The Roman army knife
QUESTION Was the Swiss Army knife the first multi-purpose knife created? The multi-tool dates from the Roman period. There are examples of bronze and silver spoon/knife combinations for eating on the road. however, the first serious multi- tool was a beautifully crafted silver implement.
The tool featured an iron knife, a spoon, a three-tined fork, spike, spatula, and small pick. The spike may have been used as an escargot extraction device, and the pick may have been a toothpick.
Archaeologists think the spatula may have helped extract sauce from narrow-necked bottles.
The 3 in x 6 in knife was excavated from the Mediterranean area and obtained by the Fitzwilliam Museum in Oxford in 1991.
experts believe it may have been carried by a wealthy traveller, in around about 200300AD, who had the item custom-made during the height of Roman power.
By the 16th century, people were combining more than just cutlery. Pistols were often attached to swords, knives, axes, spears, and crossbows.
One early example was a German cleaver-like blade with a flintlock pistol attached inscribed with a calendar, the artist’s name (Ambrosious Gemlich) and the date, 1546.
Thomas Jefferson’s scientific tools and specimens at the Smithsonian Museum contain the U.S. President’s bone-handled multi-tool equipped with a leather punch, button hook, saw blade, and a tool for removing stones from horses’ hooves.
Modern Swiss Army knives originated in Ibach Schwyz, Switzerland, in 1897 and were created by Karl elsener.
The knives, which provide soldiers with a battlefield toolkit, have since become standard issue for many modern- day fighting forces thanks to their toughness and quality. Nationalist elsener designed the knives after he realised the Swiss army was being issued with blades manufactured in neighbouring Germany.
Ed Richards, London E8. QUESTION Are green bananas more beneficial to sportsmen than ripe ones? BANANAS are good for the sportsman because of their potassium content and as a healthy source of carbohydrates.
Ripe yellow bananas are generally better for sporting activity. The composition of a green banana and a yellow ripe one are quite different. Green bananas contain 25 per cent or more ‘resistant starch’ — a complex carbohydrate that cannot be broken down by enzymes in our digestive system and passes unchanged through the intestines as insoluble fibre.
In yellow or ripe bananas, much of this starch has been broken down into bioavailable sugars that are absorbed more easily and used by your body as fuel.
Green bananas are good if you are dieting or suffering from type 2 diabetes. Unripe bananas also have probiotic bacteria, a friendly bacterium that helps with good colon health. In addition, green bananas have high nutrient absorption rate, especially calcium.
Sally Smith, Bath, Somerset. QUESTION What caused the 1814 London beer flood? IN The later afternoon of October 17, 1814, one million imperial pints of dark beer flooded St Giles Rookery, coming from Tottenham Court Road where the Meux & Company horse Shoe Brewery stood.
horse Shoe Brewery was popular among London beer drinkers and was famous for the porter it produced and the gigantic size of the vat in which it was fermented.
Breweries competed to see who could build the biggest vat, even holding opening ceremonies, and the horse Shoe vat was 22ft high, containing more than 3,500 barrels — the amount of porter it contained would have been the equivalent of half the size of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
That Monday at around 4.30pm, storehouse clerk George Crick noticed an iron restraining hoop had slipped off an enormous cask storing a ten-month-old batch of porter.
This happened two or three times a year, so he simply wrote a note to have it fixed later. But the vat was full to the brim with more than a million fermenting pints, and about an hour later the wooden staves burst apart.
Crick told a newspaper, ‘I was on a platform about 30ft from the vat when it burst. I heard the crash as it went off, and ran immediately to the storehouse, where the vat was situated.
‘It caused dreadful devastation on the premises — it knocked four butts over, and staved (pierced) several, as the pressure was so excessive. Between 8,000 and 9,000 barrels of porter [were] lost.’ The resulting flood, weighing close to 600 tons, plus wood and metal from the vat, caused the walls of the brewery to erupt under such force — it even sent bricks raining over the tops of houses nearby — and beer gushed into the neighbourhood.
It inundated St Giles Rookery at the southern end and, with no drainage on the city streets, the wave of liquid had nowhere to go except straight into homes.
Rescuers called for silence among the mayhem as they waded through to find residents trapped indoors, some streetlevel rooms filled to ceiling height.
At a time when many men were still at work, most casualties were women and children and at least eight deaths were recorded as direct result of the accident.
When the flood had subsided, homes were ruined and a pervasive smell of stale beer lingered for months.
A jury convened to investigate the disaster two days later, visiting the slum and viewing bodies — yet despite Crick’s testimony that the brewery vat was unstable earlier in the afternoon, a judge cleared horse Shoe Brewery of any wrongdoing and recorded the verdict as an Act of God.
The brewers not only escaped paying any damages to destitute victims, but also received a refund for the excise duty they had paid to produce the beer that was lost.
however, one person, addressing himself only as a ‘friend of humanity’ in a letter to the Morning Post newspaper, thought the accident should have been foreseen:
‘I have always held it as my firm opinion, that the many breweries and distilleries in this metropolis . . . are most dangerous establishments, and should not be permitted to stand in the heart of the town.
‘I am only surprised, when I consider the immense body contained in these ponderous vats, that similar accidents do not more frequently occur.’
After closing in 1921, the site of the old horse Shoe Brewery is occupied by the Dominion Theatre. But in memory of the London beer flood of 1814, a local pub — The holborn Whippet — brews a special anniversary ale each year.
Emilie Lamplough, Trowbridge, Wilts.