Ciro Terranova, a member of the New York mafia, cornered the artichoke market by buying all the crates coming in from California and reselling them at a 30 to 40 percent profit. Known as the “Artichoke King”, Terranova sustained this profitable monopoly through intimidation of distributors, merchants and even growers. The artichoke monopoly was swiftly defeated, and the ban lifted on its third day when the five companies which imported the commodity from California signed an agreement at City Hall →
Bizarre
Antimony is a metalloid that was used for a variety of aliments from ancient Egypt till Medieval Europe. In small doses it was used as a contraceptive or to induce vomiting, it’s side effects ranged from headaches, to seizures to death. Since antimony ‘pills’ were passed through the body unscathed a family usually only had one pill that they would share for generations.
Known as the world’s greatest linguist, Gregg Cox speaks 64 different languages fluently. He began learning at age 5 starting with Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German and Chinese. He learns approximately 5 languages a year and has published a language dictionary consisting of 45,600 pages of 225 different languages.
