[Loch-ruadh] Today in history Oct 14

[Sluggy]

STEVE K ROURKE wrote:

> 1495 A statute is enacted in England regulating the
> content of feather-bed stuffing.

15th century environmentalists were concerned about the meteoric rise in
the number of persons sleeping comfortably and a coincidental decrease
in the population density of sparrows. Special interest groups lobbied
their representatives in parliament for the introduction and passage of
laws requiring that mattresses be stuffed only with goose, duck or
chicken feathers. It would be found later that the powerful poultry
cartel, headquartered in what would centuries later become Petaluma, CA
bankrolled a clandestine and multifaceted campaign against the toddling
sparrow ranch industy, forcing what few pioneering operators the
industry had to switch to the now more common large farm birds (LFBs) or
face bankruptcy with no market for their feather by-product line.

History would eventually show that the decrease in sparrow populations
was not attributable to mattress production at all. Instead, vast armies
of independent guerrilla warriors, sometimes called "boys", were using
crude homemade weapons in a philosophical war to destroy the sparrow
population based on misinterpretted scratchings on an ancient talisman
found behind a rock in a larch glade just outside Bath.

Sluggy!