User:Thatdamnedfollowspot/Tech Week/Artificial Grape Flavoring
“These don't taste like grapes at all!”
Artificial grape flavoring, as we know it today, is a chemically-ridden substance that is injected into snacks to give them the remote flavor of grape. As everyone knows, artificial grape flavoring tastes nothing like grapes, and many criticize it for this reason. But what you didn't know was that artificial grape flavoring has been as old as time, hence the taste.
Discovery and first use[edit | edit source]
Artificial grape flavoring was first discovered in 34 B.C. by Julius Caesar while he was strolling to the Capitol on a fine March day. He noticed some wax grapes on display at a merchant's stand, and, mistaking them for real grapes, he took a handful and ate them. Caesar marveled at the great taste, promptly stole the "recipe" to them, claimed it to be his own making, and began offering it as a gourmet dessert to the higher classes of Rome. Caesar's "discovery" of artificial grape flavoring was the true reason for Caesar's murder, not some nonsense about him being a cruel dictator. The recipe died with Caesar, and thus the world enjoyed thousands of years without artificial grapes.
Use in World War II[edit | edit source]
In October 1942, Benito Mussolini rediscovered the eons-old recipe for the flavoring and promptly began production of it again as a meal supplement for soldiers fighting in the fields. In early 1945, when scientific studies reported that chemicals in the artificial grapes were causing troops to be extremely disoriented and rather unconscious, he demanded that production stop and the remaining artificial grapes be sent to Germany.
When Adolf Hitler received the crates of grapes in April 1945, he was desperate to regain the land that the advancing Soviets had claimed, so he was welcoming to the idea that those grapes could be melted down and formed into bullets for his troops, who were low on ammunition. This plan failed horribly, seeing as all the grapes did was clog the gun barrel with mashed wax. The shame that he felt from yet another catastrophic failure eventually caused Hitler to commit suicide. When Soviet troops broke into the Fuhrer-bunker, they found the recipe for the artificial grape flavoring and locked it up, not to be disturbed until eight years later, in 1953.
Synthesizing of artificial grape flavoring[edit | edit source]
In 1953, James D. Watson and Francis Crick were researching the molecular structure of the DNA helix when Watson discovered something smudged on the microscope he was using. Upon further inspection, using another microscope and two sets of magnifying glass, and after consulting a cookbook that Crick owned and kept in the laboratory, he discovered the molecular structure of artificial grape flavoring, which was easily mistaken by scientists all across the globe for the double helix structure of DNA. Watson and Crick kept their discovery of artifical grape flavoring a secret from the public, privately giving corporations and factories all over the world the recipe to make the flavoring.
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