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Cartoon in Punch

On 30 October 1858 a batch of sweets poisoned hundreds in Bradford, England. The confectionary had been accidentally adulterated with poisonous arsenic trioxide. About five pounds (two kilograms) of sweets were sold to the public, leading to around 20 deaths and more than 200 people suffering the effects of arsenic poisoning. With increasing urbanisation and the rise in shop-purchased food, adulterants became a growing problem. With the cost of sugar high, replacing it with substitutes was common. For the sweets produced in Bradford, the confectioner was supposed to purchase powdered gypsum, but a mistake at the wholesale chemist meant arsenic was purchased instead. Three men were arrested—the chemist who sold the arsenic, his assistant and the sweet maker—but all three were acquitted after the judge decided that, as it was all accidental, there was no case for any of them to answer. The deaths led to food-adulteration legislation and were a factor in the passage of the Pharmacy Act 1868. (Full article...)

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Station master Mikan

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In the news

Catherine Connolly

Timor-Leste joins ASEAN as its 11th member.
Catherine Connolly (pictured) is elected President of Ireland.
The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought is awarded to political prisoners and journalists Belarusian Andrzej Poczobut and Georgian Mzia Amaglobeli.
Sanae Takaichi is elected as the first female prime minister of Japan by the National Diet.
Eric Lu wins the International Chopin Piano Competition.

On this day

October 30

Rudd Concession

1888 – Lobengula, King of Matabeleland, granted the Rudd Concession (pictured) to agents of Cecil Rhodes, leading to the creation of the British South Africa Company.
1960 – At the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, Michael Woodruff performed the first successful kidney transplantation in the United Kingdom.
1965 – English model Jean Shrimpton wore a controversially short minidress to Derby Day at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Australia – a pivotal moment of the introduction of the miniskirt to women's fashion.
2010 – American comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert hosted the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, D.C.
2020 – A magnitude-7.0 earthquake occurred in the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey, triggering a tsunami and causing 119 deaths.

John Adams (b. 1735)
Adelaide Anne Procter (b. 1825)
Charles Tupper (d. 1915)
Matt Peacock (d. 2024)

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Today's featured picture

Oxybelis aeneus, commonly known as the Mexican vine snake or the brown vine snake, is a species in the family Colubridae, the colubrid snakes. It is endemic to the Americas, being found from the mountains of southern Arizona in the United States south through Mexico to northern South America and Trinidad and Tobago. The species is usually encountered in trees or shrubs on open, steep, and grassy slopes, but is also associated with wooded canyons, especially those with abundant vegetation. Its diet consists mainly of lizards (mostly anoles), but it also eats frogs, small rodents and birds. This O. aeneus snake was photographed by the Gulf of Mexico coast in the El Palmar State Reserve, near Sisal in the Mexican state of Yucatán.

Photograph credit: The Cosmonaut

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