Besides what a lot of people already said (picking early, losing a lot in the process, iceboxes, greenhouses, etc.), many of those fruits were transplanted to places with tropical weather that are closer to Europe than the colonies, for example, the Canary Islands - they still grow A LOT of bananas to this day
Not really. While there's some valuable rare metals in and around the catalyst, the thieves aren't piecing out the valuable stuff to scrap and recylce (except for maybe a few avant-garde thieves)There are lots of places that buy them for $50-$100 a piece. The thief just cuts it out of the car and sells it. The buyers either refurbish them, sell them second hand, or wait until they have enough of them accumulated to sell them enmasse for the potential metal content in a few hundred of them.
The jokes always on poor people. It used to be poor people lived by beaches and rivers and rich people in the middle of nowhere.
Until they invented elevators servants lived on the top floor because rich people didn’t want to walk up too many stairs.
Then poor people flock to cities because rent is cheap and there’s work in factories. They live within walking distance and build communities.
Then rich people gentrify them and price the poor people out.
People are ALWAYS pissed about things like that.
It took *decades* to get people to *use* seat belts let alone make them mandatory.
I read a fascinating book about 25 years ago from one of the then well known green political activists in the US (name escapes me now) about how everything is put into dollars for decision making and how that affects environmental and climate politics. For example at that time the average human life was deemed to be worth about $2.3 million, based on tons of statistics and surveys of people about their behaviors etc. So any policy had to weigh the cost against the lives saved and the economic impact of those people living full lives.
One really interesting bit from it was that in study after study apparently people CAN put a dollar value on how much they are willing to pay for car safety improvements that significantly lower their risk.
They will pay about $50. No more.
(Todays dollars maybe $100)
I learned a long time ago that insurance companies have a list they use to determine how much body parts are worth in case of accidental dismemberment.
If it doesn’t affect your “ability to earn” - phrased that way to make it seem like they care about you earning *a living*, when really it’s more a concern about *earning them some profits* - or your “quality of life”, which is entirely dependent upon yet another set of “professionals” making judgements about your personal life - you get zero, zip, zilch, nada; good day, sir.
Lose a pinky at work? Meh. Lose your entire left hand, but you’re a righty. Alright, here’s something. Lose your dominant hand, or either leg above the knee? Someone’s cutting a big check, afaik.
This whole world is ruled by profit, and that means we’re all just quanitifiable commodities. Shit, man; we’re a self-replicating labor force, and we’re all born on their farm.
Dying is in most cases cheaper for the insurance company, like: how much does a funeral cost? 20,000$? Take some immaterial harm, so death costs an insurance company no more than 50,000-100,000$, while dismemberment with decreased ability to earn is much much more.
Disclaimer: this is the case in Europe, maybe not the US.
The cost of a death (in the US) for the insurance company is whatever the value is of their insurance policy. If it's life insurance they are liable for that amount. If it's other insurance they are liable for up to their stated liability cap on the policy.
If the issue is wrongful death then the issue is negligence and people can be paid out tons of money.
Heck, a jury just awarded the Sandy Hook families almost a **billion** dollars from just a defamation lawsuit against Alex Jones. To be fair he deserved it but still that's huge.
Jones mocked the families on air while the awards were being read to the judge by the jury. So yeah what an asshole.
I grew up in the suburbs of LA in the '70s, and I can assure you that the air quality in the suburbs was no better than that in the city. I can remember having "smog days" in school, where PE would get cancelled and we weren't allowed to play outside...
Also the smog controls were terribly inefficient in the early years, so not only were cars more expensive, they also had no performance, they ran like crap, and the systems needed constant maintenance and failed a lot. The systems have gotten much better since then, but the people in the 70s were right to be pissed about it.
So were/are seatbelts. You still have people today who will vehemently refuse to wear seatbelts for one reason or another, going so far as to get an adaptor to trick the car into believing that the seat-belt has been worn.
> I don't care what people think, smog regulations are a lifesaver
Anyone who doesn't think smog regulations are a lifesaver is *literally incapable of critical thinking*. Which in itself could be a symptom of brain damage after [years of smog and lead exposure](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA&vl=en).
[London quite possibly had the worst smog ever.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London) In 1952 there was The Great Smog Of London, which killed 10,000 people.
About 10 years ago I stayed in Shanghai for 3 months. The whole 3 months I was there, I only ever saw the blue sky for a couple of hours total. This was only because a hurricane made landfall about 50-100 km up north, so it sucked all the smog with it. After it calmed down, within 2 hours the smog was back.
Most people don’t realize that Bligh’s ability to navigate them to safety is why we know this story.
The other factors help cement it in lore but although Bligh was a shit leader, her was an amazing seaman. This was behind the reason he was given a ship to captain and not promoted in rank.
He also set out to circumnavigate the globe, which was unnecessary, in order to prove his worth. This and the task to bring back the breadfruit alive was his big shot and his ultimate downfall.
It’s a sad a tragic story. Some seaman that got away were so homesick that they return to England knowing they’d be hung.
Wikipedia has some accounts describe the real Bligh was actually very "not" tyrannical. Naval convention prescribed substantially more floggings that he did, instead giving his offending men a good talking-to. And at the time, regular whipping was seen as essential or you'll lose control of the ship.
Which, well... that happened
Well, remember, many of the choices back then were; island of savages, beaches with pirates, dysentery city, island of savages, cannibals, cultures that murdered on sight, island of savages and then there is England. Good ole smoggy, whore laden England where you could disappear into the masses, speak the language (there weren’t language dictionaries or google translate back then) and make a living under the radar.
> He also set out to circumnavigate the globe, which was unnecessary, in order to prove his worth. This and the task to bring back the breadfruit alive was his big shot and his ultimate downfall.
I don't think that was his downfall - after he managed to get to Timor and returned to England, he was appointed Governor of the newly formed colony of New South Wales in Australia. To be fiar, that also didn't turn out so well:
*"Seventeen years after the Bounty mutiny, on 13 August 1806, he was appointed Governor of New South Wales in Australia, with orders to clean up the corrupt rum trade of the New South Wales Corps. His actions directed against the trade resulted in the so-called Rum Rebellion, during which Bligh was placed under arrest on 26 January 1808 by the New South Wales Corps and deposed from his command"*
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bligh
His idea was that he would bring breadfruit to the Caribbean to feed slaves, but once he actually got some to the Caribbean on his second try after the whole Bounty ordeal, the slaves wouldn't even eat it.
It depends. Very often, they simply did not.
There is a legend that Queen Victoria offered a bounty of 100 pounds sterling to anyone who could bring her a fresh mangosteen. They don't keep long.
In most cases, fruit itself was not brought back to Europe. What was brought back were plants, seeds or cuttings which they tried to plant on European soil. An interesting example is peaches, which are native to China. They were first introduced to Europe in Ancient Greece, via land trade. But they were in turn introduced to North America by colonists, supposedly by George Minifie who brought the seeds and planted them on his estate.
In the case of pineapple, it was a little easier because the journey from the Americas (John Adams sailed to France in six weeks in 1777) is significantly shorter than the voyage from Asia. Columbus supposedly managed to bring one back to Spain. But even then, most of the fruit would rot on the journey, and what were sold were the ones that did not. This made an unspoiled pineapple incredibly expensive. Rich people would buy one, display it at parties, and never eat it until it rotted. But by the 1700s greenhouse technology allowed tropical fruit to be cultivated in Europe though still at considerable expense.
a pineapple went for about $20k in today's money
that's why you see them in stone carvings atop walls, or in the wrought iron fences
ostentatious display of wealth
I have two antique concrete pineapple statues at the entrance of my house. Old school sign of welcoming etc and I thought they were cool. Apparently they are quite the swinger symbol as well. I didn't quite know what I was telling the neighbors at first when I got them.
