Potato Potato facts
While investigating facts about Potato Potato, I found out little known, but curios details like:
The potato was popularized in France largely by one man who placed guards around his potato field and instructed them to "accept any and all bribes from civilians".
Korean college students once protested against the amount of air in potato chip packets by building a raft out of them and sailing across a river.
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 50 of the best facts about Potato Potato I managed to collect.
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After a stable boy misspelled the name of a thoroughbred Potatoes, the horse was named Potoooooooo, or Pot-8-Os. In 27 years Potoooooooo won 30 races and sired 5 winners.
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About "The Whole Shabangs" potato chips, available almost exclusively from US Prison system commissaries. Ex-cons consider these chips to be the best chip out there, and a high-point of their incarceration. Many end up dismayed and disappointed at their lack of availability "on the outside".
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The Potato paradox. If a 100 kg of potatoes consist of 99% water, but dehydrate so that they are only 98% water, they now only weigh 50kg.
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The International Potato Center has successfully grown potatoes in a simulated Mars environment. They grew the plants in a CubeSat which mimicked the Martian air pressure and atmosphere, and used saline desert soils analogous to Martian soils as the growing medium.
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About Baltimore's Mr. Trash Wheel, a waterway trash inceptor that removed approx. 200,000 bottles, 173,000 potato chip bags, and 6.7 million cigarette butts from the inner harbor in just 18 months of initial operation.
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Potato chip bags are not full of air, but of nitrogen gas. This is done to prevent the chips from oxidizing, which is part of what makes them go stale.
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An Indian fan spent the whole day at a match in Toronto shouting 'aloo' (potato) through a megaphone at overweight Pakistani cricket captain, Inzamam-ul-Haq, until finally Inzamam invaded the crowd and attacked the fan with a cricket bat, causing a mass brawl
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Alcatraz had some of the best food in the federal prison system including chili dogs, butter-drenched potatoes, pork chops, biscuits and gravy & banana pudding because the warden believed “most trouble in prison is caused by bad food.” The prison staff ate the same food as the prisoners.
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King Frederick II used reverse psychology on his peasants who refused to eat potatoes because they tasted horrible. To stop the food famine he sent his guards to guard fields of potatoes and the peasants started stealing them and growing their own.
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The woman responsible for the botched "potato Jesus" restoration receives 49% of all of the church's souvenir sales featuring the image.
Potato Potato data charts
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What is true about potato potato?
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In Western Australia, it is illegal to possess more than 50kg/110lb of potatoes.
Right before WW2, the US created the "Logan Bar," a chocolate bar that deliberately tasted "a little better than a boiled potato" as an emergency ration to prevent soldiers from snacking on it outside of emergency situations. - source
The *Ecce Homo* painting which was turned into the "Potato Jesus" meme after a failed restoration has increased tourism in that area, and the funds go towards the church owned nursing home and the "art restorer's" son who suffers from cerebral palsy. - source
Irish goodbye" refers to a person ducking out of a party, social gathering or very bad date without bidding farewell. The phrase is attributed to the Potato Famine of 1845-1852, when many Irish fled their homeland for America. The distance and technology meant that they were gone forever.
In World War I, deep fried potato batons were popular among American soldiers stationed in Belgian after they were served to the British for their love of chips. As, the language locally and of the Belgian Army at the time was French, they thought they were in France naming them ‘French fries’. - source
Pringles are technically not potato chips, they are molded out of powdered potato, wheat, and other additives
A Turkish Sultan offered £10000 in aid to Ireland during the Potato Famine but Queen Victoria asked him to send £1000 as she had only sent £2000 herself.
Cliff Young. In 1983 he was a 61 year old potato farmer with no race experience. He decided to run a 544 mile Ultra-marathon because he said he ran chasing sheep all day anyway. He developed his own style having no experience or training, running while other slept and won by over 10 hours.
About the “Magic 8”. Before 1491, corn, beans, squash, chili, tomato, potato, vanilla, and cacao weren’t found anywhere in the world outside of the Americas.
In 1924 the KKK tried to move into South Bend before the Irish Catholic students of Notre Dame drove them out by throwing potatoes
Humans can survive indefinitely on a diet of just potatoes and butter
