Dublin Whiskey Fire
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Hogsheads sound like a fictional unit of measure made up to mock the imperial system.
Fun fact: hogsheads are abbreviated as hhds :)
The Irish for hogshead and barrel can be found at https://www.focloir.ie
Perhaps the Gaelic word for barrel somehow came from the English measurement hogshead, but more likely that it was spoken Gaelic for barrel overheard and adopted by English speaking stevedores.
The other problem is that there is no known Irish etymology for either tocsaid or oigiséad, or Malcolm McLennan would have included it in his faclair, but there is a plausible English one. Other Germanic languages (Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish) have variants of ox-head. Whether it originated in one of those languages or in English is disputed.
The metric system is unintuitive but standardized.
The imperial system is intuitive but (traditionally) non-standardized.
A standardized but unintuitive system is useful in modern science and engineering, where reliability and precision are of utmost importance.
An intuitive but non-standardized system is useful for day-to-day communication and conceptualization, where a standard deviation away from the average of the unit's reference does not have a meaningful effect.
Before standardization, many old units of measurement could be immediately related to everyday things, making conceptualization simple and intuitive.
Examples:
Imperial pound of mass: A pound of wheat berries is more or less how many wheatberries I can fit in my hand. I deal with wheat berries and my hands every single day - I can quite concretely conceptualize a pound and more or less relate that pound (of wheat berries) to other things: a pound of meat, a pound of wool, etc.
Imperial acre: An acre is more or less the amount of land that a pair of oxen can plow in a day. In our old little village, oxen and farm fields are something we observe every single day, and so an acre is conceptually intuitive to us.
Ancient cubit: This is more or less the length of my forearm, which again serves as a very useful reference point for measuring and conceptualizing things. Say I go to build a cabinet. I may measure in cubits. Then, when I go to cut lumber, I just measure it with my forearm, cut, and that's it.
Imperial hogshead: I speculate this barrel size is more or less either the size of an ox's head, or can tightly fit one inside it. Again, this is an animal I might observe daily, making conceptualization simple.
Note that a standard deviation of the size of an average man's hand or forearm, or of the amount of land a given pair of oxen can plow on a given day, does not have a meaningful impact on how I use and relate these units of measurement to everyday life - I'm not precision engineering a space telescope here. I'm just buying wheat berries, plowing fields, and building cabinets.
Contrast these origins with metric's.
Metric meter: "one ten-millionth of the distance between the North Pole and the Equator through Paris" - whoa get me outta here! I can't relate that to anything I encounter in my day-to-day life.
Metric gram: "the mass of one cubic centimeter of water", or "the mass of one cubic 'one hundredth of one ten-millionth of the distance between the North Pole and the Equator through Paris' of water"
Of course we can still more or less relate these metric units to things in our day-to-day life for better conceptualization, but because they're arbitrary, they don't map 1:1, whereas imperial and ancient units were naturally emergent rather than arbitrary and they mapped one to one per their definitions.
This is why imperial is a more useful system for relaying measurements colloquially, for everyday life.
1. What is a "wheatberry"? 2. What is an "oxen"? 3. How long is "a day"?
What's completely balderdash about it? The definition of centimeter is accurate, so it cannot be the case that the post is completely balderdash? Like you've requested with my oxen and my days and my wheat berries, perhaps you could you also be more precise?
Again, the point is that you use these measurements in situations where micrometer-tier precision is unnecessary. You can hear "pound", immediately be able to conceptualize it, and then move on with your life, not waste all day haggling with the merchant over his wheat berries that happen to be 0.2mm shorter on average than what you typically might consider to be a wheat berry.
For one, many units are actually defined using relatable things like your example: "the mass of one cubic centimeter of water". Here, one always buys water in in 0.5 litre, 0.75 litres or 1 litre (=0.5,0.75 and 1 kilo), so it's even more relatable than your hand of berries (I literally had half a unit kilo weight in my hand an hour ago). Or celsius, 100 is boiling point of water and 0 is freezing point, which you will also encounter in your daily life (cooking and your fridge, at least approximately) and are easy to relate.
