The Dinner That Required a Ladder
Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere can mean falling leaves, apple picking, pumpkins, and more produce than you can cook. But before heading out with baskets and bags, consider one harvest that was so unique the BBC televised it. With serious field workers doing their job, the footage should have been ordinary, but ended up raising more than just a few eyebrows…
Today’s Trivia Question
In 1957, the BBC showed people conducting an unlikely harvest from tree branches. What food were they “picking”?
(pick one to reveal the answer)
Bonus if you know the date the BBC chose for the broadcast.
| A Few More for Fun… |
While testing the spaghetti-tree idea in a London park, the filmmakers attracted whose attention?
(pick one to reveal the answer)
| A Few More Trivia Questions Before You Go… |
Once you take a more serious look at pasta, it turns up in unusual spots. Physics experiments, political debates, and even computer programming. It really is a popular dish!
Science
Spaghettification is a real scientific term. What can cause it?
(pick one to reveal the answer)
History
An Italian Futurist named Filippo Tommaso Marinetti campaigned against pasta. What did he claim it did to people?
(pick one to reveal the answer)
Language
Computer programmers describing something as “spaghetti code” are speaking about what?
(pick one to reveal the answer)
Answers
| TODAY’S QUESTIONAnswer: C. Spaghetti. The BBC’s program Panorama presented viewers with a straight-faced presenter reporting about a successful spaghetti harvest in Switzerland. In the footage, people climbed ladders and pulled strands of spaghetti from branches as if it were the average day on the farm. Some viewers fell for it and contacted the BBC to ask about starting their own orchard! Bonus points if you knew that the date of the broadcast was April 1, 1957. By choosing April Fool’s Day as the date, it should have been obvious to viewers that they were being pranked. But if a presenter is serious enough, they can get anything “pasta” you! | |
| 01 | Answer: B. Police officers threatening a fine. According to one of the hoax’s arrangers, Albert Kunz, officers approached and warned the filmmakers not to touch or damage the park’s plants. They had been testing ways to hang the spaghetti in the trees. Apparently, the police weren’t concerned about the mental health of the filmmakers, just the health of the trees. |
| 02 | Answer: A. Radiator. Radiatori are little ridged pasta pieces with fins to help catch the sauce and toppings. Several pasta shapes were introduced in the early 20th century and take their inspiration from the mechanics involved in automobile manufacturing (that’s not an April Fool’s joke, either!) |
| 03 | Answer: B. A black hole. The gravity of a black hole can pull much harder on one end of an object than the other, stretching it into a long, thin (spaghetti-like) shape. Scientists discovered it and named it spaghettification. |
| 04 | Answer: C. Made them pessimistic and slow. His 1930 manifesto included a call to abolish pasta. He wanted food that was more aligned to a faster, more modern Italy. He thought the national favorite was an obstacle to that new world. He didn’t have any scientific findings, but argued that pasta made people both pessimistic and slow. |
| 05 | Answer: A. Code that is tangled and difficult to follow. The term describes code with a structure so messy that figuring out what happens next is a challenge or chore. The term paints a good picture of problematic code; at least with spaghetti you get a meal out of the mess! Now you can say you know about a spaghetti “harvest,” why someone blamed pasta for pessimism, how the galaxy makes spaghetti, and even why coders hate it. Not a bad fall harvest! |
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How did you do?
Score 1 point for each correct answer and 1 point for the bonus if you knew it. Perfect score: 7.
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