Legend has it that Italian immigrant Caesar Cardini was at his restaurant in Tijuana on a very busy day when he quickly whipped up a salad using ingredients he happened to have readily available.

This week, Tijuana is hosting a four-day centenary celebration for the enduring dish once celebrated by the International Society of Epicures in Paris as “the best recipe to emerge from America in the last 50 years.”

“It's a recipe that has traveled all over the world,” said famous Tijuana chef Javier Plascencia, whose family now runs the eponymous Caesar's restaurant. “Everyone loves it, and the fact that it comes from Tijuana makes us proud. It's also a duty to continue promoting its history.”

But as with every legend, there are various versions.

Over the years, many names have been floated because the salad's inventor, including Cardini, his brother Alex Cardini, and Livio Santini, a young chef at what was then Caesar's Place who some imagine brought his mother's salad recipe from Italy. There's also chef Giacomo Junia, who is claimed to have invented the salad in Chicago in 1903. And there are more.

Tijuana historian Fernando Escobedo de la Torre and businessman Armando Avakian Gámez add their very own well-researched interpretation to the lore in a brand new book published to mark the centenary. They conclude that the unique salad was created by Caesar Cardini in Tijuana on July 4, 1924. Their book relies on witness testimony, historical archives and eight years of research, they said.

One of the famous American chef and tv personality Julia Child's earliest restaurant memories is the day she visited Caesar's restaurant in Tijuana as a teen.

Tijuana enjoyed a thriving out-of-town tourist attraction throughout the Prohibition era, also attracting Italian immigrants like Cardini to town's food and wine scene.

“People flocked from the Los Angeles area to eat at the restaurants; they drank forbidden beer and cocktails while they roamed the city's bars; they strolled through the flower-filled courtyard of Agua Caliente and listened to the marimba band, and they gambled sinfully at the casino,” she wrote in her 1975 book, “From Julia Child's Kitchen.” “The word got out about Tijuana and the good life, and about Caesar Cardini's restaurant and about Caesar's salad.”

Her parents ordered the much-talked-about dish. “Caesar himself rolled the big cart to the table, tossed the romaine lettuce into a big wooden bowl, and I wish I could say I remember every move, but I can't,” she wrote. “The only thing I see clearly again are the eggs. I can see him cracking two eggs over the romaine lettuce and rolling them in it, the greens getting all creamy as the eggs pour over them. Two eggs in a salad? … And garlic croutons and grated Parmesan cheese? This salad was a sensation from coast to coast, and there were even rumors of its success in Europe.”

This original version of the salad was noticeably devoid of anchovies.

It was the regulars themselves who spread the word to other parts of the United States and even Europe. Celebrities and other personalities became endorsers of the salad, Escobedo said. “It went viral,” he said. “To the point that today you can find it on every menu in every country in the world.”

Around 1930, in response to an original menu on display at Caesar's Restaurant, the salad was offered as “Romaine Parmigian Dressing” for 50 cents.

Controversial origins

This simplified origin story appears to have been promoted, but additionally questioned, by Cardini's family over time.

“I don't care how many times this story has been published and repeated,” Rosa Cardini said in a 1995 interview with The Daily Breeze. “My father was an incredibly professional restaurant and hotel owner. It is absolutely impossible that he ran out of food. He was just a little short of food, that's all.”

“Also, there are reports all the time that he would run into the kitchen like mad, just pick up whatever was there, and make the Caesar salad,” she continued. “Well, my father had professional training in food preparation. The reason this salad has lasted so long and been so successful is because it really is a masterpiece.

She added: “Every ingredient was chosen to pair perfectly with the others. They were not only chosen arbitrarily because he ran out of food.” Rosa Cardini, a native of San Diego, died in 2003 at the age of 75.

The story goes that Caesar's brother Alex Cardini, a chef and former Italian Air Force pilot in World War I, added anchovy paste to a crostini and named it Aviator's Salad in honor of the pilots at Rockwell Field Air Base in San Diego. This version of the salad – which was later called Alex's Caesar Salad – was created in 1927, according to Escobedo.

Years later, Santini, a young chef who began working with the brothers in late 1924, also gave the salad his own twist by adding paprika to the croutons, according to research by Escobedo and Avakian, the owner of the property where Caesar's now stands.

Martin Lindsay, chairman of the nonprofit Culinary Historians of San Diego, has been researching the story for more than five years and believes it ultimately comes down to the Cardini brothers and Santini.

“People kept saying 'no, it was him,' 'no, it was him,'” Lindsay said. “People on the West Coast, in San Diego and Tijuana, say it was Caesar. People in Texas say it was Alex, because Alex's sons and a few of his family still live in Texas. And then there's Livio Santini and his family.”

But Lindsay believes that “all three were involved in one way or another in the birth of the Caesar salad.”

“I can say with certainty that it came from Tijuana,” Lindsay said.

Escobedo and Avakian claim that the salad was created at Cardini's previous location, Café Alhambra, where he operated from 1922 to 1925. The restaurant was also located on Avenida Revolución for a time, but was destroyed in a fire. He later opened Caesar's Place (1926-1930) on Second Avenue and moved to its current downtown location on Avenida Revolución.

