The Straight Dope 03/17/2006

The Straight Dope -- By Cecil Adams
http://www.straightdope.com

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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 03/17/2006

Dear Cecil:

When I'm reading novels of, say, the antebellum south and there's a guy
who goes around on a cart selling blocks of ice, how the heck did he get
it? I mean, they didn't have the fridge to rely on. Did they go way up
north and cut blocks of ice and pack it in straw for the summer, or was
there a way to manufacture ice at that time? I can't figure this one out
and have nowhere else to turn. Please help.--Terwiliger Paige, via
e-mail

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Cecil replies:

Don't despair, Terwiliger. The ice business, like carburetor rebuilding
or vinyl record manufacture, is one of those vanished (or mostly
vanished) enterprises that baffles later generations. If you think
selling ice is nutty, ask some old engineering geek what it was like
using a slide rule.

To answer your question, yes, they cut ice up north in winter and packed
it away for sale in the summer. You might guess that ice harvesting, as
it was called, was an ancient trade. Not really. While stories of
hauling snow down from the mountains for summer cooling date back to
Roman times, the widespread practice of chilling food to preserve it,
and thus the need for a reliable source of cold, is less than two
centuries old.

The man credited with creating the ice business and ushering in the era
of fresh foods is Frederic Tudor, described by his biographer Gavin
Weightman (The Frozen-Water Trade, 2003) as "a diminutive, pig-headed
Bostonian." Tudor was one of your classic
when-life-hands-you-lemons-make-lemonade kind of guys. While his fellow
New Englanders waited out the long winters huddled around the stove,
Tudor beheld the frozen landscape and thought: There's money in that
ice. In 1806 he made his first shipment of ice cut from a frozen
Massachusetts pond. His initial market wasn't the American south,
though, but the West Indies, which had torrid summers and ports served
by ships needing paying cargo on the trip south. The first voyage was a
fiasco, Tudor having neglected to consider (among other oversights) how
prospective customers would store the ice once they got it. Undaunted,
he toiled for years building up the market (two smart moves: selling
customers insulated "ice boxes" and promoting ice-cold drinks), enduring
ridicule, financial hardship, and a nervous breakdown. One critical
advance came in 1825, when his associate Nathaniel Wyeth invented the
horse-drawn ice plow, whose twin blades set roughly 20 inches apart made
it possible to score a frozen lake into a checkerboard pattern and
harvest ice on an industrial basis. Tudor built up a thriving business
in Havana, Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans and in 1833 profitably
shipped ice around the Cape of Good Hope to Calcutta. The industry now
firmly established, Tudor was celebrated as the Ice King.

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/060317.html

STAFF REPORT

Dear Straight Dope:

I've always wondered, why do so many contests have "no purchase
necessary" in their rules? It seems like every contest I've ever seen on
candy wrappers and fast food joints and whatever else, always specifies
that you can enter the contest by contacting them with a post card or
going through their website rather than buying their product. Is there
some sort of tax loophole here where they save money if they allow
people to enter without buying the product? Is it just a publicity stunt
(although I don't know of anyone who has actually taken advantage of
it)? Or is it just tradition? What are they up to? --Eric Hanson, Little
Rock, Arkansas

SDSTAFF Rico replies:

Eric, you've obviously given this a lot of thought--you've named three
excellent possibilities. Unfortunately, they're all wrong, so it's up to
me to give you the straight dope.

The explanation has to do with U.S. broadcasting laws. The Federal
Communications Commission has a section in its rules called the
"lottery" law. Under federal law, lotteries are illegal. Some lotteries,
anyway. Not state or multi-state lotteries--those are OK under the
lottery law. What's verboten are what the average person thinks of as
contests. Confused? Just wait.

For more, see: 
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mpurchasetoenter.html

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC - 02/03/1989

Dear Cecil: 

Has anyone vanished in the Bermuda Triangle lately? There were many
reports of mysterious incidents back in the 70s, but since then the
whole subject has simply dropped out of sight (grin).   Is the mystery
any closer to being solved? I'm thinking of sending my in-laws on a
permanent vacation. --K.T., Saint Louis, Missouri  

Cecil replies: 

Better stick to cyanide or blunt instruments, K. The lethality of the
Bermuda Triangle has been greatly exaggerated. The only reason I bring
up the subject at all, in fact, is to bestow some belated publicity on a
fine example of the debunker's art. But more on this in a moment.   

In case anybody's forgotten, the Bermuda Triangle is a region in the
Atlantic Ocean where scores of ships and planes allegedly have
vanished--usually without a trace, in good weather, without sending
distress calls. 

Two typical cases:  

In December 1945, five Navy planes took off from Fort Lauderdale
on a routine training mission. After reporting that their compasses 
were acting up and everything looked "strange," the five lost contact
with their base and were never seen again.  Another plane sent out
to look for them vanished as well. No wreckage from any of the 
planes was ever found.  

On December 28, 1948, a DC-3 carrying 36 persons disappeared
while en route from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami. In their last
radio message around 4 AM the plane's crew reported they were 
only 50 miles south of Miami and within sight of the city's lights.
The plane was never heard from again. A massive search turned 
up no wreckage, despite the shallowness of the waters south of Miami. 

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_067.html

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