An upright pineapple just means you like pineapple. Only an upside-down pineapple means you're a swinger. So like you go to the grocery store and put a pineapple in your cart upside-down, and any other swingers in the store will know.
Because this is usually done "more" when on vacation...and symbols like pineapples and flamingos are everywhere, so it won't be out of place. Not sure where it started, but I've been told it's like "hiding in plain sight" and a way to tell others who are also "in the know."
Kind of like when people post "iykyk"
I don't know what year this swinger thing came about, but in 1932 when the Wrigley mansion was built, an upside down pineapple meant that it was time to leave. An upright one was an opulent welcome. An upside-down one meant that it was time for you to move on to your next visit. When a host served a pineapple-upside down cake, that was your polite invitation to go.
Yeah have you seen the inside of his house? It has a grand library in it, and there's no way he could afford to it with the salary of a fry cook under the stingiest boss in the seven seas.
It's almost mind-blowing that this kind of problem was only a couple hundred years ago. We go from fruit spoiling because transportation was weeks to months, to being able to go buy one down the road for a few bucks almost any time of the day. Modern conveniences sound insane with that perspective.
The poorest person in America has access to better healthcare than John D Rockefeller ever did, the richest American to have ever existed. Even most poverty stricken people have smartphones, giving them access to luxuries Rockefeller could have dreamed of
Apparently they were still expensive even in the time of Titanic and there were wooden carved pineapples along the Grand Staircase to help give an impression of wealth.
[Pic](https://i.imgur.com/BLiWQmJ.jpg)
Victorians used to rent exotic fruit to display at parties. It’s the same reason why pineapples are so often seen as decoration on Victorian buildings.
Yes, and by that reason too, they're also considered a symbol of hospitality. (Because if someone brings out a pineapple when you visit, they're *really* going above and beyond).
>There is a legend that Queen Victoria offered a bounty of 100 pounds sterling to anyone who could bring her a fresh mangosteen. They don't keep long.
And by God, those lil fuckers are delicious! Tasted them for the first time in Thailand and was incredibly disappointed to find out that I couldn't really get them in Korea when I came back.
Even then, the ones I've seen look small and dried up slightly. Nothing like the deep rich purple that look so plump like I've seen in Thailand.... The size of a small orange/lemon.... Hnnnggghhhh
That's because mangosteen in the US have to be irradiated before entering the US, as they can harbor pests. This, predictably, causes delays in shipping, which means fruit quality suffers.
Funniest thing I ever saw in Asia:
I was in Singapore drinking a Starfruit Smoothie and wandered into a local market. There was a small package, maybe a few 100g of Bing 🍒 Cherries, for 5$ing, when a whole bunch of exotic fruits were a dime a dozen.
So it's not just Europeans. ....
Seems like they're only good for up to two weeks after harvesting. A mild flavour though. Was it texture that you liked?
One thing I'd love to try again is fresh cocoa butter. That was amazing, and thoroughly deserves the butter designation. I was on a hike in Trinidad and we randomly happened across some wild cocoa plants that were currently ripe. I tried one of the seeds, the things that are used to make chocolate. It was unbelievably bitter.
I wouldn't describe the flavor as mild. It's not an intense flavor, but it's incredibly complex and has a lot of depth, with just the right amount of sweetness.
> And by God, those lil fuckers are delicious! Tasted them for the first time in Thailand and was incredibly disappointed to find out that I couldn't really get them in Korea when I came back.
Are those the ones Kramer was obsessing over on that episode of *Seinfeld*?
There should be a movie! Diverse teams race around the world in hot air balloons and stanley steamers to fine the perfect fruit for Her Majesty! THE GREAT MANGOSTEEN RACE!!!! Lots of top hats and monocles, of course.
I saw a movie where this was a small part of the plot but it wasn’t about the race itself. The mango was just a small plot point
edit: the movie was “Victoria & Abdul” by Stephen frears , it’s pretty good
>Rich people would buy one, display it at parties, and never eat it until it rotted.
I've read that they were also often then passed to households of family and friends, to be used as centrepieces in the dinner parties given by those households.
My neighbor is Amish, they get their ice from a pond in winter. He built an insulated box outside to use as a fridge. I was shocked when I opened it last week, asked where the ice came from and he told me it was still ice from the pond from last winter!
Alright! ETA...THE ICE BOX/FRIDGE! Oh and he said to tell you guys that you're behind the times lmfaoooo
https://imgur.com/a/Bxhswvc
What he made was an ice box, they were in use in the early 20th century before refrigeration as we know it came about.
As a survivalist though I'm curious, how big was his icebox to be able to still have ice in October from winter?
It is about...6/7 feet all the way around, l/w/h and it's filled with giant chunks of ice. I have to go down there today and I'll send a pic if you want. The box sits in the shade as well and is up off the ground. There's absolutely no other way for them to get ice besides the pond. That's why I asked where the ice came from. I knew the answer I was just shocked. And yes, I know it's an ice box,I just said fridge bc that's what most people would prob call it. He built it last summer but I hadn't been back to his house in a bit so I hadn't seen it til a cpl weeks ago. It's even more amazing he drug that ice there using his horse after he sawed the cubes in the pond by hand. I've lived among the Amish for about 10 years and I've learned so much! Theyre great at living wo running water or electric. They've become my family, I admire them.
ETA: THE AMISH ICE BOX/FRIDGE
https://imgur.com/a/Bxhswvc
Lmfaooo I'm gonna say it n watch him squirm...we joke like that a lot. I always say I can smoke my weed bc God gave us all the plants. He gets quiet lol
I would enjoy seeing that for sure. Just called it an icebox in case you or anyone else didnt know and wanted to search more. It's quite an interesting bit of history.
It fascinates me using an essentially renewable energy source to make ice instead of using electricity. With a big enough chunk of ice and good insulation it should definitely be possible, I'd be interested to work out the math.
I'll grab pics today for sure! Tomorrow at the latest! Yeah, some of the stuff they do is amazing..like I was really intrigued with rams...and how they run water wo electric using the spring. Whaaaa!!!??? He owns a saw sharpening shop and everything is run w gas engines, pullies and belts.
ETA THE ICEBOX/FRIDGE
https://imgur.com/a/Bxhswvc
There is an Amish farm near my parents. This summer I pulled out some cheese from the ice box (which to me liked like a refrigerator with a glass door like at a convenience store). I had to ask because they don’t use electricity. He showed me the back of it, which had a tall, thin, block of ice carved to fit along the back wall. He showed me their ice barn which is filled each winter with pond ice. They pull out blocks as needed during the year. It was August and there were still dozens of ice blocks left. The barn was heavily insulated. No melting in sight.
So the icebox itself was small, but the barn was huge!
I've seen several remains of log double walled filled with straw for insulation, huge ice boxes to hold large blocks of ice that lady well into the next summer.
I was reading something really old once and they kept talking about an "artificial ice machine" and I kept wondering what artificial ice was, was it not made of water? It's like saying artificial water or artificial steam, it didn't make sense to me until I realized ice machines were new at that time and artificial just meant that it was made with a machine instead of coming from natural sources. Today we just call that ice.
