In the late 1800s when New York tried to cut down on public alcoholism they tried the drink with a meal, but the shops just had a single sandwich that'd get passed around as everyone ordered a drink.
It looks like TH-cam ate my comment linking a source on the subject, but yes, that was 1896 with the Raines law. The loophole was that you couldn't serve alcohol on Sunday, *unless* you were a lodging house with 10+ rooms serving it with a meal (ie, unless you were a swanky hotel restaurant where rich people ate, because we're only really concerned about the poors drinking). So, saloons would either convert their basement and attic spaces, or merge with nearby lodging-houses, and sell a reusable "Raines sandwich" as a meal.
My grandmother was a little girl for that pass of Halley's Comet, and in her 80s for the more recent pass. I was in high school, and REALLY excited to show it to her for the second time. I pointed it out to her from her back garden, and she squinted at a moment and then said, "That's it? It was MUCH more impressive the first time!" 😂
It could've been. 1986, magnitude 2, about as bright as Polaris. 1910, magnitude 0, about as bright as Vega, plus no light pollution so maybe the tail was prominent.
The outdoor thing was silly in that it wasn't a game changer and a lot of restaurants had generous interpretations of "outdoors" but it did have a kernel of truth in that open air results in lower viral transmission because the air moves freely and you don't concentrate a ton of viral particles in a closed space. Not good enough for what was happening at the time but technically did work a bit
Literally in the middle of re-watching Citation Needed now. Just got to 5x05 - the one about Camille Flammarion, who triggered the panic when he claimed the comet's tail contained poisonous gas - and immediately went: 'didn't we *just* have a Lateral question about this?'.
I'm glad I can protect myself against the "comet tail that could end life on Earth as we know it" - but what for if there's no living things to eat afterwards? :D
Plus the obvious fact that it would be its seventh visit since being named... Halley named it 300+ years before, and it was noted that since ancient times it appears every 60-odd years (with no reports of all life on earth dying out, most of the times).
The meal to have a drink was a thing in South Australia for pubs to stay open late at night (and other times that were outside licencing hours). Pubs that had late night bands on would put out a whole heap of paper plates with 1 slice of ham, 1 slice of tomato, and 1 leaf of letuce. It was enough to count as a bona fide meal.
I love when a Lateral question serves to provide more context to an old TechDif video. Through the whole thing I was like "gasmasks... Wait, is this--"
Halley's Comet disappeared, and lo! the baby Mark Twain was born! Mark Twain died, and lo! Halley's Comet returned! Clearly it's a cyclical life cycle.
I guessed this immediately...but forgot there was a Citation Needed episode about it (which I *have* watched). Kind of a Pyrrhic victory for me, really.
@@derekskelton4187 Haley's Comet had passed many times, but I think 1910 is the only recorded time that the Earth actually went through the comet's tail.
Corry wasn't actually wrong about a sandwich to get around prohibition: a little bit before Prohibition, in New York, there where a set of laws that came to be known as "Raine's Laws" which (among other things) banned saloons and similar waterholes from serving alcohol on Sundays; however, there was an exception written: you see, many of the people amenable to the idea where generally middle and upper class sorts, the kind who go to more "refined" establishments, as such there was an explicit exception for drinks served with a meal at a hotel. As such, instead of closing down on the one day off of the majority of their clientele had, they bashed together spaces that barely counted as rooms (often just a room with bed and door) or merged with adjacent lodging houses; and would serve with your drink with a "Raine's Sandwich" which was generally made with expired food. However, it counted as food served at a hotel, so they were able to continue operating. (and ironically, the laws intended to improve "moral decency" ended up with folk drinking more (after all, if you get so drunk you cannot stand, there are beds nearby to sleep it off) and made it much easier for ladies (and men) of "negotiable affection" to ply their trade)
In the 1980s licensing laws in my state (Vic, Australia) nightclubs (as differentiated from pubs/bars) were only allowed to sell alcohol with a substantial meal, so entry tickets included a meal… potato chips ( fries) with gravy and about 2 bits of lettuce, a tomato wedge and a fish finger… fortunately one was not compelled to eat it, or there would’ve probably been been vomit on the dancefloor.
