Why is a sundae called a sundae?

This post was prompted by reading an exchange between two of my twitter friends:

@TweeterWill83 Icecream sundae on Sunday! (@ mcdonalds, Drapery Street, Northampton) http://4sq.com/ap1SdK

@jennywrenwatts @TweeterWill83 how appropriate!

@TweeterWill83 @jennywrenwatts always wonder why they call it that though.

So do I.

There seem to be a number of stories flying around the internet, which makes picking out the true one (if it is indeed any of them) a little bit difficult, but most of them seem to have a similar theme, and that theme starts off with ice-cream soda.

An ice-cream soda, also known in various parts of the world as a float, brown/black cow or spider*, is a beverage made with any number of scoops of ice cream (of any flavour, though classically vanilla) dolloped into a glass of coke, lemonade or any other soft drink**. Originally, it seems that most were made by scooping ice-cream into plain soda water, and then adding a flavoured syrup.

Various legends (that I can't find any really satisfying evidence for) suggest that ice-cream sodas were banned by local governments for some reason, sometimes entirely, but in many cases just on holy days (including Sundays). It is said that a replacement was required that would enable a similar treat to be supplied on these days without resorting to breaking the law, so the soda was removed, leaving behind a glass of ice-cream served with a flavoured syrup, and was known as a 'sunday'.

This new treat became popular in its own right and started to be requested and sold on days other than a Sunday. The name seems to have been altered to 'sundae' for two reasons: as it was no longer just sold on Sundays, the name 'sunday' didn't fit any more, and apparently a number of religious-types took offence at the name of their sabbath being used as the name for a wickedly pleasurable dessert.

There are a number of American towns that fight for the right to claim invention of the sundae, including Evanston, Illinois (invention claim date: 1890), Ithaca, New York (invention claim date: 1892) and Two Rivers, Wisconsin (invention claim date: 1899), all of which have slightly different stories with their own convincing proofs and dubious inconsistencies!





* And, in the rather specialised parts of the world that contain my immediate family, a 'grandma special'.
** I'm fairly sure that traditionally, coke is used, but a 'grandma special' usually involves lemonade, and some versions even use beer and other alcoholic drinks.

Your Horoscope with our resident Astrologer, Madame Teakay: Cancer (June 22 - July 23)

Cancer - June 22 - July 23

Not an actual photo of Cancer, but it looks cool. Image by GamOl from Pexels

Money woes usually send you scuttling sideways under a rock, but it's about time you sorted yourself out or your usual reserves of back-up wealth are going to run dry.
Your general conduct when out and about is extroverted and often a decibel-powered assault on the tympanic membrane, and you frequently shake the foundations doing something as simple as asking the time. This is at odds with your expected Cancerian nature, so what this means, I guess, is that you should bloody well shut up for five minutes.
Next Tuesday, please make sure you put your most treasured skills to good use doing something or other that is yet to be specified.

• Lucky natural event: Turtle birth
• Unlucky school subject: Drama
• Look out for: Irrational priorities

Astrology is, of course, mostly complete nonsense. The bits that aren't are actually astronomy. Find out more about the asterism Cancer here.

Social poll: Fatherses day

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Apostrophe dilemma: Which is the correct use of the apostrophe.

Father's day Fathers' day It depends! (Please comment to clarify...)

Should I hold in a wee to stave off dehydration?

The following question was asked by my dad:

If I was stuck in an arid place, like Mars for instance (or a desert) with no access to water supplies, should I resist the urge to wee so that I conserve the liquid content in my body for as long as possible in the hope that I will find water before I completely dehydrated?

Before I answer please consider that I am not medically trained, so don't take my word as gospel: I'm just researching this with the resources available to me, and it's a little outside of my normal interest-base. I'd appreciate clarification and correction on this issue by anyone who knows better than me!

There are two things that strike me with this one:

1. As far as I understand it, once your body's waste water collects in your bladder, then that's it. It's there until you pass it out of your body and is just dead weight that you're carrying around; it is put to no further use inside your body, and I don't think that there is a mechanism by which the body draws water back out of the bladder in times of dehydration*.
2. Again, as far as my understanding goes, the main (if not sole?) purpose of urinating is to get rid of dissolved waste products and substances from the human body. Even if it were possible to reintroduce the contents of your bladder to your blood stream via some internal method, would this potentially be more dangerous than being dehydrated?

So I'd say no, don't hold it in if you're dehydrated. At best, it appears that it would have no effect on your level of hydration whatsoever. At worst, there seems to be potential for it to actually make things worse.

Other questions that enter my mind on this subject include:

• Would the act of urinating in such a situation have any measurable contributing to lowering your body temperature?
• Is it safe to drink your own urine, and would this be a viable option for prolonging your life in a dehydration situation**?
• Would it be worth the time and effort filtering or otherwise attempting to purify your own urine before drinking it?

Before I go I'll say once more: in all honesty, I don't know what I'm talking about. These are just comments on what feels logical to me after a bit of research here and there. If you know better, please feel absolutely free to comment below and correct me.

* To people with cleverness in relevant fields: I'm assuming that the bladder collects water by an osmosis-type process, so if the relative water content of the water in your bladder and wherever it usually comes from to get there is reversed, would the direction of osmosis be reversed? And if so, would it be the case that you'd already be thoroughly dead by the time it got to this point?

** opinion seems to be divided on this matter- the most convincing sources I've found suggest that it's fine to drink your own urine for a couple of days as healthy wee is 95% water, but each time you urinate the concentration of waste products gets higher, resulting in eventual dehydration and/or renal failure

Social poll: Kettle fillage

From the status update of one of my Facebook friends:

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Does it annoy you when the person who uses the kettle before you doesn't fill it up again afterwards?

Yes No It depends on my mood...