The ingredients

At Caesar's Restaurant, the salad is still prepared tableside, just like Child's. The waiter, dressed in a tie and vest, prepares the current version of the original salad in a wooden bowl in front of the guests.

First, the dressing ingredients are mixed together – anchovies, garlic, Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, lime juice, egg yolk, olive oil and Parmesan cheese. The dressing is then mixed with large pieces of romaine lettuce, more cheese and a crostini. The dish is ready in about three minutes.

Between 8,500 and 9,000 Caesar salads are prepared at the restaurant each month, said salad master Efraín Montoya, and people travel to the restaurant from across Mexico, the United States and beyond to try them.

“We must not lose the tradition of preparing the salad on the table,” said Plascencia. “It is a real art that every one our waiters and salad preparers are very pleased with.”

The restaurant has been run by the Plascencia family since 2010. Juan José Plascencia, who is also currently president of the Tijuana chapter of the National Chamber of Restaurant and Condiment Food Industry, said they took over the restaurant when they realized it was going to close.

Plascencia said his grandfather used to be a bartender at Caesar's, so the family has a special connection to the place. “It's an iconic restaurant,” he said.

In the restaurant, guests are given the recipe for the current version of the original on cards in English and Spanish.

Birthday party

The salad will be the star of the city's centenary celebrations.

The celebrations include two sold-out dinners with renowned chefs. The release of the 100th anniversary book and a commemorative Casa Magoni wine will take place on Friday; admission is free.

And on Sunday, Avenida Revolución will host a 1930s-style festival featuring gastronomic offerings from celebrity chefs. Tickets are available online for around $75. For more information, visit TijuanaCaesars.comPart of the proceeds will go to the Tijuana Without Hunger Foundation, organizers said.

In 1974, the US paleoanthropologist conducted a study in Hadar within the distant wasteland of Ethiopia Donald Johanson and PhD student Tom Gray found a chunk of an elbow joint protruding from the dirt of a ravine. It turned out to be the primary of 47 bones from a single individual – an early human ancestor Johanson named “Lucy.” Her discovery would overturn every little thing scientists thought we knew in regards to the evolution of our own lineage.

Lucy was a member of the species Australopithecus afarensisan extinct hominin – a bunch that features humans and our fossil relatives. Australopithecus afarensis lived between 3.8 and a couple of.9 million years ago within the region of what’s now Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania. Lucy was dated to be 3.2 million years old and was, on the time of her discovery, the oldest and most complete human ancestor ever found.

Two characteristics distinguish humans from all other primates: their large brains and the flexibility to face and walk on two legs as an alternative of 4. Before Lucy's discovery, scientists thought that our large brains will need to have evolved first, since all known human fossils already had large brains. But Lucy stood on two legs and had a small brain, not much larger than that of a chimpanzee.

This became immediately clear when scientists reconstructed her skeleton in Cleveland, Ohio. A photographer took a photograph of four-year-old Grace Latimer – who was visiting her father Bruce Latimer, a member of the research team – next to Lucy. The two were in regards to the same height, illustrating Lucy's small stature and small brain. And Lucy was no small child: Based on her teeth and bones, scientists estimated that she was fully grown When she dies.

The photo also showed how human Lucy was – especially her attitude. Along with the invention of 3.6 million yr old fossilized footprintscreated by members of her species, Lucy proved conclusively that standing and walking upright was step one within the evolution of humans. In fact, large brains didn’t appear in our lineage until well over 1 million years after Lucy's life.

Lucy's bones have adaptations that allow her to have an upright posture and bipedal locomotion. In particular, her femur is angled, her spine is curved in an S shape, and her pelvis or hip bone is brief and bowl-shaped.

These features are also present in the skeleton of recent humans. They allow us, like Lucy, to face, walk and run on two legs without falling over – even when balancing on one leg in mid-step.

In the 50 years since Lucy's discovery, her influence on scientists' understanding of human origins has been immeasurable. She has inspired paleoanthropologists to explore unexplored areas, formulate recent hypotheses and develop and apply novel techniques and methods.

Even as recent fossils are discovered, Lucy stays central to modern research into the origins of man. As Anthropologist and paleoecologistI do know that they still the reference point to understanding the anatomy of early human ancestors and the evolution of our own bodies. Knowledge in regards to the human fossil record and the evolution of our lineage has increased exponentially based on Lucy's discovery.

Palestinians in Gaza have begun receiving humanitarian assistance, delivered through a newly accomplished floating pier off the coast of the besieged area. The pier was built by the U.S. military and operated in coordination with the United Nations, aid organizations and other nations' militaries. Its origins date back to a mid-Twentieth century U.S. Navy officer who collected discarded cigar boxes to experiment with a brand new idea.

Among the artifacts from the military collections National Museum of American HistoryI stumbled upon these humble cigar boxes and the remarkable history they contain.

