Any NOLA trivia?

[jacq63]

Did the term 'cocktail' originate there after a pharmacist served alcohol in egg-cups? (The French term for this, which escapes me, sounds similar to 'cocktail'). It'd be highly appropriate, and Bob Dylan did say once that 'everything in New Orleans is a good idea'. Weather and mayoral conditions notwithstanding no doubt.

[stillkit]

I've been told that some of the older buildings in the Quarter are built on cotton-bale foundations so they will "float," but I can't confirm this.

Can anyone else?

[meemy]

Originally Posted by WestbankNOLA

Anybody know any little known facts about NOLA they'd like to share?

Like, did you know that?

-Frenchman St was named for 5 or 6 Frenchman that were hung in Jackson Square

-New Orleans is not flat at all (duh, it's a bowl. A lumpy bowl at that.)

-There is almost nothing French in the city other than last names. (99% of anything original standing is Spanish)

-NOLA has been completely are almost completely washed away and rebuilt from hurricanes 3 times to date. (The first 2 occured 2 years apart).

-The namesake crescent is not the big Uptown bend, but the small bend in front of Jackson Square.

-Almost every street in the city is named after a politician or general.

-English turn got it's name because the English ships gave up and turned around in the turn below Algiers.

As you can clearly see, I'm bored.

You may find it interesting to read "Frenchmen Desire Goodchildren" by the late John Churchill Chase . Yes, he is the same John Chase who was the cartoonist for the old States Item (among others).

I remember, when I was a small child, my Father showing me where a street was named after my GG grandfather (and no, he was not a politician) so that book has been around for many years and, to the best of my knowledge, is still in print.

BTW, "our" street is out in chilly Gentilly but none of us have ever lived near there.
.

[Bixaorellana]

Originally Posted by WestbankNOLA

The handfull of Frenchmen who didn't surrender were hung and so on... Now we have Frenchmen St.

If you'd read the link, you would have seen this:

For two months, General O'Reilly, as judge and jury, conducted the trial of the other conspirators. During the two months, Joseph Villere died. Captain Aubry was the principal witness, but the defendants damaged themselves with their own testimony as they claimed all of their actions were justified on the grounds that Governor Ulloa never had any legal authority over Louisiana.
On 24 October 1769, General Alejandro O'Reilly announced the sentences:

Death:
Nicolas Chauvin de La Freniere
Pierre Caresse
Pierre Marquis
Joseph Milhet
Jean Baptiste Noyan Ten Years Imprisonment:
Julien Jerome Doucet
Balthasar Masan
Six Years Imprisonment:
Pierre Hardi de Boisblanc
Jean Milhet
Pierre Poupet
Acquittal:
Denis Braud
Joseph Petit
The very next day, without any chance for a stay of execution or a commutation of sentence, the five men faced the firing squad. The five other men were sent to Havana to serve their sentences. All of the convicted men had their property seized and sold to cover colonial debts.
================================================== ======
No one was hung.

[WestbankNOLA]

My apologies.
I still had the story right, other than the way they died and having the number off by 1.

Aubry was a traitor and played a key role in organizing the revolt then turned when O'Reilly arrived. Ulloa was never respected in Louisiana.

Aubry got his in the end however.

[mnr3]

just to keep the good talk going:

traitor or republican? (OLD sense of the word, i.e. wants to proclaim a republic--I'm looking to enliven an older debate, nothing current please)

so I'll kick this not-completely-researched-but-I'm-pretty sure nugget of trivia:

the white creoles had the tradition (not all of them, but as long as we're generalizing) of taking a quadroon or mulatto creole lover, for whom they might buy a house (often on rampart street) before they settled down and married a nice white creole girl. the quadroon girls, who may have had a "marriage of conscience" (to cover issues of morality but not legality), were actually allowed to keep the house if the ex-lover so decided, such that new orleans had a fair number of women of color who were independent homeowners, much higher of course than anywhere else in the south. the whole story of these quadroon balls is fascinating, and helps to explain part of the special quality of nola, for those who know what I mean

[WestbankNOLA]

A traitor in the sense that he helped encouraged the colonists to revolt against the Spanish and demand French rule while telling the Spanish how much better and profitable LA would be under their control. When O'Reilly came and shut it down he sung like a bird.

mnr3 did you know that it's rumored that the term "sugar daddy" orginated from the wealthy men from sugar cane plantations and their quadroon girls?