Saturday, September 11, 2010

Why are they all weeping?

The national French library has an excellent online service named Gallica. Among countless treasures of all kinds, they propose issues of the French daily Petit Journal illustré from 1884 to 1920. The following illustration appeared on the front page of that publication dated May 6, 1928:

Everybody is weeping… including a policeman and a horse. Try to guess why all the tears?

Answer: An accident had just occurred involving a truck transporting produce from the old Paris food markets known as Les Halles. It had been hit by another truck, and its load of vegetables had been scattered all over the road, and crushed by other vehicles. The first truck had been transporting a load of onions.

1 comment:

  1. The answer should have been obvious to me... but wasn't!

    Our Aussie onions have been particularly ferocious for the last couple of months :-(

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