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A cup of revolution
Happy Sunday {{first_name}},
If your day is largely built around when your next coffee fix is coming, then you have something in common with our resident ghost. You’re also actively participating in a revolutionary force that many global rulers tried to squash.
Where there’s coffee, there are conversations. And where there are conversations, you’ll find democracy. That’s a terrifying word for people whose titles begin with words like King or Sultan.
The most amazing thing about coffee isn’t the dubious origin story about Kaldi, a goat enthusiast in Ethiopia who allegedly discovered magic berries. There’s far more to understand, including how famous insurance group Lloyd’s of London actually began as a coffeehouse.
Line up Dominique Olivier’s excellent latest column, preferably with a cup of revolution in your hand.
In the spirit of human behaviour that is difficult to regulate, read on for a story of New York City unsuccessfully banning pinball. And as you’ve probably guessed by now, Dominique’s Fast Facts are inspired by the things we “can’t” have.
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!
The Finance Ghost (follow on X) | Dominique Olivier (connect on LinkedIn)
A cup of revolution please, no sugar
Almost every empire in history has feared the same thing. It isn't an army; it's a room full of caffeinated people with contrarian opinions.
Dominique Olivier explains how rulers from the governor of Mecca to King Charles II tried (and failed) to ban coffee.
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It isn’t gambling if you’re good
TL;DR: For 35 years, New York City decided a silver ball and two flippers were a threat to civic morality. It took one man calling his shot to prove otherwise.
In the early 1940s, New York City banned pinball. The man behind the crusade was Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who was convinced that the machines were a scam that emptied the pockets of schoolchildren one hard-earned nickel at a time. Pinball, in his view, was gambling for minors, and it had no place in his city.
La Guardia did not go about it quietly, either.
He led police raids across the city, hauling in thousands of machines. Then, for the cameras, he took a sledgehammer to them himself, smashing the confiscated pinball tables to splinters before the wreckage was dumped into the city's rivers.
Picture the Mayor of New York, clad in his signature 1940s trench coat and fedora, swinging a sledgehammer at a pinball machine as though it might rob someone if left unattended.
It’s outrageous that there hasn’t been a film about this (although one is allegedly in development).
The pinball ban held for over three decades and spread across multiple states, right up until 1976, when a writer and pinball enthusiast named Roger Sharpe testified before a Manhattan committee that pinball couldn’t be gambling because it was a game of skill, not chance.
Of course, he was invited to prove it.
Two machines were set up in the courtroom. In a move he likens to Babe Ruth calling his home run in the 1932 World Series, Sharpe announced exactly which shot he was about to make, pulled back the plunger, and made it. The astonished committee voted to lift the ban, and other cities soon followed.
Sharpe, to his credit, admits the shot was mostly luck. But that hardly matters. 35 years of sledgehammers and river-dumping were undone by one ball landing exactly where a man said it would.
Dominique’s Fast Facts - “I’m with the banned”
Since 2011, tomato sauce has effectively been “banned” in French school cafeterias. According to the French government, it may only be served alongside dishes like fries, which may also only be served once a week. The reasoning from officials is that they want to ensure children grow up appreciating traditional French cooking rather than masking flavours. Vinaigrette and mayonnaise are apparently also on the naughty list, but they haven’t been outright banned yet.
Japan technically outlawed dancing in clubs after midnight under a 1948 anti-vice law, which wasn't meaningfully repealed until 2015. That means that for decades, dancing at a late-night club in Tokyo was, on paper, illegal.
The "Happy Birthday" song wasn’t banned, exactly, but it was locked behind copyright for decades. Warner/Chappell claimed rights and charged licensing fees for public performance until a 2016 court ruling finally declared it public domain. Ever wondered why restaurant chains started invented their own versions of a birthday song? Now you know.
The number four is sometimes informally "banned" from buildings, floor numbers and product lines across much of East Asia, because in Chinese, Japanese and Korean the word for "four" sounds like the word for "death." Not a legal ban, but a cultural one which you'll see in the absence of 4th floors in many Eastern hospitals (no patient is going to feel good about being sent to the “death floor”).