Month: November 2016

The beer lover in your life doesn’t need another hilarious “Will Work for Beer” t-shirt this year. Instead, try one of these options.

1. 99 BOTTLES OF BEER ON THE WALL SCRATCH-OFF; $35

It can be hard to find tasteful home décor that reflects a love of beer, and it can be just as tough to keep track of the brews you’ve tried. This print from Pop Chart Lab cleverly solves both issues by featuring 99 lauded beers—from American classics like Three Floyds’ Zombie Dust to European stalwarts like Drie Fonteinen’s Oude Geuze—in a scratch-off format. When your brew-loving buddy tries a new beer, he or she can scratch it off to track their progress. It’s like an instant lottery game, except they win every time.

Find It: Pop Chart Lab

2. UKEG 64 PRESSURIZED GROWLER; $139

Growlers offer a great way to bring home a beer that doesn’t make its way into cans or bottles, but they’re not perfect. Unless you plan to drink all 64 ounces in a single sitting, you’re likely to end up with flat beer. Present a solution: The uKeg 64 Pressurized Growler uses a CO2 cartridge to ensure that the last pour from this growler is as lively as the first, and its custom tap makes it easy to pour one out.

Find It: Amazon

3. THE OXFORD COMPANION TO BEER; $43

Beer lovers can be a little obsessive about their passion, and if you’re shopping for someone who’s thirsty for knowledge, there’s no better place to start than this comprehensive reference. Edited by Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver, the Oxford Companion crams an incredible amount of information about beer culture, history, styles, brewing methodologies, and more into 900 pages. Even the most well-versed know-it-all will learn something from this text. And if you’re shopping for a beer-loving foodie, Oliver’s classic The Brewmaster’s Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food makes an excellent gift, too.

Find It: Amazon

4. BEER CAP MAP OF THE UNITED STATES; $35

Brewers keep making more intricate and beautiful bottle caps, and it’s a shame to just chuck that art into the trash each time you pop a bottle. If your giftee is trying to drink their way through all 50 states, this fun wooden map helps them keep track of progress while preserving standout caps.

Find It: Uncommon Goods

5. LIBBEY CRAFT BREW SAMPLER CLEAR BEER GLASS SET; $25

Pouring a beer into a glass enhances the whole sensory experience each sip offers. By allowing the user to better see and smell what they’re drinking, the glass is a valuable aid in fully enjoying each brew. And since different shapes of glasses suit different styles of beer, a beer geek’s glassware collection can never be too large. While there’s a dizzying variety of cool brewery-branded glassware on the market, this six-piece set from Libbey covers all the bases and enables your favorite beer geek to sip everything from dense Russian imperial stouts to refreshing German hefeweizens. Plus, at just $25, it’s a steal.

Find It: Amazon

6. BROOKLYN BREW SHOP BEER MAKING KIT; $38

With a little know-how and the right recipe, home brewers can make beers that rival the offerings of their commercial counterparts. If someone on your list wants to dip their toe into the home brewing waters, Brooklyn Brew Shop offers kits that come with almost everything they’ll need to make a gallon of beer. With styles ranging from Everyday IPA to Chocolate Maple Porter to Jalapeno Saison, there’s something for everyone.

Find It: Amazon

7. BEER SOAP; $10

For a number of reasons, it can be hard to enjoy a delicious, hoppy IPA whenever you want one. Enter the next best thing: catching a pleasant whiff of brew. Swag Brewery craft soaps made with real beer. Available in nine varieties—including oatmeal stout, IPA, and Belgian witbier—these soaps will finally give you even more reason to wash your hands.

Find It: Amazon

8. DAS CAN-IN-STEIN; $10

Drinking from a pewter tankard is a great way to add a colonial-grog-house vibe to an evening, but it’s not always practical. Das Can-In-Stein changes that. Your loved one just needs to slip their favorite 12-ounce can into the frame and enjoy.

