Home » Best Days » Do You Know These Fishy Facts?

Do You Know These Fishy Facts?

Visa or Clamshells ?
Did you know, during the Depression of the 1930s, clamshells were used in Pismo Beach, California, as legal tender?

In Cod we trust ?
Codfish were depicted on some early coins of the infant United States, from 1776 to 1778.

A real school from fishing.
In 1670, the Massachusetts Bay Colony ruled that the profits from “basse” fishing be used to build a school that was free for all to attend. Thus, striped bass fishing built the first public school in the New World.

Holy Mackerel
Because the mackerel is a fish that spoils quickly, merchants were allowed to sell it on Sundays, despite blue laws in 17th century England. Hence the phrase “Holy Mackerel!”

Quick! Freeze the fish !
Fishing led to the first practical method of quick-freezing foods. In the early 1900s,
Clarence Birdseye was fishing in a frigid region of Canada. He discovered that the fish he caught froze quickly and when cooked tasted just as fresh as when he had caught them.

                                                       ---by Bryan Henry, Farmers' Almanac Freelancer