Love Dove's by Lora

05/22/2024

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Pigeon Guillemots are handsome black-and-white seabirds with flashy red feet who nest on rocky sea cliffs from Northern California up to Alaska. Around this time every year they take on the role of devoted parents, often going hunting and returning with food for their young one fish at a time, as seen here.

04/30/2024

So I posted in a bird ID group that if the picture they showed of this pigeon had a band then it is domesticated. this is the comment I got. LMFAO

04/28/2024

Nutters laid eggs after years in isolation.

04/25/2024

The Sydney Opera House was designed by a previously unknown architect.

On January 29, 1957, 38-year-old Danish architect Jørn Utzon’s life changed forever. That Tuesday, New South Wales Premier Joe Cahill announced that Utzon had won the international architectural competition for Australia’s extravagant new opera house in Sydney Harbour. Utzon’s multi-domed design evoked Sydney’s nearby cliffs and the many sailboats puttering around the water, while also drawing inspiration from famous Danish castles and Mesoamerican temples.

There was only one problem: The structure’s iconic “sails” were initially deemed structurally unsound and too expensive. So in a moment of genius, Utzon devised the “Spherical Solution,” creating the shape of the structure’s domes from the surface of a simple sphere and essentially saving the project. Eventually, cost overruns, controversies, and setbacks led to Utzon’s removal, but his heart was always with his famous opera house, which became a national symbol of Australia after its grand opening in 1973. Surprisingly, Utzon never saw the finished building in person. That may be less strange than it sounds, however. In 2006, two years before his death, his son Jan attended an opening ceremony for the opera house’s western colonnade, noting that while his father was now too old to make the journey to Australia, he “lives and breathes the Opera House, and as its creator, he just has to close his eyes to see it.”

04/24/2024

McDonald’s started its drive-thru service thanks to the military.

McDonald’s is likely the world’s most popular restaurant. With more than 41,800 locations spread across 100-plus countries, the glow of its golden arches attracts hungry diners around the world. However, in one southern Arizona city, that wasn’t always the case. It took installing a special sliding window to bring in tons of patrons, particularly those wearing military uniforms. That’s right: The first drive-thru window at McDonald’s was created in 1975 to serve the armed forces.

Sierra Vista, Arizona, sits about 20 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, and is home to the Fort Huachuca Army base. While military bases are often good for boosting local businesses, management of the town’s McDonald’s realized that service members often passed by the restaurant without stopping. It wasn’t from lack of hunger; uniform regulations of the time prevented personnel from going into public places on personal business while wearing their uniforms. Soldiers interested in stopping for a burger and fries had to return home and change into civilian clothes before they could place an order.

Knowing this, franchise owner David Rich thought up a way his military customers could skirt the rules. Taking inspiration from other restaurants like In-N-Out Burger and Jack in the Box — which were already using drive-thrus — he added a sliding window to the side of his building where customers could order and receive their food without leaving their cars. Rich’s drive-thru — the first in McDonald’s history — caught on with the restaurant chain. Later that year, a second McDonald’s in Georgia added its own drive-thru, followed by another in Oklahoma City, and by 1979, more than half of McDonald’s 5,000 locations featured drive-thrus. Today, nearly 70% of McDonald’s sales come through its drive-thrus, which are visited by service members and civilians alike.

04/23/2024

Chef Boyardee was a real person.

The world knows him as the jovial-looking fellow whose face has graced untold numbers of ravioli cans, but to those who knew him in life, he was Ettore “Hector” Boiardi — which is to say, Chef Boyardee was a real person. Born October 22, 1897, in Piacenza, Italy, Boiardi was working as an apprentice chef by the age of 11 and founded the company bearing his name in 1928, after he and his family settled in Cleveland. The business began because Boiardi’s restaurant there was so successful that patrons wanted to learn how to make the dishes at home, which was remarkable for the time — Italian food wasn’t nearly as well known (and beloved) as it is today. In fact, Chef Boyardee has been credited with helping to popularize the cuisine in America.

There was just one problem, though: “Boiardi” was difficult for Americans to pronounce, so his products were sold under the phonetic name of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee (since simplified to its current spelling). Notably, Boiardi helped with the war effort during WWII by producing Army rations, which required keeping his factory in Milton, Pennsylvania, open 24 hours a day. By then, the company had become too big for Boiardi and his family to manage alone, so they sold it to the conglomerate Conagra in 1946. According to Boiardi’s niece, it was the only way to make sure everyone still had jobs after the war. Boiardi continued appearing in commercials until 1978, and died on June 21,

02/22/2024