The butterfly effect

1747

Royal Navy doctor James Lind takes 12 men with scurvy on the HMS Salisbury and splits them into pairs to try out six potential cures: diluted sulphuric acid, cider, sea water, garlic, vinegar, and oranges and lemons. After a week the pair treated with oranges and lemons are on the road to recovery from the disease, which at the time killed around 50 percent of all sailors on long voyages.

1753

Lind publishes his Treatise of the Scurvy, on how to tackle the disease which – although he didn’t know it at the time – is caused by vitamin C deficiency. It is not until 1795, however, that the British Admiralty’s Sick and Hurt Commission issues all British sailors on foreign service with lemon juice, extending this to all ships on the British coast in 1799.

1799-1850

As the British anti-scurvy strategy catches on among other European navies, demand for lemons rockets. The island of Sicily, which thanks to its climate dominates production of citrus fruits, undergoes a lemon boom that sees its exports increase from 1,341 to 20,707 barrels per year between 1834 and 1850.

1870s

Fed up with bandits preying on their newly valuable groves, Sicilian farmers hire some of the thieves to protect their crops. The criminals end up banding together to demand protection money from landowners who have not hired one of their members. From this extortion racket the Sicilian mafia is born in the 1870s. It swiftly gains political influence.

May 1924

Benito Mussolini visits Sicily and meets with Francesco Cuccia, the mayor of Piana dei Greci and a mafia boss. After the pair fall out, Mussolini launches a five-year war against the mafia which leads to large numbers of mafiosi, including bosses, emigrating to the US. Many settle in New York where they bolster the city’s mafia networks.

1969

American author Mario Puzo publishes The Godfather, a novel about a Sicilian immigrant who builds a mafia empire in New York. Paramount Pictures buys the film rights before the book is even published: it goes on to sell over nine million copies in its first two years and remains on bestseller lists for over a year.

28th September 1970

After the job of director is turned down by 12 experienced filmmakers, including Sergio Leone and Peter Bogdanovich, it is finally accepted, somewhat begrudgingly, by Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola has regular disagreements with Paramount throughout the production and lives in constant fear of being sacked.

14th March 1972

The Godfather is released to great commercial and critical success, going on to gross more than $100 million at the domestic box office. It is nominated for ten Oscars and wins three, including Best Picture. Coppola uses his profits from the film to purchase a vineyard in the Napa Valley in California.

1975

Coppola, his father, his wife and his young children including daughter Sofia, tread his grapes barefoot and he releases his first wine, Rubicon, in 1978. He later uses his profits from 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula to add to his estate, making it the largest vineyard in the Napa Valley, and hires a professional staff to run the business.

1999

Coppola releases Sofia Blanc de Blancs, a light sparkling wine named after his daughter. 2004 sees the launch of the Sofia Mini, a canned, single-serve version of the drink. It is a big success and Coppola goes on to launch other canned wines, helping to create an extremely successful new drinks category.

10th May 2020

To promote its new Movo line of canned wine spritzers, the Molson Coors Beverage Company introduces a special Mothers’ Day campaign in the US. Its ‘Scream for Wine’ hotline allows American mothers to call up and ‘quaranscream’ about “needy spouses, baking fails and other common injustices wrought by the stay-at-home era”. Participants can win cans of wine to see them through the traumas of lockdown.

Posted on Tuesday, July 9th, 2024 - Categories: #39 - Apr-Jun 2020, App Issues.