On August 13, 1637, vice director Aldrichs of the New Amsterdam colony (now New York City) appealed to the board of directors to set a fixed price for beer. When taxes were finally imposed on beer, the citizens responded by refusing to help their colony when British ships arrived in the harbor a few years later. They failed to answer a call to arms and the British waltzed in.

On October 31, 1715, the Mug House Riots broke out in England when two opposing political groups met in the same tavern. Their debate escalated into a fight that spilled into the streets and lasted for days.

On September 10, 1731, six people were appointed by the city of London as “hop searchers,” and assigned the task of seizing and burning all low-standard hops.

On December 31, 1759, Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease on St. James’ Gate in Dublin, Ireland. Guinness reportedly said he was so confident in his product that he happily signed the lease, which is on display at the guinness Storehouse at St. James’ Gate in Dublin, Ireland.

On December 16, 1773, Samuel Adams and John Hancokc threw a “kegger” for the Sons of Liberty inside Boston’s Green Dragon Tavern. Later that evening they led the group in a protest that became known as the Boston Tea Party. The leaders commonly provided a keg at meetings to ensure attendance.

On October 12, 1810, Munich’s first Oktoberfest is held to celebrate the royal wedding of Ludwig I of Bavaria. Today, the 16-day festival kicks off when the mayor of Munich shouts “O’sapft is!” while tapping the first keg of beer.

In 1813, Martha Jefferson moved back into Monticello to look after her widowed father, President Thomas Jefferson. On September 17, she interrupted her settling-in duties to brew 15 gallons of beer.

On October 17, 1814, a giant vat of fermenting porter burst in St. Giles, London, releasing more than 135,000 gallons of beer and causing other vats of beer to explode. A total of about 323,000 gallons of beer gushed into the streets, destroying two homes and trapping a teenage employee of a nearby pub.

The Stuttgart Beer Festival began in 1818 when King Wilhelm I sponsored the event after years of hunger. Today, the annual three-week festival is the second largest beer festival in Germany, following Munich’s Oktoberfest.

On October 5, 1842, Josef Groll brewed the world’s first golden beer, which became known as Pilsner Urquell. Up until then, beer was usually dark and hazy.

On July 11, 1883, a 14-year-old boy from Baltimore, Maryland fell into a boiling beer vat at Helldorfer’s Brewery and died almost instantly.

On October 28, 1919, the Volstead Act was signed into law, stating that Prohibition would begin the following April. This was the beginning of the end for hundreds of local breweries, as they were forced to convert to other products or shut down completely.

On November 13, 1925, Grupo Modelo bottled its first Corona Extra.

On December 5, 1933, Prohibition officially ended when Utah became the 36th state needed to ratify the 21st Amendment to the Constitution. President Roosevelt announced the news immediately, and beer lovers nationwide celebrated.

On November 28, 1935, the Tree Stooges released a short film called “The Three Little Beers,” in which the threesome work at the delivery department of the Panther Pilsner Beer company. The Stooges must stack barrels of beer onto their delivery truck and end up driving the truck to the company’s golf tournament. Needless to say, Murphy’s Law is in tact as everything that would go wrong does go wrong and the Stooges end up losing all the beer.

Frederick Louis “Fritz” Maytag was born on December 9th, 1937. The former owner of the Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco, Maytag saved the company from closing in 1965. He introduced beer enthusiasts to many classic styles of beer and is credited with preserving the “steam style” of brewing, which involves using bottom-fermenting yeast at high temperatures in shallow, open pans.

On November 20, 1944, Winston Churchill ordered his War Secretary to “Make sure that the beer goes to the troops under fire of the enemy before any of the parties in the rear get a drop.”

On August 30, 1947, Lucille Ball appeared in a Schaefer beer ad. She is shown pouring a Schaefer, calling it “The finest beer I ever tasted.”

On August 6, 1976, empty beer cans saved a woman’s life when she fell off a cruise ship heading to Cape Town, South Africa. Margaret Fuller was reported missing about an hour after she fell, but the captain of the ship was able to reverse and locate her by following a trail of beer cans that were thrown overboard by passengers.

The beer-theme movie, Strange Brew, was released on August 26, 1983. The film chronicles the adventures of two unemplyed brothers who give away their father’s beer money and then run out of beer. In an attempt to get free beer, they get jobs as beer inspectors at Elsinore Brewery. Eventually they face the evil Brewmeister Smith, whose world domination plot includes putting a drug in Elsinore beer that makes the drinker attack others when stimulated by music.

The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 was passed on July 17, requiring all 50 states to raise the minimum age of purchase and public possession of alcohol to 21.

On November 6, 2002, the city of Monmouth, Oregon legalized the sale of beer and wine within the city limits for the first time since 1858. When national Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the city voted on and defeated five different proposals to allow the sale of alcohol.

On July 28, 2003, the Merrian-Webster dictionary added the word “longneck,” which, as you might have guessed, is defined as a “a beer served in a bottle that has a long neck.”

In July 0f 2009, President Barack Obama held the infamous “Beer Summit” at the White House, where Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met with Sergeant James Crowley and Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to discuss an incident in which Sergeant Crowley was called upon to apologize for attesting Gates for disorderly conduct at the Gates’ home. Obama had a Bud Light, Biden had a Buckler, Gates had a Sam Adams Light, and Crowley had a Blue Moon.

On Septmeber 3, 2010, the world’s oldest bottle of beer was found in a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea off the coast of the Aland Islands. Experts believe the ship may have been sailing from Denmark to St. Petersburg, Russia between 1800 and 1830.

See this article for the first 25 fun facts about beer brewing history.