Find It: Amazon

9. BEER CARRYING BRIEFCASE; $40

Traveling with a six-pack can be tricky. You want to be inconspicuous, but you’ve got that bulky shape and bottles inevitably jingling together conspiring to blow your cover. Help a brew-loving buddy out. This padded briefcase securely holds a six-pack of standard 12-ounce bottles, enabling them to safely transport suds from point A to point B—all while feeling just a little bit like a secret agent.

Find It: Uncommon Goods

10. WESTMARK GERMAN HERMETUS RESEALER BOTTLE OPENER; $6

Downing an entire 22-ounce bomber of a boozy imperial stout or double IPA in a single sitting can be a delicious but questionable decision. With Westmark’s clever bottle opener, saving part of the bottle for the next day is a little easier. The Hermetus opener pops caps like normal, but once your giftee is ready to call it quits, it slides across the top of the bottle to form a tight, bubble-preserving seal.

Find It: Amazon

11. BEER; PRICE VARIES

Don’t overthink this. If you’re shopping for a beer lover, you can’t go wrong picking up a six-pack or growler as part of the gift. Free beer is the best beer, and you might get your recipient something they would have overlooked on their own shopping trips. If you’re traveling for the holidays, you’re sure to put a smile on a beer lover’s face by bringing them a local offering they can’t normally get their hands on. If you’re lucky, you might even spot a holiday gift pack that throws in a free glass with a few bottles.

Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers and may receive a small percentage on any purchase you make. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Thanks for helping us pay the bills!

OK Go’s Latest Music Video Was Shot In 4.2 Seconds. They were very well planned and exquisitely recorded seconds.
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The new movie Moana is a Sweet and Soulful Charmer. This Disney film makes full use of the talents behind it.
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Spending Money on Experiences, Not Things, Increases Gratitude and Altruism. That’s in addition to experiences making us happier.
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8 Great D.B. Cooper Pop Culture Moments. Since the skyjacker was never found, he could pop up anywhere.
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Veterinarian Drives 900 Miles To Help Horses Injured At Standing Rock. Charmian Wright treated some injuries and contributed lessons in equine health.
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Every Single James Bond Movie, Ranked. Your opinion may vary, of course.
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A Brief History of Black Friday. Making Christmas shopping a competitive sport for over 100 years.  

 
Northern flicker woodpeckers come in two color schemes, depending on where they’re from. Although all the birds are brown and black on top, the subspecies that lives in western North America—the red-shafted flicker—has red feathers on the underside of its wings and tail. Its cousin from the eastern side of the continent, the yellow-shafted flicker, has—you guessed it—yellow feathers in those spots. Seems simple enough, but scientists estimate that nearly one-third of yellow-shafted flickers also have orange or red feathers, and odd-colored woodpeckers are found far east of where the two subspecies overlap, potentially producing hybrids. More and more flickers are red where they shouldn’t be, in more ways than one.

A team of researchers has a new explanation for this color shift: Invasive plants are altering the woodpeckers’ palate—and, as a result, their palette. In short, they’re eating things that are changing their colors.

Previously, some scientists had speculated that there was a factor selecting for red feathers, pushing the yellow-shafted flickers to evolve to look more like the red-shafted ones. Others suggested that the flickers were genetically capable of developing either color, and sometimes birds just grew feathers in the wrong shade.

But ornithologist Jocelyn Hudon, of the Royal Alberta Museum in Ontario, thought something else was responsible. A miscolored bird’s feathers, he noticed, can differ in shade from one year to the next. Other east coast birds that normally have yellow feathers—like cedar waxwings and Baltimore orioles—also sometimes have orange or red feathers. Maybe, Hudon, thought, something the birds were eating was causing these color changes. That’s how flamingos get their color.