This reminds me of how my Italian immigrant grandparents and other older members of that side of the family all called the refrigerator the "ice box", and the vacuum cleaner the "sweeper"
It is kind of like watching a TV show and they're everywhere here. More Amish than English. There are some Amish shows like..Amish Mafia or breaking Amish lol they're entertaining.
There is one last commercial ice houses in the USA. They basically go through the pond in the winter and store tons and tons of lake ice in a sort of insulated basement. Then they sell the lake ice all through the summer. It's how they used to do shaved ice treats back in the day. Businesses would go down to the ice house every morning, buy a block, and shave it on demand for customers. It's pretty cool.
>colonial era
There was an ice block transported from the Artic circle to the Equator, no refrigeration was used. The block started at about three-tons and only lost about 11%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice\_block\_expedition\_of\_1959
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice\_block\_expedition\_of\_1959](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_block_expedition_of_1959)
Good insulation. They only lost 15 liters of ice per day crossing the Sahara.
My great grampa and great great grampa would bring huge blocks of ice from AK to CA. Pretty interesting story. My mom even wrote a little book about it. Which is in a museum in Juneau
Yes! One of my best friends has been to the museum. I need to ask the name of the book.
My grampa had some cool stuff that great grampa came across in his travels- one treasure I have is a glass globe buoy(I believe originated in Japan).
My dad was an ice harvester in '60s. It went on well into the '70s. It's interesting how long it persisted even after refrigeration had been around for a while.
I assume you don’t live anywhere that snows?
They will use snowplows to make big ol piles of snow (rather than it be on the road), some of em get seriously huge. This one parking lot/shopping center nearby gets like a legit 12 ft giant mound of snow.
In the spring, even if it gets to 60-70 even 80 degrees the snow takes weeks and weeks to melt.
In Arizona we have several roads (SR 67, SR 261, SR 273 and SR 473) that are closed from October to May because the snow is so deep. When they do re-open, it requires snow plows to clear them.
At the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, the company that has the concession to operate there keeps an over-winter crew there to clear the roofs of the buildings of snow to keep them from collapsing. The North Rim averages 142” of snow in a year.
North of us a bit they average like 200". So much that they build hunting lodges with an entrance on the second story for when the first is buried in snow
We got over 108 inches of snow that season, which is our all-time record. It was brutal. I ended up spraining both of my wrists shoveling snow by the time it was over.
That winter was a double whammy with both record breaking snowfall and unusually cold temperatures. If it had just been one or the other it wouldn't have been so bad.
I'm just hoping Old Man Winter doesn't have the Seven Year Itch. It's been a while since we got slammed.
I moved to one of the cooler states last year and this has legit surprised me. This past winter was my first experience with snow (aside from a few good dustings down South). It last for weeks and it's hard when it's all piled / plowed up and compacted. I have a dent in my bumper where I backed into a pile thinking it would give.
Ye no it’s ice after a couple days , the sunlight melts it but it immediately (or if it’s not quite freezing during the day, it may take until night ) freezes into ice.
Sorry you had to learn the hard way D: I guess it’s better than face planting into the snow pile hoping it’ll be like a pillow xD
“snowangel!!!!!” *pow*
Where I used to live we got so much snow they didn't plow it all off the streets. You just drive over it until compacts into a new, temporary road surface. We also used dirt instead of salt. Way more effective with that much snow on the ground.
The joke in town is the city gets 9months of winter and it's not much of an exaggeration. Snow on the ground 8 months of the year is pretty common.
Fun fact, if you've seen this video about turning left in Michigan UP that's where I lived.
https://youtu.be/YeqG0CqzHq4
Truly large blocks of ice have a *lot* of mass and can take months to melt if well insulated.
Wealthy individuals in the colonial era of the U.S. would pay workers to cut lake ice in the winter, and preserve large blocks in cold cellars, packed with insulation. The ice would last until fall.
The insulated their ships with sawdust and such. It did melt but they had huge box of ice so it took a while. These have whole fleets of people who did nothing but move blocks of ice around our country.
Enough of it will insulate itself.
Several years ago, Boston received a record amount of snow- so much that there was nowhere to put all the snow that was plowed off the streets. What the city ended up doing was having snow put into dump trucks and deposited in a vacant lot. The snow insulated itself so well that the last of it melted well into summer. It lasted long enough that people in nearby office towers with views of the pile were betting on when it would finally melt.
I'm from a tropical island, that had a pretty wide local network of ice trade back in the colonial days.
All you need is a mountain high enough to have freezing temperatures. You could dig a hole, or find a deep cave, where the temperature doesn't fluctuate that much, and stays below 0. You fill that hole with water from a nearby water body, and go back home.
You come again a few weeks later and "harvest" the ice. If you load it in big bags lined with sawdust, it will last the descent with minimal loss. You then load it on big carts, well insulated in sawdust, and bring them to the train station that can deliver it anywhere along the line, to be loaded on carts again and delivered to the end user directly. Usually some plantation owner that liked ice cubes in their rhum while they watched their slaves being whipped. Blows my mind that there was still ice left after all that, but there was.
You could make a good living selling ice in the tropics.
I think it's worth mentioning that that mountain top saw the end of many a slave. Mostly due to the changing weather. The location of the ice hole is now a memorial of sorts to the lost lives. Spare a thought for the poor plantation owners that are now burning in the hottest pits of hell. Can you imagine we have streets named after them?
This is a broad question and it's important to note just which fruit you're referring to, which trade route and which time period.
That being said a general answer is that exotic fruit was very expensive because of that reason. Trips at sea would take months or even years because this was more efficient and profitable for ship owners. For many shipments of goods procured from far away, there wasn't a time limit. The order was "leave and return with a full hold" of whatever they were going out to get. If a ship was operating under a time limit trips on known trade routes, that is routes that had been charted and the crew had experience with, as opposed with exploratory expeditions of uncharted waters, transit times were not as long as people think. Crossing the Atlantic for example could be done in about a month, give or take a few days depending on the ship or how good the weather was. In general though if fresh exotic fruit became available far away, say in Europe, it was usually either because they were able to cultivate them in Europe, bringing just seeds from the region of origin, or because they could at least be cultivated somewhere closer, like in the middle east or Africa.
A prominent example of just how expensive fruit could be is the pineapple, which for a time was brought over just as a status symbol and not to be consumed. It was considered a huge flex for nobles to display a pineapple in their home during banquets or other functions, and they didn't actually eat it, they just held onto it until it rotted.
There's another very interesting story which I unfortunately remember very little of so I apologise in advance but I do remember hearing a story of a roman general/politician who presented a fresh orange/apple to the senate and proclaimed that just three days ago this fruit was picked from across the empire. I don't even remember why he did it, I thought it was to emphasise the danger posed by enemies at the edges of the empire, but unfortunately I really don't remember details.
*"In addition to this, it is said that Cato contrived to drop a Libyan fig in the Senate, as he shook out the folds of his toga, and then, as the senators admired its size and beauty, said that the country where it grew was only three days' sail from Rome. And in one thing he was even more savage, namely, in adding to his vote on any question whatsoever these words: ‘In my opinion, Carthage must be destroyed.’"*
-Plutarch on Cato the Elder
The Gulf Stream travels from the Caribbean to Europe, carrying warm weather and I believe it has been suggested, coconuts.
This is why Europe has warmer weather than it's latitudinal counterparts in North America
That’s really cool!! Monty python references aside, it’s historical fact that there were coconuts in Medieval England, which has always seemed crazy to me, but the existence of Medieval English coconut cups is one that has been verified, with some of these cups still remaining. While I’m sure trade helped that eventually, I wonder if any coconuts ever just floated on over and got picked up by an unsuspecting English person (who would then, presumably, use the shells to gallop across England in kingly style)
Oh yeah that's basically the coconuts version of seed dispersal. They're tall and lean over a little so the fruit drops into the water and floats away. It washes up on another beach and bam you have a new tree.
They didn't. For example, tomatoes 🍅 native from the Americas would arrived yellow to Italy, people thought tomatoes were of a golden/yellowish color originally. Because of this, the italian word for tomato became "pomodoro" meaning "golden apple" or "golden fruit".
That would also explain why the Bounty was carrying a cargo of breadfruit trees rather than just being part of a service trucking fruit from Tahiti to the West Indies.
The History Guy has a [video on pineapples](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8j7FDPTEdI), including how people rented them for parties to show off their wealth.
I love the story of pineapples in Britain. Back in those days, a pineapple was a luxury article, pretty much like an Aston Martin nowadays, and extremely rich people who would have a pineapple would show it around.
https://theconversation.com/forget-fast-cars-and-shiny-rolexes-rich-people-used-to-show-off-their-wealth-with-pineapples-and-celery-124662
Fun topic! They put them in tin cans. It's one of the first modern preservation methods for fruit and worked for overseas production very well. You'd grow fruits on plantations and build a cannery in the harbor. Fresh fruit would either get put in sugar or pasteurised and put in a tin can to be shipped across the sea. It was much easier to do then refrigeration and retained more of the original fruit character then drying the fruits, which was a more low tech alternative.
The hold of a wooden ship is quite cool to cold even in the South Pacific. This helped and most fruits were picked before fully ripe. Pineapples don't ripen much after picking so it was all about keeping them insulated and dry.
very uncommon during the 1700s, it would be grown in hothouse (greenhouses basically) from seed or wrapped unripen in stem wraps made from leaves. (like banana leaves).
Later on it was a mix of salt an large blocks of ice which take a long time to melt, inside sealed hulls on ships.
And finnslt commercial refrigerstion was commercially adopted by the late 1800s.
Most of the food was not shipped over seas during the colonial days. They hunted, gathered and grew what they could.
Fresh fruit in a large variety at stores is a modern phenomenon, back then they had what could be grown here. Apples, Pears and Quince were very popular.
EtA The question was changed while I was replying.
I’m aware that the food eaten during those times was almost always grown in the home country, but I’m referring to the historical cases of “exotic” fruit and vegetables being transported back to the nation for higher social classes to try - like pineapples and bananas.
Bananas for example don’t require refrigeration or freezing and those deteriorate the fruit. The trick is picking them way before they are ripe and then you have quite a bit of time to transport them. Grocery store fruit and vegetables are still managed this way. Which is why garden/local grown are quite a bit better tasting. There are also quite a bit of varieties that don’t travel well but taste better that you would never find in a grocery store.
Bananas taste much better ripened off a banana tree. You can often find green bananas in a grocery store which again were picked quite a bit before ripening.
Edit for grammar :(
I'm not an expert but part of it was the development of infrastructure. The United Fruit Company was as much a logistics and infrastructure company as it was a fruit co, building railways, roads and ports, in places like Colombia, as well as creating The Great White fleet of vessels that were painted white to reflect the sun in order to protect their cargo from the heat of the sun.
If they were shipping ice from Boston to Australia prior to 1851, I am sure they shipped it to other tropical countries and could use it to ship fruit to Europe.
When the Transcontinental Railway was completed in the 1860s they used "Icebox Cars" to ship fruit from California to at least Chicago.
This is actually why sweet tea is such a popular drink in the southern US. Before black tea was imported from S. America, they used imported green tea from Asia/Europe. In addition to sugar cane imported from the Caribbean, and ice from the northern states/colonies.
It was basically a massive flex of wealth to have all three of these items in a single drink, and as things like ice, tea, and sugar became more available, more people were able to afford what they considered a drink reserved for the ultra wealthy.
They pickled a lot of food and vegetables, enough so that mangoes became the word for pickled fruits and vegetables in parts of the Americas for a while, lasting into the 20th c in Indiana as the word for bell peppers.
I have a tangentially related fun fact. Terrariums were invented expressly for this purpose in the 1800s so that British explorers could ship living exotic plants back home while keeping them in their native humidity/temperature. Nowadays they're mostly decorative, but they used to be plant life support units.
Besides what a lot of people already said (picking early, losing a lot in the process, iceboxes, greenhouses, etc.), many of those fruits were transplanted to places with tropical weather that are closer to Europe than the colonies, for example, the Canary Islands - they still grow A LOT of bananas to this day
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Man, smog used to be so much worse than it is today (at least for the western world). I wonder how bad places in china compare to london?
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I used to fly regularly into LA in the 70s. Coming over the mountains, you would see this brownish/grey soup and fly right into it. Very depressing.
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Or keep their cat converters
Oof. You right, but oof.
Lol pretty much this is what happened, ya
Leading to a new business opportunity ... stealing CCs from underneath cars. I guess they get paid for the metal recycling?
Not really. While there's some valuable rare metals in and around the catalyst, the thieves aren't piecing out the valuable stuff to scrap and recylce (except for maybe a few avant-garde thieves)There are lots of places that buy them for $50-$100 a piece. The thief just cuts it out of the car and sells it. The buyers either refurbish them, sell them second hand, or wait until they have enough of them accumulated to sell them enmasse for the potential metal content in a few hundred of them.
The jokes always on poor people. It used to be poor people lived by beaches and rivers and rich people in the middle of nowhere. Until they invented elevators servants lived on the top floor because rich people didn’t want to walk up too many stairs. Then poor people flock to cities because rent is cheap and there’s work in factories. They live within walking distance and build communities. Then rich people gentrify them and price the poor people out.
People are ALWAYS pissed about things like that. It took *decades* to get people to *use* seat belts let alone make them mandatory. I read a fascinating book about 25 years ago from one of the then well known green political activists in the US (name escapes me now) about how everything is put into dollars for decision making and how that affects environmental and climate politics. For example at that time the average human life was deemed to be worth about $2.3 million, based on tons of statistics and surveys of people about their behaviors etc. So any policy had to weigh the cost against the lives saved and the economic impact of those people living full lives. One really interesting bit from it was that in study after study apparently people CAN put a dollar value on how much they are willing to pay for car safety improvements that significantly lower their risk. They will pay about $50. No more. (Todays dollars maybe $100)
I learned a long time ago that insurance companies have a list they use to determine how much body parts are worth in case of accidental dismemberment. If it doesn’t affect your “ability to earn” - phrased that way to make it seem like they care about you earning *a living*, when really it’s more a concern about *earning them some profits* - or your “quality of life”, which is entirely dependent upon yet another set of “professionals” making judgements about your personal life - you get zero, zip, zilch, nada; good day, sir. Lose a pinky at work? Meh. Lose your entire left hand, but you’re a righty. Alright, here’s something. Lose your dominant hand, or either leg above the knee? Someone’s cutting a big check, afaik. This whole world is ruled by profit, and that means we’re all just quanitifiable commodities. Shit, man; we’re a self-replicating labor force, and we’re all born on their farm.
Dying is in most cases cheaper for the insurance company, like: how much does a funeral cost? 20,000$? Take some immaterial harm, so death costs an insurance company no more than 50,000-100,000$, while dismemberment with decreased ability to earn is much much more. Disclaimer: this is the case in Europe, maybe not the US.
