Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Rare Practical Application of Useless Knowledge Learned in Gaming

My wife often says it's too bad I can't put all of my (mostly) useless knowledge and interest in history and gaming to use making money. Well, the other day there arose a rare opportunity!

I work at a marketing/ad agency, and a colleague wrote an ad for a wine bar and asked me to review it. The wine bar was touting a new cocktail it offers, a French 75. The ad indicated that according to legend it was invented by a WWI pilot, and was named after the French 75mm artillery howitzer gun.

Umm. Le soixante quinze is a field gun, no? Oddly, I was the only one in the agency who caught that! :) I proudly told my wife and, of course, her response was "who knows that stuff?" Gamers, that's who.

I had design make that change, but opted not to get into crediting Raoul Lufbury for the drink's creation. I think the whole Lafayette Escadrille thing would really confuse these people.

So on that note, to illustrate the difference, I dug out some of my 15mm WWI French artillery pieces. The 75s are Peter Pig, and I think the howitzers were Houston Guns, crewed by Peter Pig.