I feel like I need some elaboration on "the Atlantic and Pacific oceans were going to swap basins". What does that mean exactly? Did they think all the water from one was going to flow into the other and vice versa?
The sandwich thing was in New York a few years before nationwide prohibition [and the sandwiches were usually stale/rotten to the point of being totally inedible]. The buildings also legally had to be hotels, so they'd also have a few rooms where people could crash in [but conditions that nobody would want to]
Corry was correctly referring to the Raines Sandwich - A law was introduced in New York in 1896 in an attempt to curb Sunday drinking. Alcohol could only be served with a meal and so, to circumvent this, a skanky old sandwich was delivered with every drink (and promptly taken away to be redelivered to the next thirsty patron). Corry and I must have listened to the same podcast on it, as it sounds very Lateral. Could have been No such thing as a Fish maybe?
And the whole "order a sandwich and a drink then hand back the sandwich" thing was also something that happened in Sweden back when alcohol wasn't banned but how much you could buy was restricted (all adults got a certain ration they could buy).
@@mludd Indeed, the motbook.* And you couldnt buy it at all if you were unemployed and if you were a higher class you got more * EDIT - misspelling - it is motbok - the whole process was called the motboksystemet, or Bratt System in English. Well worth looking up.
@@michaelocyoung Not that I know what it means, but is that supposed to be motbok? I'm Swedish, and "book" doesn't seem right. The spelling doesn't seem consistent with words that I'm aware of.
@@mawillix2018 Probably, I copied it from an old article I wrote about the history of booze in Sweden, back when I was still in the early stages of learning svenska.... Either that or I could blame Autocorrect getting hold of it somewhere along the line.
Michael's Log Supplemental: I've just done a re-Google for the Bratt System and I've found a couple of references to motboken and motboksystemet...... so I'm guessing the word was misspelled in an original source and a large number of other sources / citations since then has repeated the misspelling. There is even a Wiki article for Motboksystemet in Swedish.
A gas mask with vintage absinthe to filter the lead contaminant out of the absinthe while you drink it, because lead contamination is what used to cause the hallucinations.
Pretty sure it was the massive amount of alcohol that caused the hallucinations associated with absinthe. And filtering won't help if you then drink the filtered absinthe from a lead cup.
Not prohibition-related, but there was the gambit of saloons offering literal free lunches. But it’d all be extremely salty crackers and fish and such, so you’d have to buy drinks to make it through your free lunch. Hence “no such thing as a free lunch”
I love/hate how people always do this. Something slightly out of the ordinary happens and suddenly all bets are off, people just go off on all sorts of crazy theories. Seems like it happens every time.
I remember my dad mentioning the thing about legally needing to serve alcohol with food being a thing when he was younger (in Australia, probably 80s or 90s). So you'd pay a cover charge that included the meal and then everyone would bin it straight away. Iirc it was mashed potatoes or something equally cheap.
I was about to compliment how good Tom looks in that outfit when I realized this might be on one of it not the only time I’ve seen him not in a red t shirt. His hair and slightly blue shirt look great!!!
Mark Twain was born in 1835 a year of Halley's comet passing Earth. He died in 1910 the year of the next passing of the comet. Some say (mainly me) this is a sign that he was a gift to Earth from the comet.
Well the population that could actually read prior to the 1900th was not that big. It's only after the time that even working class people could reas enough. That in combination of cheap newspapers to spread the messages fast.
If I remember the facts right from this other video from another channel, you should check it out btw it has this guy called Tom Scott reading Wikipedia articles to some other Yorkshire blokes and they have to guess what's in it, but this was _maybe_ the first time that the Earth passed through its *tail?* Not a 100% on that but it _was_ the first time they could see what the tail was made out of thanks to spectroscopic imaging and found out that it's cyanogens, poisonous. And the average person that panic buys a gas mask when the world is set to end is unlikely to put in the thought to figure out that just because we know it's poison now we've probably passed it a couple times and the world hasn't ended those times so it's probably fine, or at least not before already owning the gas mask.
1910 was an exceptionally close pass of Halley's comet; the Earth actually went through the comet's tail. So even with records of its previous visits, nobody was really sure about the effects of getting that close.