But more importantly, it doesn't matter. Most "personal" definitions are vague. My girlfriend is significantly shorter and a meter is way longer for here than for me, also her forearms are like two thirds of my forearm. Nobody knows how a meter is defined and I think many have forgotten how a gram or a kilo are defined, it's a scale you internalise. How to define them, that's up to the scientist. The day to day advantage is that it's so easy to calculate with these units and every single unit has the same concept behind it (from current to weight to acceleration).
Metric units can certainly be adapted to be fractionally relatable, though their origins are certainly not, as I mentioned:
>we can still more or less relate these metric units to things in our day-to-day life for better conceptualization, but because they're arbitrary, they don't map 1:1, whereas imperial and ancient units were naturally emergent rather than arbitrary and they mapped one to one per their definitions.
The grandparent comment mentioned how nonsensical or absurd "hogshead" is as a unit of measurement, and the essence of the response was that "hogshead" is actually rather sensical, originating from something very relatable and natural.
So, its an appeal to nature then? Somehow, I doubt it'd make a difference if meter was derived from the total lengths of bishops mitres at parish (everyone knows how tall those hats are - relatable!).
Units are only "intuitive" because that's what you've internalized - similar to how the the golden age of music was when one was a teenager or young adult.
>an appeal to nature then
No. It's an explanation that imperial & similar ancient measurement units were adopted with the goal of being simple and intuitive for people to quickly understand. This was accomplished by choosing immediately relatable reference points. In the case of a hogshead barrel, that reference point was the ox head.
A mile, that's 1000 paces, that's both simple to remember and intuitive.
A kilometer, that's 621.4 paces, that's neither simple to remember nor intuitive.
No unit in the metric system maps simply to anything a human can immediately relate to, this is by definition of each unit in the system.
This "intuition" is not intrinsic, though, but is because of familiarity. If you've done track sports (or watched athletics), you can visualize 100m. If you've watched NFL, you can "intuit" 10 yards empirically - not because it equals to 30 feet and you look at your own feet. The same goes for 21"/27"/42"/60" (TVs).
The only scenario I can imagine where of human-relatibility would matter is when the unit is unknown to the listener, e.g. if someone introduced me to a carlength (or the notoriously unintuitive 'length of a football field'); however, this is now completely unnecessary with modern education and standardization
The origin of the measure is just lore, and counts for nothing; which is why being immersed into a system which you were previously unfamiliar with (metric or imperial) bestows the same "intuitiveness" - as anyone who joined the US army can tell you.
The argument that imperial units are somehow relatable as they are similar to naturally occurring things is a textbook appeal to nature.
Nobody who uses meters outside of setting the international standard or working in particle physics would have a working idea where they denoting meters in wavelengths of radioactive decay or hemisphere spanning fractions. They approximate it to something they can relate to just like you do. It's easy to skewer imperial units too with silly examples stories e.g. Fahrenheit.
Similarly just because it's convenient to me to think of (mile!) country roads, quarter sections, and acres from familiarity despite using metric elsewhere due to the grids from historical land allocations in Western Canada doesn't devalue other ways of measuring.
If you want to be rude, do it, but be direct about it and own it. Or rather, don't be rude. Please do not presume anything about the author of a comment nor attempt to make personal attacks against the author, as it's not only rude, it's irrelevant to the substance. I am not the substance of my comment, the origins and intuitiveness of units of measurement is the substance.
>Similarly just because it's convenient to me to think of (mile!) country roads, quarter sections, and acres from familiarity despite using metric elsewhere due to the grids from historical land allocations in Western Canada doesn't devalue other ways of measuring.
I agree.
Why then, haven't imperial analogs appeared for data storage?
