Go Fetch

Westbrook, Connecticut, April 12, 1977 - Have you ever pushed a cork into a bottle when you were suppose to pull it out? Perhaps you made an attempt to open a bottle of wine with one of those prong pullers and you failed miserably? Or maybe you pushed on your corkscrew too hard while trying to turn the worm into the cork? Never fear, Bernard Bonin has designed a new "Cork Retriever."

He has been assigned United States Design Patent Number D244,002 for his tool. To go cork fishing with it, you place the shaft in the bottle and attempt to grab one end of the cork with the bottom end which is bent at a 90 degree angle. Once you have it hooked, you pull it up and then tug and tug until it pulls that lost cork through the neck of the bottle. Maybe.

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Right

On this day in 1777 Henry Clay was born in Hanover County, Virginia. Clay was a three time unsuccessful candidate for President. After the first failed candidacy for the Presidency in 1824, he became the elected President's (John Quincy Adams) Secretary of State. In 1832 he made another try and was unsuccessful but remained a Senator until 1842. His third Presidential attempt was in 1844 and resulted in another failure. He was elected to the Senate again in 1849 and served until his death in 1852.

In 1833 Clay became a leader of the new "Whig" political party. During this time he gave several strong anti-slavery speeches. When he was about to make one of these speeches in 1839, one of his colleagues told him that it would ruin his chance to ever become President. Clay replied, "I would rather be right than President."

The first meeting of the International Correspondence of Corkscrew Addicts (ICCA) was held October 1, 1974. It was organized and hosted by Dr. Bernard Watney and held at the Guinness Brewery, London, England. Remembering the words of Henry Clay ("I would rather be right than President"), it was decreed at this meeting that the leader of the group is to be known as "Right" Brother Timothy was elected as the first Right of the ICCA.

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Letter to the Editor

Time Traveler

Seillans, France - I liked very much the watches in the "Spring Forward Day"edition. In Europe we changed the hour on March 30th and we used the watch pictured below. This was the gift for the 8th congress of the CFTB, the French corkscrew club, on 22/23 March 2003. I read The Daily Screw every day before the the local paper - the news is so much better! ... Hans Turler

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