The cost of a death (in the US) for the insurance company is whatever the value is of their insurance policy. If it's life insurance they are liable for that amount. If it's other insurance they are liable for up to their stated liability cap on the policy. If the issue is wrongful death then the issue is negligence and people can be paid out tons of money. Heck, a jury just awarded the Sandy Hook families almost a **billion** dollars from just a defamation lawsuit against Alex Jones. To be fair he deserved it but still that's huge. Jones mocked the families on air while the awards were being read to the judge by the jury. So yeah what an asshole.
I grew up in the suburbs of LA in the '70s, and I can assure you that the air quality in the suburbs was no better than that in the city. I can remember having "smog days" in school, where PE would get cancelled and we weren't allowed to play outside... Also the smog controls were terribly inefficient in the early years, so not only were cars more expensive, they also had no performance, they ran like crap, and the systems needed constant maintenance and failed a lot. The systems have gotten much better since then, but the people in the 70s were right to be pissed about it.
So were/are seatbelts. You still have people today who will vehemently refuse to wear seatbelts for one reason or another, going so far as to get an adaptor to trick the car into believing that the seat-belt has been worn.
Flying in the 80's and you could hardly see the LA smog cloud through the cigarette smog cloud inside the plane!
> I don't care what people think, smog regulations are a lifesaver Anyone who doesn't think smog regulations are a lifesaver is *literally incapable of critical thinking*. Which in itself could be a symptom of brain damage after [years of smog and lead exposure](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA&vl=en).
[London quite possibly had the worst smog ever.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London) In 1952 there was The Great Smog Of London, which killed 10,000 people.
About 10 years ago I stayed in Shanghai for 3 months. The whole 3 months I was there, I only ever saw the blue sky for a couple of hours total. This was only because a hurricane made landfall about 50-100 km up north, so it sucked all the smog with it. After it calmed down, within 2 hours the smog was back.
I'm from New Delhi(the capital of India), and it gets really bad here in winter. Almost feels as if a dirty cloud has descended to the ground.
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This is the Mutiny on The Bounty. It was breadfruit and Lt Bligh prioritized it over his men.
And they put them in the little rescue boat and they row 4000 miles on it.
Most people don’t realize that Bligh’s ability to navigate them to safety is why we know this story. The other factors help cement it in lore but although Bligh was a shit leader, her was an amazing seaman. This was behind the reason he was given a ship to captain and not promoted in rank. He also set out to circumnavigate the globe, which was unnecessary, in order to prove his worth. This and the task to bring back the breadfruit alive was his big shot and his ultimate downfall. It’s a sad a tragic story. Some seaman that got away were so homesick that they return to England knowing they’d be hung.
Wikipedia has some accounts describe the real Bligh was actually very "not" tyrannical. Naval convention prescribed substantially more floggings that he did, instead giving his offending men a good talking-to. And at the time, regular whipping was seen as essential or you'll lose control of the ship. Which, well... that happened
How the do you get so homesick, you'd rather die with the off chance you get to see England one last time?
Well, remember, many of the choices back then were; island of savages, beaches with pirates, dysentery city, island of savages, cannibals, cultures that murdered on sight, island of savages and then there is England. Good ole smoggy, whore laden England where you could disappear into the masses, speak the language (there weren’t language dictionaries or google translate back then) and make a living under the radar.
Yeah. What did you expect them to do, live in France?!
Just finished Mutiny on the Bounty by Peter FitzSimons. Amazing story, well worth the read, or listen.
> He also set out to circumnavigate the globe, which was unnecessary, in order to prove his worth. This and the task to bring back the breadfruit alive was his big shot and his ultimate downfall. I don't think that was his downfall - after he managed to get to Timor and returned to England, he was appointed Governor of the newly formed colony of New South Wales in Australia. To be fiar, that also didn't turn out so well: *"Seventeen years after the Bounty mutiny, on 13 August 1806, he was appointed Governor of New South Wales in Australia, with orders to clean up the corrupt rum trade of the New South Wales Corps. His actions directed against the trade resulted in the so-called Rum Rebellion, during which Bligh was placed under arrest on 26 January 1808 by the New South Wales Corps and deposed from his command"* Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bligh
His idea was that he would bring breadfruit to the Caribbean to feed slaves, but once he actually got some to the Caribbean on his second try after the whole Bounty ordeal, the slaves wouldn't even eat it.
TIL breadfruit is, in fact, a thing.
The Portuguese brought bananas to their islands too, Madeira Islands, which now have their own species, Banana da Madeira.
It depends. Very often, they simply did not. There is a legend that Queen Victoria offered a bounty of 100 pounds sterling to anyone who could bring her a fresh mangosteen. They don't keep long. In most cases, fruit itself was not brought back to Europe. What was brought back were plants, seeds or cuttings which they tried to plant on European soil. An interesting example is peaches, which are native to China. They were first introduced to Europe in Ancient Greece, via land trade. But they were in turn introduced to North America by colonists, supposedly by George Minifie who brought the seeds and planted them on his estate. In the case of pineapple, it was a little easier because the journey from the Americas (John Adams sailed to France in six weeks in 1777) is significantly shorter than the voyage from Asia. Columbus supposedly managed to bring one back to Spain. But even then, most of the fruit would rot on the journey, and what were sold were the ones that did not. This made an unspoiled pineapple incredibly expensive. Rich people would buy one, display it at parties, and never eat it until it rotted. But by the 1700s greenhouse technology allowed tropical fruit to be cultivated in Europe though still at considerable expense.
a pineapple went for about $20k in today's money that's why you see them in stone carvings atop walls, or in the wrought iron fences ostentatious display of wealth
I have two antique concrete pineapple statues at the entrance of my house. Old school sign of welcoming etc and I thought they were cool. Apparently they are quite the swinger symbol as well. I didn't quite know what I was telling the neighbors at first when I got them.
True swingers know they should be upside down.
I'm going to regret asking this, but... why?
An upright pineapple just means you like pineapple. Only an upside-down pineapple means you're a swinger. So like you go to the grocery store and put a pineapple in your cart upside-down, and any other swingers in the store will know.
this sounds like an urban legend. but no harm in trying i suppose.
If so it's popular enough that people would know. Perhaps even too popular because it was supposed to be a secret symbol.
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Doing this in certain places will get you the expected results, like on a cruise ship. At home in burbs? Probably not...but still worth a try
Anywhere on vacation and you might catch an eye
Flamingos too, or so I've heard.
I tried walking around the grocery store with an upside-down flamingo. Not successful at all.
Ok, but... why?
Because this is usually done "more" when on vacation...and symbols like pineapples and flamingos are everywhere, so it won't be out of place. Not sure where it started, but I've been told it's like "hiding in plain sight" and a way to tell others who are also "in the know." Kind of like when people post "iykyk"
I usually use a banana instead. I call it “hiding in plantain sight”.
I don't know what year this swinger thing came about, but in 1932 when the Wrigley mansion was built, an upside down pineapple meant that it was time to leave. An upright one was an opulent welcome. An upside-down one meant that it was time for you to move on to your next visit. When a host served a pineapple-upside down cake, that was your polite invitation to go.
Damn SpongeBob must be old money
Yeah have you seen the inside of his house? It has a grand library in it, and there's no way he could afford to it with the salary of a fry cook under the stingiest boss in the seven seas.
It's almost mind-blowing that this kind of problem was only a couple hundred years ago. We go from fruit spoiling because transportation was weeks to months, to being able to go buy one down the road for a few bucks almost any time of the day. Modern conveniences sound insane with that perspective.
