07/16/2026
"broken monocles" - wow if ever a phrase was reminiscent of another world in a distant but hopefully not erased past. Even 100 years ago, there were tirades against the present to a "golden past" - always the case. They were right then as now.
🐵🍷 Talk about causing chaos after one too many...
In 1926, a monkey with expensive taste reportedly escaped from a nearby beer hall and decided it fancied something a little more refined... wine.
According to The New York Times, the thirsty primate burst into one of Berlin's oldest and most aristocratic wine restaurants, where it overturned tables, smashed chairs, shattered bottles and glasses, and sent terrified diners running for the exits.
Attempts to catch the monkey only made matters worse. It fought back by hurling bottles and glasses, bit at anyone who got too close, and even used the bald heads of two retired military officers as stepping stones while making its escape across the restaurant!
Police and firefighters struggled to stop the rampage until one quick-thinking firefighter noticed the monkey had grabbed a bottle of vodka. The animal climbed onto a picture frame, took several swigs... and before long, the alcohol did what no one else could. Once it became intoxicated, it was finally captured.
Whether every detail is exactly as reported or not, it's one of the most wonderfully bizarre newspaper stories of the 1920s and proof that sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.
🍺➡️🍷 If you were writing the headline today, what would you call this story?
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