The toast of Washington
QUESTION
Was George Washington once America’s biggest whiskey producer?
WHEN George Washington, America’s Founding Father and first president, retired from politics in 1797, he returned to his Mount Vernon estate on the banks of the Potomac River in Virginia.
The estate had been planted with rye, a cover crop used to manage erosion and preserve the soil rather than as a harvest.
James Anderson, the canny Scots plantation manager, realised that combined with Washington’s stateof-the-art gristmill and abundant water supply, it could be used to make whiskey.
That winter, Anderson began distilling in the estate’s cooperage, using two stills.
The project proved so successful that Washington approved plans for a purpose-built distillery with five stills. Within a year of its completion in 1798, it was the largest in the country, producing 11,000 gallons of whiskey, which Washington sold for $1,800 (€140,000 in today’s money). When Washington died on December 14, 1799, the distillery was left to his nephew, Lawrence Lewis. The business floundered and after a fire burned the distillery to the ground in 1814, it wasn’t rebuilt.
Martin Coles, Norfolk.
QUESTION Have many professional soccer players gone on to become politicians?
THERE are a number of footballers who have branched out into politics, but perhaps the most notable is George Weah.
He has certainly had a significant impact in both areas. As a footballer, he played for a number of top clubs, including Paris SaintGermain, AC Milan and Chelsea. He also won 75 caps for his home country of Liberia, and is regarded by many as the greatest African footballer of all time – indeed, he was named Fifa World Player of the Year in 1995.
He has also had quite a career in politics. In 2005, as Weah pursued his dream of becoming president of Liberia, Andrew Rice wrote in The New York Times Magazine:
‘His outsider challenge has startled Liberia’s insular political class. Some politicians have embraced Weah, hoping to ride his popularity to power. Others are attacking, questioning his lack of governing experience, his scant education and his rather fuzzy political platform.’
In response to his perceived outsider status, Weah said: ‘If I say I am not a politician, it is because I did not go to school to do political science. But at the end of the day, I think we are all born politicians. It’s practical. All you gotta do is practice.’ And so it proved. While his initial run for the presidency failed, he would ultimately achieve his goal, as he has been Liberian president since 2018.
David O’Mahoney, Cork.
QUESTION Does Queen Elizabeth still receive a lamprey pie from the people of Gloucester?
EELS were caught in their hundreds of thousands in medieval England and commonly used to pay rent to landlords. But lampreys – jawless fish that resemble eels – have always been considered a high-status food.
Because they could be trapped in the River Severn, the city of Gloucester traditionally made an annual lamprey pie for the sovereign. So valued were the pies that in 1200 the city was fined 40 marks (about €44,000 in today’s money) for failing to supply one.
The Earl of Chester presented King John with one lamprey and was given a horse by way of thanks.
In the 14th century, the 4th Baron Berkeley paid the equivalent of £5,000 (€5,800) to send two lampreys to Edward III. And Henry I supposedly died after eating too many lampreys while on campaign in France.
Gloucester continued its lamprey pie tradition until 1836, when the number of these fish in the River Severn was declining rapidly. Nowadays, they are a protected species. The city still presents the British sovereign with an ornately decorated pie on special occasions, such as coronations and jubilees, though in recent years the lampreys have had to be sourced from elsewhere. Recipes usually involve baking the fish in a high crust along with syrup, lemon, wine or spices.
Ian MacDonald, Essex.
QUESTION Did the German navy try to kill Daily Mail founder Lord Northcliffe in World War I?
ON FEBRUARY 26, 1917, a German warship shelled the area around Lord Northcliffe’s country retreat, Elmwood, at Broadstairs, Kent, in an attempt to assassinate him. A mother and baby at neighbouring Rose Cottage died in the attack.
Born Alfred Harmsworth in Dublin in 1865, Northcliffe rose to prominence as a newspaper magnate in the 1890s.
The founder of modern journalism was able to reach an unprecedented audience through his ownership of The Times, Evening News and, of course, the Daily Mail. He controlled 45% of daily newspapers and 15% of Sunday newspapers in Britain at the outbreak of World War I. He was hated by the Germans due to his strong patriotic rhetoric. They loathed the Daily Mail’s Letters From The Front describing the horror of the trenches in the intimate language used by the War Poets.
In 1916, a Mail reporter sneaked into a banquet at the German headquarters in the Balkans and published the menu as proof. This was seen as an embarrassment to Kaiser Wilhelm, who was ridiculed as ‘a tired and broken man – the hair is white, though the moustache is suspiciously dark’.
Targeted: Lord Northcliffe
Three months after the Somme had ended in a bloody stalemate, a German destroyer was dispatched in a bid to silence Lord Northcliffe. The day after the attack, his communique to his employees explained: ‘Incidentally, the paper was nearly deprived of its chief proprietor last night, a source of mixed feelings among the staff. Shrapnel burst all over the place, some of it hitting the library in which these notes are prepared every day, and killing a poor woman and baby within 50 yards of my home and badly wounding two others.
‘The bombardment lasted from six to ten minutes according to various estimates, and was the result of a destroyer raid.’
Paul Butterworth, Kent.
Is there a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Irish Daily Mail, DMG Media, Two Haddington Buildings, 20-38 Haddington Road, Dublin 4, D04 HE94. You can also fax them to 0044 1952 510906 or you can email them to charles. legge@dailymail.ie. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.