In 1939 John Noble Laycockthen commander of the Navy's Civil Engineer Corps, was assigned as a war planning officer for the Navy's Bureau of Yards and Docks in Washington, D.C., to assist prepare for a possible war within the Pacific.

Laycock needed to determine methods to establish naval bases on undeveloped islands. The top priority could be what the military called “naval lightening,” the method by which cargo and supplies are moved by ships to a coast where there aren’t any ports or docks for docking.

That's it Problem facing the relief effort in Gaza – and a situation that military and humanitarian groups have faced countless times over the past century.

In his predecessors' office files, Laycock found plans developed within the Nineteen Thirties to make use of small pontoons – essentially floating boxes – that might be easily transported and quickly assembled by hand into larger barges or floating platforms. However, Laycock saw problems with the design of the plans and the way in which the pontoons were to be connected together. And he had an idea.

In my Research into his workI came upon that around July 1940, Laycock began visiting every concessionaire on the Navy headquarters, then positioned on the National Mall, and asking them to avoid wasting empty cigar boxes for him. Laycock and a helper lined up the boxes and distributed them evenly. Then they connected them with picket strips from children's kites, which they secured to the corners of the boxes with small nuts and bolts.

The easy model showed that it was possible to attach individual, evenly sized, small pontoon boxes right into a for much longer and far stronger floating beam. Multiple supports will be combined in the bottom to create a platform of any size needed. A sufficiently large platform could carry cargo, military trucks and armored vehicles weighing as much as 55 tons.

From cigar boxes to steel pontoons

In August 1940, while on a family vacation, Laycock discovered exactly methods to connect the person pontoons, which were manufactured from steel quite than wood or cardboard like his cigar box model. He designed steel fasteners – enlarged bolts and nuts called “jewels” that will be inserted and tightened by hand – that may withstand the stresses of the ocean's movement beneath a floating platform.

Through trial and error and applying various military requirements akin to the width of the steel plates, the burden of the empty pontoon, the depth required for floating and the load capability Laycock designed a straightforward pontoon 5 feet high, 7 feet long and 5 feet wide. He also designed a curved section to serve because the bow of a pontoon-based transport ship. By 1941, tests had proven that the design and system were ready for mass production.

Floating steel dams

Pontoon technology first entered the war within the South Pacific in February 1942, when the Naval Construction Force, also referred to as the Seabees, brought it to Bora Bora within the Society Islands. The Seabees were pleased with the way it worked, contributing to the system's nickname – Laycock's “Magic Box.”

The universal nature of pontoons made it possible to construct one Series of floating structures, including excavators, barges, floating cranes, workshops, warehouses and gas stations, tugs, piling rigs and dry docks. These pontoon structures might be found from Guadalcanal to the Mariana Islands, the Aleutian Islands, and the Philippines.

Planning for the invasion of Sicily in July 1943 found one other use for Laycock's pontoon system. In late 1942, Royal Navy Captain Thomas A. Hussey realized that the Sicilian beaches had gentle slopes. During an invasion, landing craft, particularly those designed for tanks, will be expected to run aground several hundred feet above land in 6 feet of water. Even waterproof vehicles could be flooded and will sink.

Conscious of the Laycock pontoons, Hussey inquired whether the units could form a floating road, called a causeway, to bridge the gap between the ship and the shore. Laycock developed a way of constructing narrow causeways two pontoons wide and 30 pontoons long – about 175 feet. Arranging them side by side creates a floating dam 325 feet long. They could even be towed or carried by landing craft and deployed in shallow water upon arrival.

In mid-March 1943 the dams were successfully tested proved successful in Sicily. In 23, 24-hour days, the Seabees unloaded over 10,000 vehicles, including trucks, jeeps, halftracks, and towed artillery, onto the causeways. Senior American and British leaders said the landings couldn’t have happened so quickly Wouldn't there be the pontoon causeways?.

Pontoon highways in Normandy

Similar to Sicily, the coast of Normandy in France had beaches with gentle, flat slopes. Floating pontoon causeways were key to the D-Day landings by U.S., British and Canadian forces on June 6, 1944. Engineers would anchor one end of the dam to the shore and extend the structure far enough out to sea in order that cargo ships could dock at low or high tide without running aground.

Additional pontoons were added to the perimeters every few hundred feet along the causeway to form piers, allowing multiple ships to dock at the identical time no matter tidal conditions. They could unload directly onto dry pontoons, identical to at any normal pier or dock.

This system allowed for an enormous round the clock flow of tanks, trucks, artillery, supplies and personnel to support the fighting as Allied forces pushed inland through Normandy in the approaching months.

Use in war and for humanitarian aid

Over the many years, this idea evolved with technological advances in construction and fasteners Pontoon systems utilized in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. These have now also been improved and have helped to offer humanitarian aid, for instance in Haiti after a severe earthquake in 2010.

The Gaza pier includes each parts of the pontoon system – Laycock's original floating platform as Cargo hub 3 miles offshoreand the British-proposed floating causeway and pier system that might allow truck deliveries to achieve land. All from a humble cigar box concept model.