To find out, Hudon and his colleagues analyzed the “aberrant” feathers on a few yellow-shafted flickers they captured in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and compared them to museum specimens of yellow-shafted, red-shafted, and hybrid flickers collected across Canada. As they explain in an upcoming paper in the journal The Auk: Ornithological Advances, they found that the yellow-shafted flickers’ red feathers weren’t colored by the same carotenoid pigments responsible for the colors of red-shafted flickers, but by a pigment called rhodoxanthin.

Data from birders that had banded and tracked hundreds of flickers over the last 30 years told the scientists that the birds acquire the red pigment and shift colors during their fall molt in August and September, a time of year that the flickers mix fruit into their ant-based diet. That led Hudon to the likeliest source of the rhodoxanthin: Tatarian and Morrow’s honeysuckles, a pair of invasive plants native to Central Asia that produce abundant berries loaded with rhodoxanthin right around the time of the flickers’ molt.

The berry theory would explain why the red yellow-shafted flickers don’t display any traits of red-shafted flickers beyond feather color (there’s no hybridization); why many yellow-shafted flickers have both red and yellow feathers (the rhodoxanthin only affects feather growth after berries are eaten); and finally, why the red color appears abruptly and can differ or disappear (as rhodoxanthin is cleared from a bird’s system, the color fades). The feather color is affected by when the berries are ingested and how many are eaten.

Hudon’s team thinks that rhodoxanthin may cause color changes in other birds too—and have consequences on their love lives. While yellow-shafted and red-shafted flickers frequently mate with each other and pay no mind to color, many other species use feather color to identify and assess potential mates. For these birds, a meal that changes their hue could lead to problems finding a partner. Though their feathers might be red, they could be left feeling blue.

It’s hard to think of the boundlessness of space as cluttered, but an interactive art project aims to illustrate the real danger of something most of us have never given much thought to: space junk.

Most of the known pieces of space junk out there—around 670,000 examples—measure between 1 and 10 centimeters, while about 29,000 come in at over 10. But don’t let the size fool you; it’s the speed that’s the real danger. Earlier this year, the European Space Agency reported that possibly a paint chip or metal fragment “a few thousandths of a millimeter across” put a 7mm crack in the Cupola’s window on the International Space Station. When traveling at thousands of miles per hour, even a flake can lead to catastrophe.

That’s why documentary filmmaker Cath Le Couteur and musician Nick Ryan have created “Adrift,” an art project meant to highlight the real danger of space junk, as reported by Motherboard. Along with London’s Royal Astronomical Society, the duo created a three-pronged effort to talk about space debris through art: Adopt, listen, and watch.

For those interested, you can “adopt” one of three pieces of space junk by following the debris on Twitter. The first is SuitSat, a Russian spacesuit filled with garbage and fitted with a radio that was thrown out of the ISS in 2006. The second is the United States’s Vanguard I, the oldest satellite in orbit. The last one is the Chinese weather satellite Fengyun, which was blown apart in a weapons test in 2007; however, that act nearly doubled the amount of space debris currently in existence.

By following these space junk Twitter accounts, you can message them and they’ll actually reply to you with a status update. Though the results might be a little horrifying. Or a lot horrifying:

@McCreaLeslie Your people predict I will burn up in Earths atmosphere early 2017. You’ll get messages until then. i don’t want to die.

— FengyunAdrift (@FengyunAdrift) November 24, 2016

The listening portion of this art project comes courtesy of the Machine 9, which “tracks the positions of 27,000 pieces of space junk, transforming them into sound, in real time, as they pass overhead.” You can listen to the otherworldly music below:

Then there’s the documentary by Le Couteur, which goes into further detail about the dangers of debris in space and how the future might play out if we don’t listen to these warnings. (Hint: things won’t go particularly well.) You can check out the documentary below, and visit the Adrift site for even more information on an issue that everyone should be paying a lot more attention to.

[h/t: Motherboard]

Lighting is more important than it might seem. Besides being functional, the light fixtures, lamps, and sconces in your home can add style to your abode and create a cozy vibe. But lighting can also affect your emotions in complex ways, impacting everything from your mood to your productivity. Take a look at these seven ways you can use lighting to make your home a happier place.

