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The World's Fair

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profile.gif David Ng is Director of the Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory at the University of British Columbia - this is a just a fancier way of calling himself a science teacher.

profile.gifBenjamin Cohen is an Asst. Professor of Science, Tech., and Society at the University of Virginia. He studies the place of S & T in environmental history, policy, and ethics. He also writes other stuff.

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The Cartography of Sweet Tea

Category: Knoxville '82: Where Miscellany ThriveLinks to interesting sites and discussion of them
Posted on: June 14, 2007 1:27 PM, by Benjamin Cohen

Holy cow, what a fascinating site! It maps the availability of Sweet Tea at the McDonalds' of Virginia, and shades and bounds and draws the surely-soon-to-be-infamous "Sweet Tea Line."

sweettea.bmp
Yellow dots have Sweet Tea, black dots don't.

Said Sweet Tea Line is south of the Mason Dixon line, south of Virginia's border, but north of Richmond, the old confederate capital. I was especially intrigued to read that "Sweet Tea grew in popularity with it's public introduction at the 1904 World's Fair." It is now a staple of the Southern beverage diet.

You gotta follow the lead from the site, and click one by one down the options when you get to the map.



Thanks to the Muffin Pan Man for sending this along and noting correctly that you just can't tell why it's so interesting. But it is.

Comments

It may be interesting, but it isn't accurate. We have Sweet Tea at McDonalds in Fairfax County (DC Metro area), which should move the line at least to the northern border of the state.

Posted by: heiwa | June 14, 2007 3:37 PM

There is no Sweet Tea in Texas, so along with Pork Barbeque it only encompasses a portion of the South

Posted by: bwv | June 14, 2007 3:54 PM

Actually, he shows the northern border of available sweet teas, which goes beyond the averaged "line" of demarcation. Although it appears his "northern border" still doesn't quite hit Fairfax, he's right by it.

Posted by: BRC | June 14, 2007 4:50 PM

Oh, that's too wonderful. Now _this_ is the kind of stuff they ought to be teaching kids in school. Who wouldn't want to become a geographer or cartographer after a lesson like this????

When I lived in North Carolina, you could get sweet tea or regular tea in every restaurant, and if you wanted, you could get a 50-50 mix of sweet tea and regular, which was what I usually picked, because sweet tea was just too sweet for me. But the mix usually came out just right.

Posted by: Zuska | June 18, 2007 7:10 PM

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