Every so often in my "digging" (which I affectionately have come to call it) I come across an anecdote so short and sweet that it probably really doesn't warrant me shelling out a blog of it's very own, but this one was simply so eggs-cellent that I had to get cracking right away!
"Ballou's Monthly Magazine" (Volume 13) which covered international stories of interest between January and June of 1861 told a devvilishly good story that seems so far fetched it just might leave your head a little scrambled. The story goes that "a singular wager was won recently by a skater on the Lake of Geronsart, near Namur, Belgium. He betted that he would skate for an hour, wearing a basket of eggs on his head without breaking one of them. He accomplished it in first-rate style, having during the hour written his name in elaborate characters on the ice, besides tracing an immense variety of complicated figures, and at last set down the basket and received his wager, amid the cheers of all present." This story is retold in several newspapers of the era and although the name seems to be poached from every headline, "The Freeman's Journal From Dublin" states that the date of this feat's achievement was January 19, 1861.
All I know is this... anyone that can carve their name in the ice deserves a hats off as far as I'm concerned. If they do it with their breakfast on their head while eggstending their free leg - for an hour no less - I'm pretty sure they're incredible! Move over triple axel, the skaters of today can eggspect a new challenge from an unnamed Belgian skater from yesteryear... we'll call him Eggs Benny!
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