This summer, I was on a British Airways flight to France where they handed out snack boxes an hour or two before landing. I blearily opened the box and found the following inside the lid:
In case you can't read it, it says:
The first production of a croissant dates back to 1683. That year, Austria was under siege by the Turkish Empire. In Vienna, the Turkish assailant found that time was slipping past and decided to dig an underground tunnel to enter the city.
The bakers were thanked and they decided to make bread in the shape of a crescent moon (symbol of the Turkish flag) and the croissant was born. 100 years later, Marie Antoinette (Austrian Princess who married Louis XVI) introduced the croissant to the French Aristocrats.
It was only at the start of this century that the butter puff croissant was created, and became the French national product in 1920. Now the croissant is one of the most famous breakfast items in France & the rest of the world.
It looks like English, it sounds like English, and yet after reading it over repeatedly I still cannot understand it. What was Vienna's problem that they could not resist a lone Turkish assailant? Could the inhabitants not have just bopped him over the head and taken his shovel from him? What was the role of the bakers? What were they being thanked for? What prompted them to suddenly make crescent-shaped bread? Is it possible they were "spanked" rather than "thanked"? How did the croissant become the "French national product" in 1920? What was the French national product in 1919? (Guess it beats the French national product of 1789, the guillotine...)
Oh, and what's with the random capitalization? And starting a sentence with "100" instead of "One hundred"? Come on, British Airways, your country invented English. Have some standards!
And now, I want to go eat a croissant. Humph.
