Dining Family-Style with the Khmer Rouge

On this day in 1976, the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot renamed Cambodia as Kampuchea. The year before, as the Khmer Rouge guerrillas battled to win control of Cambodia, the ruling Sangkum Party published a booklet warning the masses what communist rule would mean for the nation.

"There would be no delicious food to eat," predicted Sangkum. "If you ate more than allowed, the government would learn about it from your children in secret and you would be taken out and shot." Perhaps these warnings struck many Cambodians as far-fetched rhetoric, but the future would show these predictions were surprisingly accurate. One of the first achievements that Pol Pot's regime proclaimed was that it had successfully achieved communal eating through most of the country.

In four years of Pol Pot's rule, roughly 1.7 million Cambodians died from torture, starvation or disease.

Debs’ Yuletide Supper

Eugene Debs, a union leader and Socialist Party presidential candidate, served a prison sentence under the Espionage Act for publicly denouncing the U.S. entry into World War I.

President Woodrow Wilson refused to commute Debs’ sentence, but his successor was more forgiving.  President Warren Harding explained that he agreed to let the Socialist leave prison on December 24, 1921 "because I want him to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife."

Lincoln Was a Humble Eater

Over its first four weeks, the movie "Lincoln" has been drawing big crowds, and ticket sales have exceeded $83 million so far. The Spielberg film focuses on President Lincoln's efforts to secure passage of the 13th Amendment, which constitutionally banned slavery.

The movie doesn't show Abraham Lincoln dining in presidential splendor, which is appropriate because the 16th president of the United States had humble tastes when it came to food.  He liked bacon and vegetables, but his favorite food was probably the apple, and lunch was often just an apple with a glass of milk.

The stresses of being a wartime president left Lincoln feeling increasingly indifferent toward food. John Hay, one of Lincoln’s secretaries, said, "He ate less than anyone I know."

Oswald Lied About Lunch

After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Dallas police took Lee Harvey Oswald into custody. During one interrogation session, detectives asked Oswald for his alibi — what was he doing when the president was shot on the street outside the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald worked.

"I told you," Oswald replied. "I was eating lunch in the lunchroom with a couple of the colored boys who work with me. One is named Junior and the other is a little short man. I don't know his name."

Detectives were able to confirm that Oswald was lying about his alibi, as well as what he claimed to have eaten for lunch: a cheese sandwich and an apple.

Condi Rice Was the Dinner Decider

Condoleezza Rice, the former U.S. secretary of state, was born on this date in 1954. Long before she began overseeing the nation's foreign policy, Rice was influencing her family's dinner menu.

As early as age 4, Condoleezza was determining what the Rices would have for dinner. Her mother, Ann, would ask her young daughter what she wanted for dinner, and Condoleezza would reply without hesitation. "Ann would cook exactly what Condoleezza said," recalled a family friend. "And (father) John would eat exactly what Condoleezza said. And he would enjoy it!"

Condi's stepmother, Clara, later remembered that the future secretary of state "was always the person in charge of the food, when we eat."