Sylvester Graham (1794–1851) was an American Presbyterian minister and dietary reformer known for his emphasis on vegetarianism, the temperance movement, and eating whole-grain bread.  His preaching inspired the graham flour, graham bread, and graham cracker products. Graham is often referred to as the "Father of Vegetarianism" in the United States of America.  As his fame spread, "Grahamism" became a movement, and people inspired by his preaching began to develop and market Graham flour, Graham bread, and graham crackers.  He neither invented nor endorsed any specific product, nor did he receive any money from their sale.  Grahamite boarding-houses were established in the 1830s.  The Grahamites applied dietetic and hygienic principles to everyday life including cold baths, hard mattresses, open windows, a vegetarian diet with Graham bread and drinking cold water.  Animal flesh was banned from Grahamite homes but eggs were allowed to be eaten at breakfast and were an important component of Grahamite diets.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester_Graham   

Rambunctious first appeared in print in the early half of the 19th century, at a time when the fast-growing United States was forging its identity and indulging in a fashion for colorful new coinages suggestive of the young nation's optimism and exuberance.  Rip-roaring, scalawag, scrumptious, hornswoggle, and skedaddle are other examples of the lively language of that era.  Did Americans alter the largely British rumbustious because it sounded, well, British? That could be.  Rumbustious, which first appeared in Britain in the late 1700s just after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was probably based on robustious, a much older adjective that meant both "robust" and "boisterous."  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rambunctious   

According to Quaker Oats legend, it all started in the 1850s when John Stuart opened up the North Star Mills Company in Canada, followed by a German immigrant named Ferdinand Schumacher who founded the German Mills American Cereal Company in Akron, Ohio, in 1856.  Then, after a move to the United States, John Stuart and his son Robert opened the North Star Mills Company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1873, as Company Histories notes.  Around that same time, Henry Seymour and William Heston, owners of the Quaker Mill in Ravenna, Ohio, decided to protect their assets by applying for a trademark for the Quaker Oats name and the logo of the Quaker man, which became a symbol of quality and value.  https://www.tastingtable.com/982720/how-quaker-oats-made-us-breakfast-history/    

On May 10th, 1849, a rivalry between two Shakespearean actors erupted into an honest-to-goodness riot outside the Astor Place Opera House in New York City—a riot that left more than 20 people dead, and some 50 wounded.  The crux of the matter?  Who played the better Macbeth:  the American (Edwin Forrest) or the Englishman (William Macready).  “The saga began several years earlier, in 1845, when the volatile Philadelphia-born star Edwin Forrest was on tour to the UK,” writes Andrew Dickson.  Stung by a poor reviews in London (the Spectator yawned that his Othello was “affected” and said his “killing of Desdemona was a cold-blooded butchery”), Forrest became paranoid that his great rival, the eminent English actor William Charles Macready, was orchestrating a campaign against him.  The following March, Forrest bought a ticket for Macready’s Hamlet in Edinburgh; just as the play-within-the-play scene began, Forrest hissed, loudly and publicly.  The affair became a scandal, particularly when Forrest sent a letter to the London Times pouring scorn on Macready’s “fancy dance” of a Dane.  Back in the US, Forrest—narcissistic even by the standards of most actors—exulted that he had struck a blow against anti-American prejudice.  Macready, an altogether quieter and more uptight character, was shocked, but had little sense how things would escalate.  On his own return tour to the US in the fall of 1848, he was astonished to discover that many American reviewers—who had praised him to the rafters on previous visits—had mysteriously turned against him. When he reached Forrest’s hometown of Philadelphia, he was dismayed to find that his enemy had arranged to perform many of the same dates in direct opposition.  One night, Macready’s Macbeth was interrupted when the audience began fighting amongst itself.  As the curtain came down, Macready protested, only to find when he opened the paper the next day that Forrest had printed a furious take-down of his “narrow, envious” rival.  The dispute simmered:  in Cincinnati a few months later, half a sheep was thrown at Macready’s feet.  Things only got more heated from there, until the fateful evening of May 10th, when a mob formed outside Macready’s final performance.  “Swelled by ranks of criminal gangs of ‘b’hoys’ from the Bronx, they tried to storm the theatre, but, finding the doors locked, pulled up paving stones from the streets with their bare hands and began to throw them through the windows,” Dickson writes.  Read more at https://link.lithub.com/view/602ea8ce180f243d6536ae8dip4jv.27il/3880d39f    

The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Associated Press and New York Times were among news outlets awarded Pulitzer Prizes May 8, 2023 honoring journalists who uncovered financial conflicts of interest and delved into issues of racism, immigration and abortion.  

The softer you sing, the louder you're heard. - Donovan, musician (b. 10 May 1946)   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2668  May 10, 2023