"This hard drive is old, about 87 Shakespeare's"
"Oh, Twitter was ruined for me when they increased the character limit to a Poem"
"We are web-scale, we serve fourscore Libraries of congress worth of video per second"
The most recent of which being https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_fruit_juice_flood from 2017 - thankfully no victims.
Would zero-calories lightly flavored seltzer count? Most people probably consider that water... But presumably hard seltzer would definitely count, as would Pepsi Max. So maybe it's a combination of factors like energy content, flavor, aroma, color, etc.
After distillation the whisky is at "still strength" (typically ~70% ABV) and diluted to "cask strength" before maturation. Then after that, it's usually diluted further for bottling.
Near twice that number died in the molasses flood in Boston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_Flood
The density of molasses is about 1.4 tonnes per cubic metre, 40% more dense than water, resulting in the molasses having a great deal of potential energy. The collapse translated this energy into a wave of molasses 25 ft (8 m) high at its peak, moving at 35 mph (56 km/h)... nearby buildings were swept off their foundations and crushed. Several blocks were flooded to a depth of 2 to 3 ft (60 to 90 cm)
"Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage …. Here and there struggled a form—whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was …. Horses died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings—men and women—suffered likewise."
Just our luck, driving right into some festivities, we think. Then, minutes later, we find the origin of the beer - a truck has veered onto the road shoulder and toppled over, the locals helping themselves to the free beer strewn all over.
I imagine that village still being collectively tipsy...
1. Gas truck tips over. Usually with 0 fatalities
2. Locals go over to collect free gas
3. Truck explodes. 30+ fatalities
If there's an actual flood of heated alcohol, then you might get poisoning just from inhaling? It's hard to avoid breathing, really.
But imagine the cleanup.
Kind of shocked by this. Why did the indulge like that? One could go to any college party in the US and find enough alcohol to kill themselves and yet it rarely happens. Were there that many people in Dublin that were hopeless alcoholics at the time?
> bounded by Flushing Avenue on the north, Park Avenue on the south, Waverley Avenue on the west and Washington Avenue on the east
Found it. It's by the Brooklyn Navy Yards: https://goo.gl/maps/uat3hq47dvV9tQaTA
in fact, the building still exists,
from wikipedia "Front of main plant, 1918": https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Industri...
it's on the Washington and Park corner: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6960688,-73.9674585,3a,75y,3...
>People drank from the 6 inches (150 mm) deep river of whiskey that is said to have flowed as far as the Coombe.
Can't help but laugh hysterically whilst imagining this scene. Guess I found a brand new piece of trivia to share with my Irish friends and co-workers.
The Irish have been amongst the nicest and the most 'jolly' group of people I've known/worked with. Look very forward to visiting the island someday.
And this isn’t harmless. I’ve worked in tech all my life, mostly outside of Ireland, and the “jolly drunkard” is certainly not a helpful stereotype when you’re trying to be taken seriously and progress in your career, I’ve experienced the unpleasant labelling myself (despite I’m teetotal) and frequently seen it applied to other Irish people.
- Strongly dislike the cultural glorification of getting excessively drunk, but can't deny it's there - the stereotype is not based on fiction. - Also strongly like the international reputation we have as being hospitable, fun, and friendly (as evidenced by the comment above), which is essentially a positive stereotype. - In my experience when meeting new people, acknowledgement-that-the-Irish-are-drinkers (in a non-antagonistic way) is not in itself harmful, and can often be a good ice breaker and rapport builder. As in, the stereotype itself is not the harmful part. Most people I've encountered tend not to make negative assumptions, are smart enough to reason about group vs individual behaviour, and give the benefit-of-the-doubt, and those who don't have a being-an-asshole problem, not a infected-by-a-stereotype problem. - My reading of the comment above was that the spirit was non-asshole-y.
Just my two cents
I 100% agree with you though, part of the Irish culture people look to experience is the good times around a few pints and some traditional music, with the reward of a hangover in the morning to mark it as a successful night.
The few negative things I've ever experienced were off hand comments about the famine, and some nonsense about the North of Ireland.
