Morning Beers and a Little Known Hero

Two things I read this week that are definitely worth sharing:

Atlas Obscura’s piece on the three London pubs that still open for breakfast, and yes you can have a beer with your bacon and eggs. Here’s my favorite factoid from the article:

…drinking before work is fairly taboo in Britain, and most people wait until at least lunchtime. Back in the day, though, workmen would easily drink six to eight pints of beer every day, says Jennings. For what else could they drink? The water often came from sewage-ridden sources such as the River Thames, and there were no soft drinks. Tea and coffee eventually arrived, but they were expensive, foreign imports and, even once they became more common, subject to heavy taxation. “So people drank beer with their meals during the day. That lasted well into the 19th century for many people,” says Jennings.

The second piece that really caught my attention was this article from North Carolina Rabbit Hole about the man who led the team that disarmed two hydrogen bombs that accidentally fell near Goldsboro, NC in 1961. Here’s the opening paragraph:

On a cold wet day in January 1961, Lt. Jack ReVelle climbed out of a muddy hole in the ground, holding a rough, gray sphere the size of a volleyball against his chest. For the better part of a week, he and his crew had been digging in the swampy ground outside of Goldsboro, North Carolina. It had been raining and snowing, and the hole had grown to be larger than a football field. Jack was just 25 years old, but he was in charge. When he and his men finally found what they were looking for, Jack was the one who got to climb up the ladder and bring it out.

I definitely recommend reading the rest of the article to learn about a man who did something extraordinary, and yet no one knew about it for 50 years.

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