I'm thinking 1910, gas masks and umbrellas probably has something to do with smog, maybe acid rain. No idea about the sugar pills though. Perhaps water disinfectant?
Flammarion is getting mostly a bad rap. From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Flammarion#Halley's_Comet 'In an article in the New York Herald in November 1909, responding to such claims by others, he stated that "The poisoning of humanity by deleterious gases is improbable", and correctly stated that the matter in the comet's tail is so tenuous that it would have no noticeable effect.[15] However, he also indulged in a "thought experiment" about what might happen if it did inject various gases into the atmosphere.' Flammarion's "thought experiment" was definitely unwise. Journalists, even the sainted NY Times (if you trust Smithsonian Magazine, ref in footnote 5), passed it on as if Flammarion had claimed it would actually come to pass.
Feeling nostalgic for Camille Flammarion and the bumfaced aliens from Mars
"Hello NASA? Yes, it's Matt Grey. Put narrowboats on Mars. ... They've gone."
How did the panelists not watch Citation needed? It's one of the best educational comedy panel show out there!
Absolutely. I got it in 3 seconds. I even remember Gary saying that the people were gonna be "le snuffed".
To also quote Gary "there are many paths to knowledge!"
Immediately followed by "This isn't one of them!" (by Chris, I think)
@@faenethlorhalien MILD DISQUITE!
Oh look a Tech Diff reference strikes again! Which is why I knew the answer immediately.
I miss Tech Diff. 😭
I'll probably watch it all again. 😆
@@Slikx666 It's a good thing they're coming back this year.
Yeah, my first thought was "Oh, the Camille Flammarion episode! I should rewatch Citation Needed..."
Same! Immediately thought is this related
Same here
There it is again! A Citation Needed episode in a trenchcoat!
If you heared the entire podcast its even more so with how Tom just had no breaks with these three.
In the late 1800s when New York tried to cut down on public alcoholism they tried the drink with a meal, but the shops just had a single sandwich that'd get passed around as everyone ordered a drink.
I'm imagining bar bets where the loser has to eat the sandwich.
It looks like TH-cam ate my comment linking a source on the subject, but yes, that was 1896 with the Raines law. The loophole was that you couldn't serve alcohol on Sunday, *unless* you were a lodging house with 10+ rooms serving it with a meal (ie, unless you were a swanky hotel restaurant where rich people ate, because we're only really concerned about the poors drinking). So, saloons would either convert their basement and attic spaces, or merge with nearby lodging-houses, and sell a reusable "Raines sandwich" as a meal.
The brick sandwich!
The really funny part about this being a Citation Needed episode is that we even got the same joke about the gas masks being useful 4 years later
And now enhanced into 104 years later!
My grandmother was a little girl for that pass of Halley's Comet, and in her 80s for the more recent pass. I was in high school, and REALLY excited to show it to her for the second time.
I pointed it out to her from her back garden, and she squinted at a moment and then said, "That's it? It was MUCH more impressive the first time!" 😂
It could've been. 1986, magnitude 2, about as bright as Polaris. 1910, magnitude 0, about as bright as Vega, plus no light pollution so maybe the tail was prominent.
In 1910, the Earth went through the comet's tail - a very close pass. Must have been spectacular!
Jordan made the exact same gas mask joke Gary did! The deja vu is palpable.
The outdoor thing was silly in that it wasn't a game changer and a lot of restaurants had generous interpretations of "outdoors" but it did have a kernel of truth in that open air results in lower viral transmission because the air moves freely and you don't concentrate a ton of viral particles in a closed space. Not good enough for what was happening at the time but technically did work a bit
"Can't have a party but you can have a work event" => Boris Johnson's Partygate?
Indeed.
4:53 I believe to recall the exact words he used were "snuff out"
C’est buggered
Le snuf
Literally in the middle of re-watching Citation Needed now. Just got to 5x05 - the one about Camille Flammarion, who triggered the panic when he claimed the comet's tail contained poisonous gas - and immediately went: 'didn't we *just* have a Lateral question about this?'.