1. BRIGHT LIGHTING CAN HELP YOU FOCUS.

Although most people dislike living and working under harsh, fluorescent ceiling lights, some type of bright lighting is essential when you need to be alert and focused. Bright light stimulates your brain and increases serotonin levels, which can help you concentrate. So if you’re working from home or paying your bills, make sure your ambient lighting is bright enough to energize you and help you focus. Consider using halogen, LED, or compact fluorescent bulbs in your home.

2. DIMMER SWITCHES CAN IMPROVE YOUR SLEEP.

When it’s dark, your brain’s pineal gland secretes melatonin to promote sleep and regulate your body’s sleep-wake cycle. Spending time in bright light in the evening can interfere with your natural cycle, wreaking havoc on the quality of your sleep and overall health. To help your brain and body wind down in the evening, dim the lights and use energy-efficient light bulbs. Besides using a dimmer switch, try to avoid staring at your devices. Studies have shown that the short-wavelength blue light emitted from phones and computers interferes with your circadian rhythm, making it harder to sleep.

3. TASK LIGHTING CAN HELP YOU AVOID EYE STRAIN.

Whether you’re applying makeup, chopping onions, or reading in bed, task lighting allows you to better see exactly what you’re doing. Having an additional, focused source of light also improves the contrast between the object you’re directing your attention to and the surrounding environment, helping you avoid eye strain and headaches. To achieve ideal task lighting in your home, put a reading lamp on your nightstand and desk, and make sure that your bathroom mirror, kitchen counters, and dining room table are adequately lit.

4. BRIGHT LIGHTING CAN MAKE YOU FEEL WARMER.

According to a series of studies, bright light can make people feel as though they’re warmer, even when the temperature of the room stays the same. So to feel warmer on a cold day, turn on all the lights in your home. But be aware that feeling warmer seems to also heighten whatever emotion you’re feeling, whether it’s happiness, excitement, sadness, or anxiety. When participants were under bright lighting, they rated people as more attractive, reported that they liked spicier sauce on chicken wings, and reacted more strongly to positive and negative words. In other words, the bright light increased the intensity of their emotional response as well as making them feel physically warmer.

5. LETTING IN MORE NATURAL LIGHT CAN STAVE OFF DEPRESSION.

A 2006 report explained the link between sunlight, our circadian rhythms, and mood. People with seasonal affective disorder (SAD) experience depression during the fall and winter months because their serotonin levels drop when there’s less sunlight. Even if you don’t have SAD, less exposure to sunlight can also mess with your melatonin levels and circadian rhythm, causing you to become sleep-deprived and grumpy. To maximize your home’s natural light and keep your serotonin levels up, position mirrors next to or across from windows to bring in sunlight, and clean your windows to let the most sunlight through.

6. ACCENT LIGHTING CAN LET YOU SHOWCASE YOUR FAVORITE THINGS.

Most art museums make ample use of accent lighting to illuminate paintings and sculptures. Even if you don’t have valuable art pieces in your home, you can still use accent lighting to draw people’s eyes to whatever you want to show off—whether that’s a vase, plant, fireplace, or your collection of baseball cards. To highlight your favorite things in your home, consider installing track lighting or mounting picture lights on the wall.

7. CANDLES AND TWINKLE LIGHTS CAN MAKE YOUR HOME COZIER.

To make your home an expression of your personality, taste, and style, get creative with your lighting. Beyond choosing floor and desk lamps in colors and designs that complement your home, consider using additional sources of light such as candles, twinkle lights, night lights, or DIY Mason jar lamps. These decorative light sources can make your home feel cozy, mellow, and warm. Let there be light!

A traditional Thanksgiving dinner is the meal that keeps on giving. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the leftovers filling your fridge, here are 10 resourceful recipes to give you some post-Turkey Day inspiration. 