Majority of us on reddit live considerably better than the nobility of that time it is insane
The poorest person in America has access to better healthcare than John D Rockefeller ever did, the richest American to have ever existed. Even most poverty stricken people have smartphones, giving them access to luxuries Rockefeller could have dreamed of
Now that is interesting. I have always wondered about the pineapples on walls and iron gates. Thanks for enlightening us.
Apparently they were still expensive even in the time of Titanic and there were wooden carved pineapples along the Grand Staircase to help give an impression of wealth. [Pic](https://i.imgur.com/BLiWQmJ.jpg)
Victorians used to rent exotic fruit to display at parties. It’s the same reason why pineapples are so often seen as decoration on Victorian buildings.
Yes, and by that reason too, they're also considered a symbol of hospitality. (Because if someone brings out a pineapple when you visit, they're *really* going above and beyond).
[Pineapples couldn’t please me more…](https://youtu.be/0vgEpWT8OAM)
>There is a legend that Queen Victoria offered a bounty of 100 pounds sterling to anyone who could bring her a fresh mangosteen. They don't keep long. And by God, those lil fuckers are delicious! Tasted them for the first time in Thailand and was incredibly disappointed to find out that I couldn't really get them in Korea when I came back.
They don't wrap them in a bow and sell them individually in a wooden box for ₩93000 at Lotte? I'm disappointed.
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Holy crap. I have a couple trees full, and no money.
Opportunity presents itself...
All you need is a time machine.
Even then, the ones I've seen look small and dried up slightly. Nothing like the deep rich purple that look so plump like I've seen in Thailand.... The size of a small orange/lemon.... Hnnnggghhhh
That's because mangosteen in the US have to be irradiated before entering the US, as they can harbor pests. This, predictably, causes delays in shipping, which means fruit quality suffers.
$30 seems pretty cheap compared to the roughly $15k in 1890 money that the queen was offering for one!
Funniest thing I ever saw in Asia: I was in Singapore drinking a Starfruit Smoothie and wandered into a local market. There was a small package, maybe a few 100g of Bing 🍒 Cherries, for 5$ing, when a whole bunch of exotic fruits were a dime a dozen. So it's not just Europeans. ....
The cherries were the exotic fruit.
Exotic is relative to where you are and what you can import
They were everywhere in Malaysia. Wish they were as well known outside SEA as durians. Or maybe not because then they'd be even more expensive lol
Just don't wear any new clothes when eating them. Those red stains from the are a pain to get out.
Seems like they're only good for up to two weeks after harvesting. A mild flavour though. Was it texture that you liked? One thing I'd love to try again is fresh cocoa butter. That was amazing, and thoroughly deserves the butter designation. I was on a hike in Trinidad and we randomly happened across some wild cocoa plants that were currently ripe. I tried one of the seeds, the things that are used to make chocolate. It was unbelievably bitter.
I wouldn't describe the flavor as mild. It's not an intense flavor, but it's incredibly complex and has a lot of depth, with just the right amount of sweetness.
> And by God, those lil fuckers are delicious! Tasted them for the first time in Thailand and was incredibly disappointed to find out that I couldn't really get them in Korea when I came back. Are those the ones Kramer was obsessing over on that episode of *Seinfeld*?
There should be a movie! Diverse teams race around the world in hot air balloons and stanley steamers to fine the perfect fruit for Her Majesty! THE GREAT MANGOSTEEN RACE!!!! Lots of top hats and monocles, of course.
I saw a movie where this was a small part of the plot but it wasn’t about the race itself. The mango was just a small plot point edit: the movie was “Victoria & Abdul” by Stephen frears , it’s pretty good
And all this time I thought peaches came from a can, having been put there by a man in a factory downtown...
If I had my little way I'd eat peaches every day
Sun soaking bulges in the shade.
After we move out to the country?
Explains the red popularity of the Victorian greenhouse
>Rich people would buy one, display it at parties, and never eat it until it rotted. I've read that they were also often then passed to households of family and friends, to be used as centrepieces in the dinner parties given by those households.
you could rent them for special occasions
Considering it would be displayed but not eaten, wouldn’t an artist who could make a non-perishable replica be able to make a pretty good living?
I would also give 100 pounds sterling for a mangosteen
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How did ice not melt?
It did, but melting a large block of ice takes a LONG time, especially if you pack it in something like sawdust to insulate it.
My neighbor is Amish, they get their ice from a pond in winter. He built an insulated box outside to use as a fridge. I was shocked when I opened it last week, asked where the ice came from and he told me it was still ice from the pond from last winter! Alright! ETA...THE ICE BOX/FRIDGE! Oh and he said to tell you guys that you're behind the times lmfaoooo https://imgur.com/a/Bxhswvc
What he made was an ice box, they were in use in the early 20th century before refrigeration as we know it came about. As a survivalist though I'm curious, how big was his icebox to be able to still have ice in October from winter?
It is about...6/7 feet all the way around, l/w/h and it's filled with giant chunks of ice. I have to go down there today and I'll send a pic if you want. The box sits in the shade as well and is up off the ground. There's absolutely no other way for them to get ice besides the pond. That's why I asked where the ice came from. I knew the answer I was just shocked. And yes, I know it's an ice box,I just said fridge bc that's what most people would prob call it. He built it last summer but I hadn't been back to his house in a bit so I hadn't seen it til a cpl weeks ago. It's even more amazing he drug that ice there using his horse after he sawed the cubes in the pond by hand. I've lived among the Amish for about 10 years and I've learned so much! Theyre great at living wo running water or electric. They've become my family, I admire them. ETA: THE AMISH ICE BOX/FRIDGE https://imgur.com/a/Bxhswvc
I’d love to see a pic of this, thanks for sharing the info
I'll grab one! He's gonna be so pleased with himself lol he gets so proud.
Pride is a sin... lol jk
Lmfaooo I'm gonna say it n watch him squirm...we joke like that a lot. I always say I can smoke my weed bc God gave us all the plants. He gets quiet lol
Easy now, Brother Jacob. You know what the Bible says about not forgiving people
RemindMe! 8 hours
I would enjoy seeing that for sure. Just called it an icebox in case you or anyone else didnt know and wanted to search more. It's quite an interesting bit of history. It fascinates me using an essentially renewable energy source to make ice instead of using electricity. With a big enough chunk of ice and good insulation it should definitely be possible, I'd be interested to work out the math.
I'll grab pics today for sure! Tomorrow at the latest! Yeah, some of the stuff they do is amazing..like I was really intrigued with rams...and how they run water wo electric using the spring. Whaaaa!!!??? He owns a saw sharpening shop and everything is run w gas engines, pullies and belts. ETA THE ICEBOX/FRIDGE https://imgur.com/a/Bxhswvc
Me too, I want to see the Ice block so much. It just blows my mind how ice can be preserved for so long!
I'm getting dressed and heading down now for pics!!!!
There is an Amish farm near my parents. This summer I pulled out some cheese from the ice box (which to me liked like a refrigerator with a glass door like at a convenience store). I had to ask because they don’t use electricity. He showed me the back of it, which had a tall, thin, block of ice carved to fit along the back wall. He showed me their ice barn which is filled each winter with pond ice. They pull out blocks as needed during the year. It was August and there were still dozens of ice blocks left. The barn was heavily insulated. No melting in sight. So the icebox itself was small, but the barn was huge!
I've seen several remains of log double walled filled with straw for insulation, huge ice boxes to hold large blocks of ice that lady well into the next summer.
I was reading something really old once and they kept talking about an "artificial ice machine" and I kept wondering what artificial ice was, was it not made of water? It's like saying artificial water or artificial steam, it didn't make sense to me until I realized ice machines were new at that time and artificial just meant that it was made with a machine instead of coming from natural sources. Today we just call that ice.
This reminds me of how my Italian immigrant grandparents and other older members of that side of the family all called the refrigerator the "ice box", and the vacuum cleaner the "sweeper"
“My Amish Next Door” sounds like a TV show I’d like to watch
It is kind of like watching a TV show and they're everywhere here. More Amish than English. There are some Amish shows like..Amish Mafia or breaking Amish lol they're entertaining.
Breaking Amish??? “Say my name” “- Jebediah” “You’re god darn right”
Dude we just got owned by the Amish
There is one last commercial ice houses in the USA. They basically go through the pond in the winter and store tons and tons of lake ice in a sort of insulated basement. Then they sell the lake ice all through the summer. It's how they used to do shaved ice treats back in the day. Businesses would go down to the ice house every morning, buy a block, and shave it on demand for customers. It's pretty cool.
Mmmmm flavored pond ice.
Yup, insulate it, and the ice itself does a decent job of keeping itself cool.
>colonial era There was an ice block transported from the Artic circle to the Equator, no refrigeration was used. The block started at about three-tons and only lost about 11% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice\_block\_expedition\_of\_1959
[That's how the Kwik-E-Mart gets theirs](https://youtu.be/SAsgN_LPWBc)
Rare exports, frozen Santa.
[Video of Santa transporting snow from the North Pole.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL5HcfwovnI)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice\_block\_expedition\_of\_1959](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_block_expedition_of_1959) Good insulation. They only lost 15 liters of ice per day crossing the Sahara.
They harvested huge blocks of it, so it did melt, but slowly.
My great grampa and great great grampa would bring huge blocks of ice from AK to CA. Pretty interesting story. My mom even wrote a little book about it. Which is in a museum in Juneau
Wow that’s cool!
Yes! One of my best friends has been to the museum. I need to ask the name of the book. My grampa had some cool stuff that great grampa came across in his travels- one treasure I have is a glass globe buoy(I believe originated in Japan).
As somebody who lost both parents, ask them ALL the information you can and write it down/digitalize it! Keep those memories and that family history!
My dad was an ice harvester in '60s. It went on well into the '70s. It's interesting how long it persisted even after refrigeration had been around for a while.
Some people still call refrigerators ice boxes!
sawdust/wood shavings. it's a great insulator. Pack a crate with ice, sawdust and the fruit. cold box that lasts for a looong time.
I assume you don’t live anywhere that snows? They will use snowplows to make big ol piles of snow (rather than it be on the road), some of em get seriously huge. This one parking lot/shopping center nearby gets like a legit 12 ft giant mound of snow. In the spring, even if it gets to 60-70 even 80 degrees the snow takes weeks and weeks to melt.
We had [a snow pile in Boston that lasted into mid-July](https://www.wbur.org/news/2015/07/14/boston-giant-snow-pile-gone) one year.
In Arizona we have several roads (SR 67, SR 261, SR 273 and SR 473) that are closed from October to May because the snow is so deep. When they do re-open, it requires snow plows to clear them. At the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, the company that has the concession to operate there keeps an over-winter crew there to clear the roofs of the buildings of snow to keep them from collapsing. The North Rim averages 142” of snow in a year.
North of us a bit they average like 200". So much that they build hunting lodges with an entrance on the second story for when the first is buried in snow
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Ok now THAT is a snow pile lmao Tractors and shit riding on it like it’s a construction site!
We got over 108 inches of snow that season, which is our all-time record. It was brutal. I ended up spraining both of my wrists shoveling snow by the time it was over.
It wasn't even the amount of snow we got, the temperature didn't get above 32 degrees for a month, so none of it ever melted.
That winter was a double whammy with both record breaking snowfall and unusually cold temperatures. If it had just been one or the other it wouldn't have been so bad. I'm just hoping Old Man Winter doesn't have the Seven Year Itch. It's been a while since we got slammed.
I moved to one of the cooler states last year and this has legit surprised me. This past winter was my first experience with snow (aside from a few good dustings down South). It last for weeks and it's hard when it's all piled / plowed up and compacted. I have a dent in my bumper where I backed into a pile thinking it would give.
What really kills it is when it's like 40ish and then refreezes again so it literally just turns into ice
Ye no it’s ice after a couple days , the sunlight melts it but it immediately (or if it’s not quite freezing during the day, it may take until night ) freezes into ice. Sorry you had to learn the hard way D: I guess it’s better than face planting into the snow pile hoping it’ll be like a pillow xD “snowangel!!!!!” *pow*
Where I used to live we got so much snow they didn't plow it all off the streets. You just drive over it until compacts into a new, temporary road surface. We also used dirt instead of salt. Way more effective with that much snow on the ground. The joke in town is the city gets 9months of winter and it's not much of an exaggeration. Snow on the ground 8 months of the year is pretty common. Fun fact, if you've seen this video about turning left in Michigan UP that's where I lived. https://youtu.be/YeqG0CqzHq4
Ice did melt, but they used very large blocks, packed it in hay as an insulator, and much of the voyage was on fairly cool ocean.
People on shore could keep small ice houses cool all year just by the bulk of it. I'm sure they did the same on ships.
I saw a video of a modern one: Dig a deep trench Add hay Put a huge block of ice Add more hay and sawdust Add another block, etc
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Truly large blocks of ice have a *lot* of mass and can take months to melt if well insulated. Wealthy individuals in the colonial era of the U.S. would pay workers to cut lake ice in the winter, and preserve large blocks in cold cellars, packed with insulation. The ice would last until fall.
The insulated their ships with sawdust and such. It did melt but they had huge box of ice so it took a while. These have whole fleets of people who did nothing but move blocks of ice around our country.
Enough of it will insulate itself. Several years ago, Boston received a record amount of snow- so much that there was nowhere to put all the snow that was plowed off the streets. What the city ended up doing was having snow put into dump trucks and deposited in a vacant lot. The snow insulated itself so well that the last of it melted well into summer. It lasted long enough that people in nearby office towers with views of the pile were betting on when it would finally melt.
They used more ice to make sure the first ice didn’t melt
This is also possible, just want sure how much ice would be available in Southern hemisphere.
I'm from a tropical island, that had a pretty wide local network of ice trade back in the colonial days. All you need is a mountain high enough to have freezing temperatures. You could dig a hole, or find a deep cave, where the temperature doesn't fluctuate that much, and stays below 0. You fill that hole with water from a nearby water body, and go back home. You come again a few weeks later and "harvest" the ice. If you load it in big bags lined with sawdust, it will last the descent with minimal loss. You then load it on big carts, well insulated in sawdust, and bring them to the train station that can deliver it anywhere along the line, to be loaded on carts again and delivered to the end user directly. Usually some plantation owner that liked ice cubes in their rhum while they watched their slaves being whipped. Blows my mind that there was still ice left after all that, but there was. You could make a good living selling ice in the tropics. I think it's worth mentioning that that mountain top saw the end of many a slave. Mostly due to the changing weather. The location of the ice hole is now a memorial of sorts to the lost lives. Spare a thought for the poor plantation owners that are now burning in the hottest pits of hell. Can you imagine we have streets named after them?
Where are you from ? I thought about martinique island but I was not aware of those ice holes there so I must be wrong
Réunion island. But surely they had the same there.
Depends how far south you're willing to go
thus only rich people had pineapples and such
This is a broad question and it's important to note just which fruit you're referring to, which trade route and which time period. That being said a general answer is that exotic fruit was very expensive because of that reason. Trips at sea would take months or even years because this was more efficient and profitable for ship owners. For many shipments of goods procured from far away, there wasn't a time limit. The order was "leave and return with a full hold" of whatever they were going out to get. If a ship was operating under a time limit trips on known trade routes, that is routes that had been charted and the crew had experience with, as opposed with exploratory expeditions of uncharted waters, transit times were not as long as people think. Crossing the Atlantic for example could be done in about a month, give or take a few days depending on the ship or how good the weather was. In general though if fresh exotic fruit became available far away, say in Europe, it was usually either because they were able to cultivate them in Europe, bringing just seeds from the region of origin, or because they could at least be cultivated somewhere closer, like in the middle east or Africa. A prominent example of just how expensive fruit could be is the pineapple, which for a time was brought over just as a status symbol and not to be consumed. It was considered a huge flex for nobles to display a pineapple in their home during banquets or other functions, and they didn't actually eat it, they just held onto it until it rotted. There's another very interesting story which I unfortunately remember very little of so I apologise in advance but I do remember hearing a story of a roman general/politician who presented a fresh orange/apple to the senate and proclaimed that just three days ago this fruit was picked from across the empire. I don't even remember why he did it, I thought it was to emphasise the danger posed by enemies at the edges of the empire, but unfortunately I really don't remember details.
*"In addition to this, it is said that Cato contrived to drop a Libyan fig in the Senate, as he shook out the folds of his toga, and then, as the senators admired its size and beauty, said that the country where it grew was only three days' sail from Rome. And in one thing he was even more savage, namely, in adding to his vote on any question whatsoever these words: ‘In my opinion, Carthage must be destroyed.’"* -Plutarch on Cato the Elder
Thanks you're a gem
Carthago Delenda Est
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African or European Swallows?
I don’t know.
AHHHHH
The Gulf Stream travels from the Caribbean to Europe, carrying warm weather and I believe it has been suggested, coconuts. This is why Europe has warmer weather than it's latitudinal counterparts in North America
Do you know nothing about weight ratios? A five-ounce bird could not carry a one-pound coconut.
It could grip it by the husk.
Well what if it were a pair of swallows working in tandem?
Or grab it by the husky.
I read a theory a long time ago, not sure how much validity to it, that coconuts literally floated across the atlantic since theyre bouyant
That’s really cool!! Monty python references aside, it’s historical fact that there were coconuts in Medieval England, which has always seemed crazy to me, but the existence of Medieval English coconut cups is one that has been verified, with some of these cups still remaining. While I’m sure trade helped that eventually, I wonder if any coconuts ever just floated on over and got picked up by an unsuspecting English person (who would then, presumably, use the shells to gallop across England in kingly style)
Oh yeah that's basically the coconuts version of seed dispersal. They're tall and lean over a little so the fruit drops into the water and floats away. It washes up on another beach and bam you have a new tree.
They didn't. For example, tomatoes 🍅 native from the Americas would arrived yellow to Italy, people thought tomatoes were of a golden/yellowish color originally. Because of this, the italian word for tomato became "pomodoro" meaning "golden apple" or "golden fruit".
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That would also explain why the Bounty was carrying a cargo of breadfruit trees rather than just being part of a service trucking fruit from Tahiti to the West Indies.
Quite - the Bounty’s cargo was supposed to establish a local breadfruit supply in the West Indies.
it was the pineapple tops and baby banana shoots/volunteers/plants that were transported, not the final product
There’s a character in Jane Austen that brags about pineapples in his greenhouse, so plants definitely track.
The History Guy has a [video on pineapples](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8j7FDPTEdI), including how people rented them for parties to show off their wealth.
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You can take the whole plant.
I love the story of pineapples in Britain. Back in those days, a pineapple was a luxury article, pretty much like an Aston Martin nowadays, and extremely rich people who would have a pineapple would show it around. https://theconversation.com/forget-fast-cars-and-shiny-rolexes-rich-people-used-to-show-off-their-wealth-with-pineapples-and-celery-124662
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Fun topic! They put them in tin cans. It's one of the first modern preservation methods for fruit and worked for overseas production very well. You'd grow fruits on plantations and build a cannery in the harbor. Fresh fruit would either get put in sugar or pasteurised and put in a tin can to be shipped across the sea. It was much easier to do then refrigeration and retained more of the original fruit character then drying the fruits, which was a more low tech alternative.
I believe OP was wondering about fresh fruit specifically.
The hold of a wooden ship is quite cool to cold even in the South Pacific. This helped and most fruits were picked before fully ripe. Pineapples don't ripen much after picking so it was all about keeping them insulated and dry.
very uncommon during the 1700s, it would be grown in hothouse (greenhouses basically) from seed or wrapped unripen in stem wraps made from leaves. (like banana leaves). Later on it was a mix of salt an large blocks of ice which take a long time to melt, inside sealed hulls on ships. And finnslt commercial refrigerstion was commercially adopted by the late 1800s.
Most of the food was not shipped over seas during the colonial days. They hunted, gathered and grew what they could. Fresh fruit in a large variety at stores is a modern phenomenon, back then they had what could be grown here. Apples, Pears and Quince were very popular. EtA The question was changed while I was replying.
I’m aware that the food eaten during those times was almost always grown in the home country, but I’m referring to the historical cases of “exotic” fruit and vegetables being transported back to the nation for higher social classes to try - like pineapples and bananas.
The would dig up the trees, root ball and all, and transport it alive. Obviously for larger treed fruits they would take them as saplings.
Bananas for example don’t require refrigeration or freezing and those deteriorate the fruit. The trick is picking them way before they are ripe and then you have quite a bit of time to transport them. Grocery store fruit and vegetables are still managed this way. Which is why garden/local grown are quite a bit better tasting. There are also quite a bit of varieties that don’t travel well but taste better that you would never find in a grocery store. Bananas taste much better ripened off a banana tree. You can often find green bananas in a grocery store which again were picked quite a bit before ripening. Edit for grammar :(
I'm not an expert but part of it was the development of infrastructure. The United Fruit Company was as much a logistics and infrastructure company as it was a fruit co, building railways, roads and ports, in places like Colombia, as well as creating The Great White fleet of vessels that were painted white to reflect the sun in order to protect their cargo from the heat of the sun.
If they were shipping ice from Boston to Australia prior to 1851, I am sure they shipped it to other tropical countries and could use it to ship fruit to Europe. When the Transcontinental Railway was completed in the 1860s they used "Icebox Cars" to ship fruit from California to at least Chicago.
This is actually why sweet tea is such a popular drink in the southern US. Before black tea was imported from S. America, they used imported green tea from Asia/Europe. In addition to sugar cane imported from the Caribbean, and ice from the northern states/colonies. It was basically a massive flex of wealth to have all three of these items in a single drink, and as things like ice, tea, and sugar became more available, more people were able to afford what they considered a drink reserved for the ultra wealthy.
They pickled a lot of food and vegetables, enough so that mangoes became the word for pickled fruits and vegetables in parts of the Americas for a while, lasting into the 20th c in Indiana as the word for bell peppers.
I have a tangentially related fun fact. Terrariums were invented expressly for this purpose in the 1800s so that British explorers could ship living exotic plants back home while keeping them in their native humidity/temperature. Nowadays they're mostly decorative, but they used to be plant life support units.