Eating and Drinking
The region that is home to Florence has one of the most versatile and varied-form cooking traditions in Italy, that we have already mentioned in our tourists’ guide to Tuscany. We are going to try and provide a more specific view, limiting ourselves to the city of Florence and the area immediately around it.

Florentine cooking is linked to a tradition of simple dishes prepared with genuine, tasty but plain ingredients, which has recently been reconsidered by the world of more sophisticated cuisine. Cereals, bread, vegetable and oil (which must be extra-virgin) are the basis of many recipes that just have to be tried in one of the many restaurants in Florence. 

Simple food, such as cannellini beans and other vaguely repulsive ingredients such as tripe and livers are transformed into pleasant, tasty dishes, served on both stalls and in local inns and also in luxury restaurants. We can therefore find: fagioli all'uccelletto (beans), boiled and then fried in oil and tomato sauce; trippa alla fiorentina, (tripe) covered in tomato and grated parmesan cheese; lampredotto, the darkest part of tripe, used for soups and risottos, but also liked by many locals as a filling for a sandwich; crostini toscani with liver paté. And the unforgettable "fiorentina" a cut of meat from the Chianina cow, famous worldwide, to be tried in any restaurant in Florence.
 
Source:  http://www.travelplan.it/florence_guide_eating_drinking.htm

"October 8th, 1871. On this day in 1871, flames spark in the Chicago barn of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary,
gniting a 2-day blaze that kills between 200 and 300 people, destroys 17,450 buildings,
leaves 100,000 homeless and causes an estimated $200 million (in 1871 dollars; $3 billion in 2007 dollars) in damages."
(http://www.history.com)

Incendiary 
by Vernon Scannell
   
That one small boy with a face like pallid cheese 
 
And burnt-out little eyes could make a blaze 
As brazen, fierce and huge, as red and gold 
And zany yellow as the one that spoiled 
Three thousand guineas' worth of property 
And crops at Godwin's Farm on Saturday 
Is frightening---as fact and metaphor: 
An ordinary match intended for 
The lighting of a pipe or kitchen fire 
Misused may set a whole menagerie 
Of flame-fanged tigers roaring hungrily. 
And frightening, too, that one small boy should set 
The sky on fire and choke the stars to heat 
Such skinny limbs and such a little heart 
Which would have been content with one warm kiss 
 
Had there been anyone to offer this.

"Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own."
-Arthur Schopenhauer

"Life is like a ten-speed bicycle.
Most of us have gears we never use."
-Charles Schulz

"The United States consumes 25% of all the world’s energy."

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption)