple, Sheree Batt and Lawrence Calder, alleged that Stone had come to their house the morning after the murders wearing blood-splattered clothing.

On October 23, 1998, the 38-year-old Stone was convicted and given a triple life sentence, despite his repeated claims of innocence. Immediately thereafter, Barry Thompson contacted a daily newspaper to retract his testimony. Based on Thompson’s admission that he lied, a Court of Appeals threw out Stone’s conviction. At a second trial, which ended in early October 2001, he was again convicted and sentenced to three life terms, which he began serving on October 5.

Despite the second conviction, there are some who still believe Stone is innocent.