The U.S. has more than 300 types of honey, but there’s one you won’t find among store shelves: mad honey. Upon visual inspection, mad honey offers up a clue that it’s a bit different. Created when bees feast almost exclusively on nectar and pollen from flowering rhododendron bushes, the natural sweetener often has a reddish hue. It also has a slightly bitter taste, though another unusual characteristic that appears shortly after consumption is what gives mad honey its name: It causes hallucinations. 

Honeybees are not native to the U.S.

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The U.S. is home to around 4,000 types of bees, though the species we rely on for pollination and honey production isn’t native to the continent. English colonists likely brought the first honeybees to Virginia in 1622.

Mad honey is a rarity, found mostly among high-altitude honeycombs in the mountains of Turkey and Nepal. Harvesting it can be dangerous — Himalayan giant honeybees tend to create hives among cliffs and rugged outcrops — and consumption can be, too. Pollen and nectar from several species of rhododendrons in these areas contain grayanotoxins, a poison that helps the plants ward off hungry herbivores. While small doses of grayanotoxins can cause euphoria and lightheadedness in humans, larger doses can cause hallucinations, vomiting, temporary paralysis, and even death.  

Those sometimes-disastrous reactions haven’t stopped humans from seeking out the sticky substance, though. Some practitioners of folk medicine have long believed that small doses of the toxin-laced honey can be beneficial for human healing. Microdoses of mad honey have been used to treat high blood pressure, diabetes, and arthritis — don’t try this at home — but researchers are unsure how beneficial the stuff is for anyone other than its original creators (bees).

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Foods tend to get their names from their appearance or ingredients, though not all are so clear-cut. Take, for instance, the egg cream, a beverage that has delighted the taste buds of New Yorkers (and other diner patrons) since the 1890s. If you’ve never sipped on the cool, fizzy drink known for its chocolate flavor and foamy top, you should know: There are no eggs or cream in a traditional egg cream drink.

The first milkshakes had no ice cream.

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Frosty milkshakes are diner standards, served with a side of burgers and fries, though the earliest version of the drink didn’t include ice cream. Invented in the late 1800s, the first milkshakes were a blend of eggs, cream, and whiskey.

According to culinary lore, the first egg cream was the accidental invention of Louis Auster, a late-19th- and early-20th-century candy shop owner in New York’s Lower East Side. Auster’s sweet treat arrived in the 1890s, at a time when soda fountains had started selling fancier drinks, and it was a hit — the enterprising inventor reportedly sold upwards of 3,000 egg creams per day by the 1920s and ’30s. However, Auster kept his recipe well guarded; the confectioner refused to sell his formula, and eventually took his recipe to the grave. The origins of the drink’s name have also been lost to time. Some believe the name “egg cream” came from Auster’s use of “Grade A” cream, which could have sounded like “egg cream” with a New York accent. Another possible explanation points to the Yiddish phrase “echt keem,” meaning “pure sweetness.” 

Regardless of the misleading name, egg creams are once again gaining popularity in New York, though you don’t have to be a city dweller to get your hands on the cool refreshment. Egg creams can be easily made at home with just three ingredients: milk, seltzer, and chocolate syrup.

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On March 5, 1973, several hundred people gathered at a farm in tiny Ossineke, Michigan, to witness a burial they would remember for the rest of their lives. One local grocery store closed its doors so employees could attend; even Michigan Governor William G. Milliken dropped by to pay his respects. Was this a funeral for a native son who made good, or perhaps a beloved civic leader? No, it was a ceremony to bid arrivederci to some 30,000 frozen pizzas that may have been harboring dangerous toxins.

Hawaiian pizza (with pineapple and ham toppings) originated in Hawaii.

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This particular combination of toppings was the brainchild of Greek immigrant Sam Panopoulos, who introduced the Hawaiian pizza at his restaurant in Ontario, Canada, in 1962.

This bizarre scene stemmed from the discovery of swollen mushroom tins at Ohio's United Canning Company two months earlier. After FDA tests revealed the presence of bacteria that causes botulism, calls to United Canning's extended branch of customers eventually reached frozen-pizza maker Mario Fabbrini. When two test mice croaked after eating his mushroom pizza, Fabbrini believed he had no choice but to recall his wares from store shelves and swallow the estimated $60,000 in losses. Attempting the pizza equivalent of turning lemons into lemonade, he announced intentions for a grand "funeral," and arranged for a series of pickup trucks to dump his 30,000 unwanted mushroom pies into an 18-foot hole. After placing a flower garland on the grave — red gladioli to symbolize sauce, white carnations for cheese — Fabbrini served fresh (mushroom-free) pizza to anyone brave enough to partake.

Further tests later showed that the mice had died not from botulism, but from peritonitis, and it was unclear whether their deaths were pizza-related casualties. Sadly, the $250,000 Fabbrini later won in a lawsuit against United Canning and two other defendants wasn’t enough to fully revive his business, and Fabbrini sold the company in the early 1980s. Nevertheless, much like that sauce stain that never entirely disappears from your shirt, the story of the Great Michigan Pizza Funeral endures for those who know where to look. 

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