An English Lord Chancellor and the ghost of a chicken make an unlikely pairing. What happened to the chicken, and who is more associated with this sort of thing nowadays?

zbeckabee

I'll shoot for part one. 1626: Francis Bacon, English philosopher, statesman, and essayist, died of possible pneumonia after purchasing a chicken and stuffing it with snow to see if cold could preserve meat. Highgate is reputedly haunted by the chicken's ghost. http://www.digital-karma.org/culture/facts/list-of-unusual-deaths http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon I have no clue on the rest of it. Sep 06 07, 4:11 PM

Baloo55th

Correct so far. Someone else, who may never have heard of Bacon, 'discovered' this idea. Sep 06 07, 4:24 PM

lanfranco

Good grief. Are we talking about the history of refrigeration? ;-) And a fascinating history it is, as I discovered while looking for a working, early 20th-century refrigerator for a certain house museum. Does the person you're looking for appear on this site, Baloo? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigeration Sep 06 07, 5:39 PM

Baloo55th

Not refrigeration as such. Who made a commercial success of what Bacon was trying to do - and didn't catch pneumonia in the process? Sep 07 07, 11:58 AM

queproblema

Yoicks! I mean, Yikes! As usual, you have a poser here. I need to be off and running; here's something somebody else can work with. Carl Swanson invented the TV dinner, or maybe not. Here's a starter link, but don't forget about Clarence Birdseye. http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/tvdinner.html Then, Elmer F. Glabe and Victor H. Shubert (practically Victor Herbert!) share a patent for cooling chickens. http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6329003-description.html And here's something I don't begin to understand. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T9G-49MF0KG-3&_user=10&_coverDate=03%2F31%2F2004&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=40f28a2dfa6779591de561292479a254 Sep 07 07, 4:17 PM

Baloo55th

Birdseye is the one I was looking for. Birdseye was a travelling salesman and not, as kids in the UK might think, a bearded old sailor. Have a fish finger.... Sep 08 07, 10:01 AM

queproblema

Then we need a link. http://www.birdseyefoods.com/corp/about/clarenceBirdseye.asp I couldn't find that in his many ventures and adventures he was ever a traveling salesman, but he did claim to be a fisherman and a "dock-walloper," and to have cruised with Sir Wilfred Grenfell. No beard, though! Off-topic: Grenfell must have had a very large number of various travel companions; the father of one of my close friends from Cambridge, MA, also went with him on dental missions. Sep 08 07, 11:16 AM