On today's episode of: I marathon Citation Needed every now and then for fun so I knew the answer within seconds - this!
me too 😂 I can't count the number of times I've been through Citation Needed and TOTPAL. I did it again recently so this one was fresh in my mind
I'm glad I can protect myself against the "comet tail that could end life on Earth as we know it" - but what for if there's no living things to eat afterwards? :D
That's why you need even more umbrellas for your crops, and gas masks and sugar pills for your livestock. Don't be caught unprepared!
@@roecocoa Myriads of tiny little gas masks for every grain of wheat.
Plus the obvious fact that it would be its seventh visit since being named... Halley named it 300+ years before, and it was noted that since ancient times it appears every 60-odd years (with no reports of all life on earth dying out, most of the times).
The meal to have a drink was a thing in South Australia for pubs to stay open late at night (and other times that were outside licencing hours). Pubs that had late night bands on would put out a whole heap of paper plates with 1 slice of ham, 1 slice of tomato, and 1 leaf of letuce. It was enough to count as a bona fide meal.
As several people have already pointed out, this was discussed in an episode of Citation Needed, and so I knew it almost immediately.
I love when a Lateral question serves to provide more context to an old TechDif video. Through the whole thing I was like "gasmasks... Wait, is this--"
Ah, so that's what happened to Mark Twain - poor fella forgot his umbrella.
No he was too deep and tried making music and drowned
The rain it falls upon the just
And also on the unjust fella ;
But mostly on the just because
The unjust man stole his umbrella.
Halley's Comet disappeared, and lo! the baby Mark Twain was born! Mark Twain died, and lo! Halley's Comet returned! Clearly it's a cyclical life cycle.
I guessed this immediately...but forgot there was a Citation Needed episode about it (which I *have* watched).
Kind of a Pyrrhic victory for me, really.
Also got it right off. To be fair, in 1910 they really wouldn't have known what effects might come from passing through a comet's tail.
Nothing phyrric about it at all; it means you can re-watch Citation Needed one more time!
@@myladycasagrande863 Except the comet passed plenty of times in the past
@@derekskelton4187 Haley's Comet had passed many times, but I think 1910 is the only recorded time that the Earth actually went through the comet's tail.
"opportunistic entrepreneur" is a really fancy way to say "scammer"
Corry wasn't actually wrong about a sandwich to get around prohibition: a little bit before Prohibition, in New York, there where a set of laws that came to be known as "Raine's Laws" which (among other things) banned saloons and similar waterholes from serving alcohol on Sundays; however, there was an exception written: you see, many of the people amenable to the idea where generally middle and upper class sorts, the kind who go to more "refined" establishments, as such there was an explicit exception for drinks served with a meal at a hotel.
As such, instead of closing down on the one day off of the majority of their clientele had, they bashed together spaces that barely counted as rooms (often just a room with bed and door) or merged with adjacent lodging houses; and would serve with your drink with a "Raine's Sandwich" which was generally made with expired food. However, it counted as food served at a hotel, so they were able to continue operating.
(and ironically, the laws intended to improve "moral decency" ended up with folk drinking more (after all, if you get so drunk you cannot stand, there are beds nearby to sleep it off) and made it much easier for ladies (and men) of "negotiable affection" to ply their trade)
my citation needed knowledge made me guess the question and the answer from the title of this video alone and i was not disappointed
This episode is one that I would have had to excuse myself from guessing.
Totally. And I would have felt like a total boss
🎵 I was gazing in Wisconsin, I took a little risk
Send brollies, masks, and sugar
Dad, get me out of this 🎵
The mask would be useful in Wisconsin. It'd protect you from the Dairy Air.
Corry is a constant delight.
I knew this one from the start. Citation needed classic.
Edit: and 5:30, Jordan made the same joke as I think Gary did back then
4:38 - I love the details in the subtitles, but I think there's a bit of text accidentally left in. Great job as always!
I think someone just messed up on formatting the pronunciation information above the words.
In the 1980s licensing laws in my state (Vic, Australia) nightclubs (as differentiated from pubs/bars) were only allowed to sell alcohol with a substantial meal, so entry tickets included a meal… potato chips ( fries) with gravy and about 2 bits of lettuce, a tomato wedge and a fish finger… fortunately one was not compelled to eat it, or there would’ve probably been been vomit on the dancefloor.
Camille Flammarion!!
I feel like I need some elaboration on "the Atlantic and Pacific oceans were going to swap basins".
What does that mean exactly? Did they think all the water from one was going to flow into the other and vice versa?
The sandwich thing was in New York a few years before nationwide prohibition [and the sandwiches were usually stale/rotten to the point of being totally inedible]. The buildings also legally had to be hotels, so they'd also have a few rooms where people could crash in [but conditions that nobody would want to]
Corry was correctly referring to the Raines Sandwich - A law was introduced in New York in 1896 in an attempt to curb Sunday drinking. Alcohol could only be served with a meal and so, to circumvent this, a skanky old sandwich was delivered with every drink (and promptly taken away to be redelivered to the next thirsty patron). Corry and I must have listened to the same podcast on it, as it sounds very Lateral. Could have been No such thing as a Fish maybe?
1:10 this is still the law in Sweden - places which sell alcohol must also sell food, so every pub is also a restaurant or cafe.
And the whole "order a sandwich and a drink then hand back the sandwich" thing was also something that happened in Sweden back when alcohol wasn't banned but how much you could buy was restricted (all adults got a certain ration they could buy).
@@mludd Indeed, the motbook.* And you couldnt buy it at all if you were unemployed and if you were a higher class you got more
* EDIT - misspelling - it is motbok - the whole process was called the motboksystemet, or Bratt System in English. Well worth looking up.
@@michaelocyoung Not that I know what it means, but is that supposed to be motbok? I'm Swedish, and "book" doesn't seem right. The spelling doesn't seem consistent with words that I'm aware of.
@@mawillix2018 Probably, I copied it from an old article I wrote about the history of booze in Sweden, back when I was still in the early stages of learning svenska.... Either that or I could blame Autocorrect getting hold of it somewhere along the line.
Michael's Log Supplemental: I've just done a re-Google for the Bratt System and I've found a couple of references to motboken and motboksystemet...... so I'm guessing the word was misspelled in an original source and a large number of other sources / citations since then has repeated the misspelling. There is even a Wiki article for Motboksystemet in Swedish.
A gas mask with vintage absinthe to filter the lead contaminant out of the absinthe while you drink it, because lead contamination is what used to cause the hallucinations.
Pretty sure it was the massive amount of alcohol that caused the hallucinations associated with absinthe. And filtering won't help if you then drink the filtered absinthe from a lead cup.
Not prohibition-related, but there was the gambit of saloons offering literal free lunches. But it’d all be extremely salty crackers and fish and such, so you’d have to buy drinks to make it through your free lunch. Hence “no such thing as a free lunch”
Well if anyone needs me I'm going to go binge rewatch Citation Needed.
In New York bars became restaurants by selling a few fries with a drink on the side to comply with Gov. Cuomo's decrees.
They were often referred to as Cuomo Fries.
I love/hate how people always do this. Something slightly out of the ordinary happens and suddenly all bets are off, people just go off on all sorts of crazy theories. Seems like it happens every time.
I remember my dad mentioning the thing about legally needing to serve alcohol with food being a thing when he was younger (in Australia, probably 80s or 90s). So you'd pay a cover charge that included the meal and then everyone would bin it straight away. Iirc it was mashed potatoes or something equally cheap.
Got it straight off.
I'm so bad at history that I heard 1910 and immediately thought, "That was during WWI, right?" 😅
2:51 - ...Wait... were the prices *astronomical* ? **Checks the year...**
I was about to compliment how good Tom looks in that outfit when I realized this might be on one of it not the only time I’ve seen him not in a red t shirt. His hair and slightly blue shirt look great!!!
I know this from a cititation needed episode
The meal thing happened in Finland in 70/80s
I knew this one right away, because I watched Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos“ series!
3:14 cyanide was detected in the tail of Halley’s Comet when it visited in 1910.
First thought giant volcano but 1910 rang a memory.
Today I learned Halley's Comet was the original Y2K
which is funny, given that a week ago was the new Y2K by crowdstrike
When you watch too much Tom Scott and it spoils Tom's question...
Mark Twain was born in 1835 a year of Halley's comet passing Earth. He died in 1910 the year of the next passing of the comet. Some say (mainly me) this is a sign that he was a gift to Earth from the comet.
Tom not wearing red.... somethings not right in the Universe
Watching the news, you're absolutely right. I hope he puts the shirt back on, otherwise we're doomed!
The new hair look has a Cute quality too.
Might I interest you in this red umbrella? Great protection against things wrong in the universe.
Why didn't any of those fun things happen in 1986 when I was in primary school?
After seeing just the question, I'll bet it has something to do with a reoccurring astronomical event.
Given the dire warnings, was there no written history about the previous appearance of the comet? That is to say... nothing bad happened!
Well the population that could actually read prior to the 1900th was not that big.
It's only after the time that even working class people could reas enough.
That in combination of cheap newspapers to spread the messages fast.
If I remember the facts right from this other video from another channel, you should check it out btw it has this guy called Tom Scott reading Wikipedia articles to some other Yorkshire blokes and they have to guess what's in it, but this was _maybe_ the first time that the Earth passed through its *tail?* Not a 100% on that but it _was_ the first time they could see what the tail was made out of thanks to spectroscopic imaging and found out that it's cyanogens, poisonous. And the average person that panic buys a gas mask when the world is set to end is unlikely to put in the thought to figure out that just because we know it's poison now we've probably passed it a couple times and the world hasn't ended those times so it's probably fine, or at least not before already owning the gas mask.
1910 was an exceptionally close pass of Halley's comet; the Earth actually went through the comet's tail. So even with records of its previous visits, nobody was really sure about the effects of getting that close.
@@myladycasagrande863 Thanks!
@@sirBrouwer Thank you.
Well, I'm sure they were glad to have bought a gas mask in time for the Great War!
What happened in 1910? The events of Mary Poppins, I believe.
🎶 It's grand to be an Englishman in 1910! King Edward's on the throne; it's the age of men. 🎶
3:49 that is how an umbrella (well parasol but they are the exact same device) works
Well, _technically_ (or rather _linguistically)_ an umbrella protects you against rain, a parasol against the sun.
@@rolfs2165 Umbral means shadow. Umbrella linguistically means little shadow, which is more for sun than rain
@@xolotlnephthys while para means protection against, and sol means sun.
I'm thinking 1910, gas masks and umbrellas probably has something to do with smog, maybe acid rain. No idea about the sugar pills though. Perhaps water disinfectant?
Maybe they work like iodine pills do
I miss the red shirt...
Back in the 60s, when I was a child, they were selling gas masks to children to pretend to be astronauts.
Hmm i can imagine that the space part was what you would tell the children while the parents knew the real use for it.
Making the gasmask less scary.
ugh fine I'll rewatch Citation Needed for the n-th time, it was gonna happen soon anyways
And here we have some delicious food for the algorithm ;-)
Does anyone have the name/topic of the Citation Needed episode that mentioned this?
Reminded of Private Walker...
@ 4:15 in the video: is this a halley's comet's "cosmic rays" tin-foil-hat-alike?
I can only think of the Dyson mask, though it's a bit early
Wait, I was right!
Tech Dif helped me again!
3:26 it could have been Dr Rush's bilious pills
first guess, had acid rain just been discovered?
lateral is the new QI
I know this one so I'll have to bow out of commenting on it.
I always thought gas masks weren't invented until WW1. The more you know.
Wait Tom has another Channel? Where he doesn't wear red shirts? WTF why didn't he advertise this when he retired?
he did
halley comet?
Absinthe makes the heart grow Fonda
before seeing the episode my guess is "acid rain"?
Got away with similar during covid
6 min video came out 3 min ago, no one knows the answer
Citation needed fans do!
2x speed watchers (me) did!
Flammarion is getting mostly a bad rap. From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Flammarion#Halley's_Comet
'In an article in the New York Herald in November 1909, responding to such claims by others, he stated that "The poisoning of humanity by deleterious gases is improbable", and correctly stated that the matter in the comet's tail is so tenuous that it would have no noticeable effect.[15] However, he also indulged in a "thought experiment" about what might happen if it did inject various gases into the atmosphere.'
Flammarion's "thought experiment" was definitely unwise. Journalists, even the sainted NY Times (if you trust Smithsonian Magazine, ref in footnote 5), passed it on as if Flammarion had claimed it would actually come to pass.