1. SAVORY CREPES WITH TURKEY AND STUFFING

If you’re not out shopping all Friday morning, reward yourself with these savory Thanksgiving crepes from the blog Butter with a Side of Bread. The insides are filled with leftover stuffing and strips of turkey, and then topped off with a drizzle of gravy and cranberry sauce. The recipe even makes use of your leftover mashed potatoes by incorporating them into the batter for the crepes themselves.

2. TURKEY POT PIE SOUP

A fast way to get rid of any excess leftover turkey is to transform it into a soup. This turkey pot pie soup from the blog Handle the Heat takes only 30 minutes to cook, and it will provide you with quick and easy meals for the rest of the holiday weekend. The addition of fresh sage is the perfect way to prolong the flavors of fall—even when it starts to feel like winter outside.

3. MASHED POTATO AND STUFFING PATTIES

What’s the best way to re-purpose the starchy sides leftover from Thanksgiving? By pressing them into patties and frying them, of course. In addition to using stuffing and mashed potatoes, these patties from Pocket Change Gourmet also call for leftover turkey, so they’re substantial enough to be eaten as a snack or a meal.

4. THANKSGIVING LEFTOVERS STROMBOLI

Thanksgiving sandwiches start to get old after the third or fourth time you make them. If you’re in search of something a little more innovative to do with your leftovers, try stuffing them into a stromboli. This glorious creation from the blog Betsy Life includes turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and mashed potatoes, all braided inside a golden-brown crust. The recipe uses pre-made pizza dough, so putting it together takes even less effort than you’d think.

5. THANKSGIVING LEFTOVER CASSEROLE

This casserole from Family Friendly Recipes has it all. Just layer your turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, gravy, stuffing, and cranberry sauce into a baking dish and 40 minutes later you’ll have a dish that delivers that perfect Thanksgiving taste all in one bite.

6. FRIED MASHED POTATO BALLS

It’s easy to overlook the sad bowl of leftover mashed potatoes sitting in the corner of your fridge. This recipe from Spicy Southern Kitchen injects new life into your old mashers with healthy heapings of bacon, cheddar, green onion, and jalapeños. Roll the mixture together into 1-inch balls and fry them for a delicious bite-sized snack.

7. STUFFING SANDWICH

Most conventional Thanksgiving sandwiches include stuffing between the bread. In this sandwich from Sporkful, the stuffing is the bread. By binding the leftover stuffing with egg, it can then be formed into slice-like patties and fried up to crispy perfection. The stuffing buns make the perfect vehicles for all the classic sandwich components like turkey, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce.

8. PUMPKIN PIE MILKSHAKE

Some pumpkin milkshake recipes call for pumpkin puree, or perhaps a scoop of pumpkin ice-cream. This leftover thanksgiving pumpkin pie milkshake from Blogging Over Thyme recipe requires a whole slice of pie. A thermos full of this stuff might make the Monday after Thanksgiving a little more bearable.

9. TURKEY AND SWEET POTATO ENCHILADAS

For a Mexican spin on the all-American flavors of Thanksgiving, use your leftover turkey meat as stuffing for enchiladas. The baked sweet potatoes emphasize the fall flavor profile and smoky chipotle sauce adds an extra spicy kick.

10. THANKSGIVING LEFTOVER PIZZA 

When looking for a tasty leftover vehicle, it’s hard to go wrong with pizza. This recipe for turkey, mashed potato, and mushroom pizza steps out of the box by swapping out the pizza sauce for gravy. That sounds like a brilliant idea no matter what time of the year it is.

When it was first introduced to the public, saccharin seemed to be a miracle. The substance is about 300 times as sweet as sugar, and it doesn’t have any calories. What’s not to love about that?