In a large majority of situations in my experience, like being a senior manager of a new team, the CEO of a company meeting clients or negotiating with vendors and partners, it’s utterly irrelevant at best.
Also, the fact that Ireland has a major, major alcohol problem is no justification for the stereotype; so do many northern hemisphere countries. London had its Gin Crisis of the 18th century, with huge death toll and virtual breakdown of society, and the UK still has astronomical alcohol consumption, but they don’t get labelled the same way as the Irish
It shows how sticky stereotypes are and how they allow people to point at others without really thinking about themselves. I've got an example too. Within the UK Scotland gets a bad rap for being a nation of overweight people who eat deep fried food every other meal, when in reality the rate of obesity within the country are within a couple of percentage points (something like 27.5% in Scotland, 25% in England). I have literally had overweight English people trying to crack wise with me (Scottish, 83kg/190cm - basically in shape) about Scottish people being fat which is kinda funny. I thought it would be a bit rude to turn it round on them - there's a line between banter and direct insults after all :D
Ireland gets it a bit worse though. So many people love to try to mirror the accent or joke about the potato famine or the troubles (not excluding Scotland from this, this stuff occurs across the English speaking world) wee bit edgy for my liking.
To be fair we certainly do have a reputation for drunkenness and general loutishness in parts of the Continent, apparently in anywhere with cheap holiday resorts the UK has a bad name.
Needless to say, this probably happened, but I'd take the specific details of the events described with liberal handfuls of salt.
> Guess I found a brand new piece of trivia to share with my Irish friends and co-workers.
I really wouldn't. They'll probably laugh politely, we're very used to this. But this won't endear you.
As an Irish person myself I've always felt the stereotype was a little overblown.. It seems I'm completely wrong. We will literally drink until we die if there is a literal river of whiskey.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
That's a lot of whisky
> During the evacuation many people gathered by the streams of whiskey, filling any vessel at hand with the substance. “Caps, porringers, and other vessels" were all gathered to lap up the burning liquid, resulting in 24 hospitalisations due to alcohol poisoning and 13 subsequent fatalities.
I doubt any other city would do better. London sure as hell wouldn't.
For London specifically, in 2020 it was ~800 deaths, or about 2.2 per day on average.
Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
From the article:
None of the fatalities suffered during the fire were due to smoke inhalation, burns, or any other form of direct contact with the fire itself; all of them were attributed to alcohol poisoning.
What a way to go.
I have a hard time picturing large numbers, so I use railway tanker cars the way some people use bananas for scale.
Well, there goes my morning.
Surprising. But not surprising.
That would make sure nobody alive would understand it.
Wikipedia has consistent style rules around usage/conversion of currencies[1][2], so yes your edit would probably be swiftly reverted if it didn't follow those.
I'm not really sure why you're using such a conspiratorial tone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Date...
[2] (From above page) "For obsolete currencies, provide an equivalent (formatted as a conversion) if possible, in the modern replacement currency (e.g. decimal pounds for historical pre-decimal pounds-and-shillings), or a US-dollar equivalent where there is no modern equivalent."
The Pound of today is pretty much a different currency to the 19th century
Utter horseshite, that's like saying a Canadian along the border would be clueless as to CAD-USD conversion rates. The UK is our next door neighbour. It's common enough to buy goods up north, online from the UK, and to travel there. We can generally do a rough conversion in our heads; the same goes for USD nowadays due to the prevalence of online shopping (and the fact that its now at near parity with EUR helps).
> The Pound of today is pretty much a different currency to the 19th century
True of any currency. You may as well argue that any measurement in an inflation adjusted currency is nonsense if you're going to go down that route.
Given that the Sterling was in use then and now, I'd argue that the most meaningful way to calculate value would be to adjust the value for the inflation of Pounds Sterling. That can then be converted as appropriate to euros for convenience (as it seems to have been in the first paragraph of this article).
I for one can't be bothered to read the sources and will just take in the factoid as-is and move on.