Sometimes momentous things happen over lunch, or a casual dinner, especially when the right minds meet for a meal.
1. FOSTERING THE FDA
American
food in the late 19th century was not very safe for eating. Syrups
contained morphine. Canned peas glowed neon green. Chemical additives
like borax (now ant bait) and copper sulfate (now a pesticide) were
common. Dr. Harvey Wiley wanted them off America’s tables, but every
bill he introduced was killed by powerful food lobbies. So in 1902,
Wiley hired 12 volunteers to eat meals laced with common additives.
Called “the Poison Squad,” the men were paid with three doctored meals a
day. The results spurred the country’s first food-regulation laws in
1906. As for Wiley? He became the father of the FDA.
2. A CAPITAL AFFAIR
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June 1790, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton bumped into each
other outside of George Washington’s New York City home. The two
chatted and decided to have dinner sometime. But Jefferson had an
agenda, extending an invitation to one of Hamilton’s rivals, James
Madison. Madison had been fighting to relocate America’s capital to the
Potomac River. Meanwhile, Hamilton wanted to transfer state debts into
federal hands—a move that would establish America’s credit. The dinner
triggered a historic compromise: The federal government assumed the
state debts, and Washington, D.C., became America’s capital.
3. A SWEET ENDING
Don’t
tell mom, but sometimes forgetting to wash your hands before a meal is
a good thing. In 1879, Ira Remsen and Constantin Fahlberg, chemists at
a Johns Hopkins lab, took a break to eat. Fahlberg had been
researching coal tar derivatives and, eager to catch a bite, forgot to
wash his hands. Midway through his meal, Fahlberg noticed that his food
was unusually sweet. Returning to the lab, he realized the taste was
produced by an oxidized chemical, an artificial sweetener he later named
saccharin. The sweet stuff boomed as sugar supplies dried up during
both world wars. Today, artificial sweeteners are a $2 billion industry.
4. OPEN SESAME!
Oscar
the Grouch might seem out of place at a posh Manhattan dinner party,
but that’s where his home, Sesame Street, got its start. In 1966,
television producer Joan Cooney hosted a dinner party at her New York
apartment and invited Lloyd Morrisett, a well-connected exec at the
Carnegie Foundation. Morrisett talked about all the junk his
three-year-old daughter watched on TV. She was so addicted, she’d wake
up early just to tune in to the morning test patterns! The dinner party
brainstormed, wondering how to use TV’s addicting qualities for good.
Within three years, that grouchy green monster was changing the way kids
learn.
5. A MOVING LUNCH
In 1994, Pixar was not the beloved animation studio it is today. Their first film,
Toy Story,
wasn’t even out yet, but the studio’s team was already wondering what
it should do next. During a lunch meeting at the Hidden City Café in
Richmond, California, Pixar’s animators and directors brainstormed ideas
and scribbled character designs onto napkins. The doodles would bloom
into four beloved features:
A Bug’s Life; Monsters, Inc.; Finding Nemo; and
WALL-E. A decade of projects was set after just one lunch meeting!
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