But not everything in saccharin’s history is sweet. The story of the sugar substitute begins in the labs of Johns Hopkins University, where Dr. Ira Remsen became the first chemistry professor in 1876. One of his earliest laboratory residents was postdoctoral student Constantin Fahlberg, a Russian chemist whom Remsen met when the H.W. Perot Import Firm hired both of them to research sugar impurities.

In 1878, Remsen and Fahlberg were working on various products derived from coal tar. One night that June, Fahlberg worked late in the lab and went home to his supper in a hurry, neglecting to wash his hands. The bread he ate was unusually sweet, and so was his drink. Even his napkin tasted sweet. Eventually Fahlberg realized that he was sipping his drink from an area of his cup that his fingers had touched. He tasted his thumb, and then ran back to the laboratory to work on the newly discovered “coal tar sugar,” which he named saccharin.

Fahlberg and Remsen co-authored research papers on saccharin over the next few years, but Fahlberg struck out on his own when he obtained a German patent for the compound in 1884, followed by a series of American patents. Remsen was upset that Fahlberg applied for the patent on his own: He wasn’t all that interested in the commercial production of saccharin, but felt it important that his contribution to the discovery be acknowledged. Remsen was especially incensed at how Fahlberg’s account of the discovery neglected to even mention the lead researcher.

Fahlberg opened a saccharin factory near Magdeburg, Germany, and another in the U.S. While saccharin sold well enough to make Fahlberg a wealthy man, sales went mostly to food manufacturers who used it as an additive. Consumers bought saccharin, too, but not as much, since regular sugar was readily available and didn’t have the metallic aftertaste of saccharin.

Saccharin had its fans, however—including one in the White House. Theodore Roosevelt was president when the Pure Food and Drug Act, designed to protect the public from food adulteration and unsafe ingredients, was passed in 1906. Harvey Wiley, the chief chemist for the USDA, was charged with investigating dangerous foods. But when he broached the subject of the safety of saccharin in 1908, he hit a sore spot with the president. Roosevelt’s doctor had prescribed a sugar-free diet, and Roosevelt used saccharin in its place. Wiley described saccharin as “… a coal tar product totally devoid of food value and extremely injurious to health.”

Roosevelt was insulted. His response: “Anybody who says saccharin is injurious to health is an idiot.” The remark proved to be the end of the two men’s personal relationship.

In 1912, the use of saccharin was banned in the manufacture of processed foods, but it was still sold to consumers as a stand-alone product. Diabetics and people wishing to lose weight regularly purchased saccharin—but when a sugar shortage caused a massive price increase during World War I, its use really exploded. The same thing happened during World War II.

Meanwhile, the question of saccharin’s safety wasn’t fully settled. In the 1950s, another sugar substitute called cyclamate was approved for sale. A combination of cyclamate and saccharin proved very popular, in part because the cyclamate canceled out the bitter aftertaste of the saccharin. The new combination led to a boom in diet soft drinks, until two 1968 studies indicating that cyclamate caused bladder cancer in laboratory rats prompted the FDA to ban the sweetener.

A 1970 study showed some disturbing evidence of saccharin also causing bladder cancer in rats, and the substance was banned in 1977. This time, food manufacturers, lobbyists, and consumers immediately fought back, wary of losing their last artificial sweetener. The ban was soon changed to a warning, and labels were added to products that contained saccharin.

However, later studies showed that the increased incidence of bladder cancer was only applicable to rats, due to their particular biology. The results of the earlier studies were not transferable to humans. In 2000, saccharin was taken off the government’s list of known carcinogens, and the warning labels were discontinued. While other sugar substitutes have since been developed, saccharin still remains one of the most popular. Sold under the brand names Sweet’N Low, Sweet Twin, NectaSweet, and others, it accounted for 70 percent of the world demand for artificial sweeteners as of 2001, with world sales totaling hundreds of millions of dollars [PDF].

