500words

   Jeanie October 2022 Long, long before the introduction of the international date line, the Arab geographer Abulfeda (1273-1331) predicted that circumnavigators would gain one day.   He was proved right in 1522 at the end of the Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation – the first successful navigation around the world.    After sailing westward from Spain, the expedition called at Cape Verde in the Atlantic Ocean for provisions on Wednesday 9 July 1522 (ship’s time) - however locals told them that it was actually Thursday 10 July.   The crew was very confused as they had meticulously recorded every day of their 3 year journey, without fail. The international date line (IDL) was not drawn up until 1884.   It is an imaginary line of demarcation that passes through the mid-Pacific at roughly 180 degrees longitude.   It is halfway around the world from the prime meridian (0 degrees longitude) which is in Greenwich London.   The IDL runs from the N...

    It has been reported widely in the media that consumers are confused by the three terms ‘sell-by’, ‘best before’ and ‘use-by’, used in food labelling. Just in case any of you are in the confused group, here’s a brief rundown. Sell-by dates don’t matter a bit to the consumer. They were introduced for stock control in Marks and Spencer’s warehouses in the 1950s and then rolled out to the shelves in the 1970s. The  best-before  date, sometimes shown as BBE (best before end), is about quality and not safety, so is usually applied to foods that have been preserved including frozen, dried, tinned foods, pickles and jams and some hard cheeses. Best-before dates were first introduced, also by M&S, in the 1990s as an indicator of the quality of their food. Using produce by the best before date guarantees the optimum flavour, texture and appearance of the food. This means that there is no need to get rid of food that has passed its best-before date, it’s ent...

  The Date Palm The date palm is the oldest tree still living, it has been known from remotest antiquity and extensive fossil records extend back 80 million years to the late Cretaceous period.   It is thought that the date palm was first cultivated in lands around the Persian Gulf over 6000 years ago and evidence has been found in Neolithic sites in Egypt and Syria. The “Fertile Crescent”, the land north of the Arabian Desert and from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf, is the region where settled farming first emerged and people began clearing the land and developing the local vegetation. One of the oldest palm artifacts found is a seal from a jar found at the Saqqara necropolis in Giza, Egypt.   Made from plaited palm leaves, it is approximately 2,100 years old.     DNA extracted from it shows a very similar genetic code to the modern North African date palm.   It also has generic definition similar to the wild Cretan Palm found in Crete an...