1. LET THEM EAT LOBSTER!

In colonial America, lobster wasn’t the delicacy it is today. In fact, it was so cheap and plentiful, it was a staple for prisoners and servants. One group of servants from Massachusetts actually grew so tired of eating lobster that they took the employers to court, where a judge ruled that lobster was to be served to them no more than three times a week.

2. JUDGE THEM NOT BY THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN

(Image credit: Flickr user Alex)

In their ocean habitat, lobsters are brown. (They turn red when you cook them.) However, there are a few notable exceptions. About one in every four million lobsters is born with a genetic defect that turns it blue. Sadly, these prized critters rarely survive to adulthood. After all, a bright blue crustacean crawling around on the ocean floor is simply easier for predators to spot. Yellow lobsters are even more uncommon, making up only one in 30 million. But if you end up with a yellow or blue one on your plate, don’t worry; lobsters of all hues are equally delicious.

3. A CENTURY OF MEAT

Most lobsters weight between 1.5 and 2 lbs., but one lumbering beast caught off the coast of Nova Scotia in 1977 measured 3.5 feet from claw to tail and weighed 44 lbs. How does a lobster put on that sort of weight? He was 100 years old.

4. SHOWING TOO MUCH LEG

Speaking of red lobsters: In 2003 the seafood chain Red Lobster ran a promotion offering customer $20 all-you-can-eat snow crab legs. The gimmick was both incredibly successful and a mistake. Hungry seafood lovers flocked to the restaurants, where most of them plowed through a lot more crab than the company anticipated. Even when Red Lobster raised the price to $24 per person, it still lost money on the deal.

5. EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEAFOOD, BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK

In 2010, Red Lobster restaurants across America began equipping their wait staff with computer-based “seafood expert encyclopedias.” The technology allows waiters to look up the answer to any seafood-related question posed to them. So ask away.

6. THE SILENT TREATMENT

In Disney’s 1940 animated film Pinocchio, Mel Blanc played the character of Gideon the cat, one of the scoundrels who introduces Pinocchio to the world of vice. Blanc, who famously voiced Bugs Bunny, recorded an entire movie’s worth of dialogue for Gideon. But during post-production, Disney decided the character would be cuter if he was mute. All of Blanc’s lines were cut, except for three burps, which you can hear during the brief scene at the Red Lobster Inn.

7. A PARENT’S JOB IS NEVER DONE

Red Lobster and Olive Garden are both owned by Darden Restaurants, a parent company that’s pretty overprotective. In 2010, Darden filed suit against a San Diego T.G.I. Friday’s for running a “never ending shrimp” promotion. Darden argued that the campaign combined Olive Garden’s “never ending pasta bowl” with Red Lobster’s “endless shrimp” in a way that “willfully attempted to confuse and mislead customers.” The case is still tied up in court, where lawyers are dealing with “never ending paperwork.”

8. OUT OF THE POT AND INTO THE FIRE

(Image credit: Crustastun)

In October 2010, British inventor Simon Buckhaven introduced the world to a lethal device known as the crustastun. It might look like a harmless computer scanner, but it’s designed to zap a lobster with an electric shock, killing it in less than two seconds. Animal-rights groups have praised the invention as a more humane method of killing lobsters -at least more humane than boiling them alive.

9. IMAGINE ALL THE LOBSTERS

In 1979, The B-52s song “Rock Lobster” became the band’s first to hit the Billboard Top 100. At the time, former Beatle John Lennon had been away from music for about three years, but after hearing “Rock Lobster,” he was inspired top start writing music again. Lennon said the song moved him because it “sounds just like Yoko’s music.” It’s unclear whether or not that was a compliment.

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The article above, written by Adam K. Raymond, is reprinted with permission from the May-June 2011 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue!

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!

David Neivandt, a professor at the University of Maine, and Alex Caddell, an undergraduate student there, have developed a golf ball made from the shells of lobsters.

Though biodegradable golf balls already exist, this is the first to be made with crushed lobster shells with a biodegradable binder and coating, creating value from waste material. “We’re using a byproduct of the lobster canning industry which is currently miserably underutilized — it ends up in a landfill,” Neivandt says. “We’re employing it in a value-added consumer product which hopefully has some cachet in the market.”

And that cachet doesn’t come with a higher price tag. Biodegradable golf balls that are now on the market retail for a little under $1 per ball. The raw materials for the lobster shell balls cost as little as 19 cents per ball.

So, will golf balls made of lobster shells be more likely to… end up in a trap?  Not in the envisioned scenario.  The balls were created specifically for use on cruise ships.  Thus the emphasis on biodegradability.

Link, via.

Unlike the bacon pancake post that Miss Cellania wrote last week, certain things that are delicious really don’t belong together. Case in point, this lobster relish creation above, which combines lobster and gelatine (Jell-O). Now, I like lobster and I love Jell-O, but the thought of them combining is giving me the ooies.

Matt Stopera of BuzzFeed has a list of 12 terrifying culinary creations made with Jell-O. Each one is more horrifying than the last. Read at your own risk: Link – Thanks Eric!

Why waste all those shells from your lobster dinner when you can turn them into art? Here’s Lobster Man, as spotted by Daryl Mitchell in Hornby Island, British Columbia, Canada.

That is all. Now you know what’ll be in my nightmare tonight! Link – via Rue The Day

Yay for global warming! New study by marine geologist Justin Ries shows that if carbon dioxide emissions increase to extreme levels, we’ll get giant lobsters:

A new study published in the journal Geology shows that if carbon dioxide emissions reach extreme levels, the changes in the world’s oceans might result in lobsters 50 percent bigger than normal.

Lobsters can take carbon from the water and use it to build their exoskeletons, says marine geologist Justin Ries, who oversaw the study. The theory, he tells NPR’s Guy Raz, is that lobsters are able to convert the extra carbon into material for building up their shells.

Link

The owner of a seafood store in Wickford, Rhode Island received a lobster shipment from one of its suppliers, and came into possession of a 20.6-pound lobster caught off Georges Bank in Canada.

He decided to release the lobster, but first ransom it to raise $2,500 for a local food bank.  So if you want this 65-year-old lobster to swim free, send a contribution to the "Free Wickford Willie Fund" by Saturday, January 31.

Photo: Adrienne Downing

Link – via coldmud

Restaurant manager Keith Valenti said there was never any intent to harm the lobster, and the decision to keep it in the tank was made to offer customers a little something extra.

“We bought a big lobster, started taking pictures with kids and it worked out real well,” Mr Valenti told Reuters news agency.

But it was a “no brainer”, he added, to agree to the request to return George to the ocean.

“We never intended him to be sold, just draw attention to the restaurant, and he did.”

George was scheduled to be released in the waters off Kennebunkport, where lobster trapping is prohibited. Link -Thanks, Geekazoid!