The Simpsons recently cemented its title as America’s longest-running primetime scripted series with the announcement of seasons 29 and 30. For a time, Baywatch was the world’s most syndicated program, sold to 148 countries and a weekly global audience of over a billion people. And in 1983, up to 125 million people (an unprecedented 77 percent audience share) watched “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen,” the last ever episode of M*A*S*H. But when it comes to the single most repeated program in history, that title is claimed by none of television’s biggest names, but by an obscure British comedy sketch, filmed in 1963 with a cast of two, that has gained a cult audience all over the world.

The two stars in question were British comedian Freddie Frinton and 72-year-old actress May Warden. Frinton first made a name for himself in the music halls and variety shows of wartime Britain, and after World War II added a sketch to his show entitled “Dinner For One.”

In the sketch he plays James, a butler, employed by Miss Sophie, played by Warden, an upper class woman who is celebrating her 90th birthday with a fine banquet. Sadly, Miss Sophie has long outlived her four closest friends—Sir Toby, Admiral von Schneider, Mr. Pommeroy and Mr. Winterbottom—but places are set at her dinner table regardless, with James valiantly stepping in to impersonate each one.

As each of the four courses are served—with Miss Sophie explaining each time that the pair will follow the “same procedure as every year” —James tops up the four missing guests’ glasses, toasts Miss Sophie’s health, and downs them all. And needless to say, by the end of the meal (and after four glasses of sherry, four glasses of white wine, four glasses of champagne, and four glasses of port) James is slightly the worse for wear. At the end of the sketch, as they’re going up to Miss Sophie’s bedroom, James asks, “Same procedure as last year?” and Miss Sophie replies, “Same procedure as every year.” James responds, “Well, I’ll do my very best,”—a very risqué move at the time.

“Dinner For One” was originally written in the 1920s by English author and scriptwriter Lauri Wylie, but it proved so popular with his audiences that Frinton eventually bought the rights to it and continued to perform it as part of his show for the next seven years. Then, during a tour of English seaside resorts in 1962, a German entertainer and television star named Peter Frankenfeld happened to see Frinton and Warden performing the sketch in Blackpool and asked if they would like to reproduce it as part of his TV show, Guten Abend. The following year, the pair travelled to Germany and filmed it in English—though under the German title “Der 90 Geburtstag,” or “The 90th Birthday”— in front of a live studio audience; by then, the pair were so used to the material that it took just one take to get a flawless recording.

But how did such an unassuming sketch become the Guinness World Records’ most repeated TV show ever?

Well, besides proving immediately popular with Frankenfeld’s audience, part of the skit’s success lies in Frinton’s expert physical comedy (which needs no subtitles and so works across the language boundary) and partly in its short running time, which for many years made it the perfect short to fill time between broadcasts. After being used sporadically as little more than a time-filler over the next decade, in 1972, German television network Norddeutscher Rundfunk decided to schedule it at 6 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. The viewers loved it, and a now annual tradition was established.

“Dinner For One” has been shown every New Year’s Eve in Germany since, and has established itself as such a traditional part of the country’s New Year celebrations that Miss Sophie’s catchphrase is now familiar to practically all native German speakers: In 1996, an opposition finance minister even accused his opponent of adopting “the same procedure as every year” in the German parliament.

More recently, others countries have gotten in on the tradition, and “Dinner For One” has now established itself as a New Year’s tradition in the likes of Denmark, Austria, and Sweden; as a pre-Christmas tradition in Norway, where it’s broadcast annually on December 23; and has amassed a cult following in countries as far afield as Estonia and South Africa. “Dinner For One” has since racked up more than 200 individual broadcasts (it was reportedly shown 19 times on different German networks on New Year’s Eve 2003 alone), easily taking the title as the world’s most-repeated television program. Although ironically, for such a quintessentially British sketch, it has yet to be shown in its entirety on British television …

Weeks ahead of its scheduled demolition, photographer Seph Lawless got a last look at what has become of Kansas City’s Metro North Mall in the two years since its closure.