[PW] Marco Polo and pasta

[Brian Whatcott]

At 10:41 AM 7/21/2008, Dennis,  you wrote:
>...the "spaghetti growing on trees" film is
>a famous hoax from 1957:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_tree
>
>Maybe the friend's memory conflated a viewing of this with one of
>another Marco Polo film, or maybe somebody did a parody of the hoax...?
>
>Dennis Lien / U of Minnesota Libraries // d-lien at umn.edu

Wiki explains in this way:
"In the obituary for de Jaeger, who died in London on 19 May 2000,
which was published in The Independent Newspaper, Ian Jacob the then
  Director-General of the BBC is quoted as having said to Leonard Miall
  Head of Television Talks 1954-61:

"When I saw that item, I said to my wife, 'I don't think spaghetti
grows on trees', so we looked it up in Enc. Brit.. Do you know, Miall,
Encyclopædia Britannica doesn't even mention spaghetti." "

In this matter, the patrician Enc Brit had corrected its omission of
the 14th ed. of 1957, by the 15th of 1977, where the
Micropedia vol VII certainly mentioned several varieties of
spaghetti - though under the general head "Pasta".


Brian Whatcott    Altus OK    Eureka!