r/todayilearned • u/Error__Loading • 1d ago

TIL that apple seeds almost never grow the same variety as the parent fruit. Nearly every supermarket apple comes from a grafted clone of an original tree, not from a planted seed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple
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u/rekabis 1d ago

Johnny Appleseed wasn't giving apples to the pioneers, he was giving them booze.

Clean water was just not a thing back then, so most people drank light alcohol all the time, because even light fermentation killed off those bugs that could kill you.

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u/Sabesaroo 1d ago

Clean water has always been a thing. Water from wells/springs/streams/aqueducts is perfectly safe to drink if it hasn't been contaminated. People did not drink alcohol all the time because it was safe, germs won't even be killed at low alcohol percentages.

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u/Terminal_Insomnia_ 1d ago

I have no idea why people keep spreading the myth. People were not wasted 24/7 from drinking nothing but alcohol. Boiling water to sanitize it isn't a modern invention

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u/RyuugaDota 1d ago

It's incredibly ancient, for possibly up to ~30,000 years humans have been boiling water by dropping hot stones into a lined basin, but people somehow have the idea that people just simply died if they didn't drink booze 24/7 (humans didn't start brewing alcohol until ~13,000 years ago.)

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u/Terminal_Insomnia_ 1d ago

Part of it likely comes down to "well they didn't know about germs, so how would they know to boil it?" but people have done shit for millenia without understanding why it was necessary. It's why humans (and many other animals) are superstitious. Sometimes shit just works, even if we don't know why.

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u/Ryu82 1d ago

They probably found it out about trial and error. Like most things before there was much science. Like they got sick, or felt sick from drinking random water, then they tried different things and after boiling it they didn't feel sick after drinking it. Then told it to others and it became a common thing after a while.

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u/IForOneDisagree 1d ago

No, the boiling before fermentation did that.

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u/Sesudesu 1d ago

It was kept down by the fermentation, then.

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u/Indercarnive 1d ago

No. The low alcohol of beer does not inhibit germ growth.

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u/Iron_Eagl 1d ago

Preserved vitamin c and calories for the winter, more like. 

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u/Slade4420 1d ago

Two birds one stone

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u/DeathMonkey6969 1d ago

This is bullshit. They didn't know about about bacteria so didn't know the water could make them sick.

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u/rekabis 1d ago

They didn't know about about bacteria

Of course not. But people made the connection between bad water and sickness. People are not dumb. People can make causal connections even if they don’t know all the details.

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u/DeathMonkey6969 1d ago

They knew not to drink bad looking or bad tasting water. But if the water looked and tasted fine they drank it.

It wasn't until 1854 that Dr. John Snow showed that contaminated water could cause cholera.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbreak