Imagine the owner of this Madrid oyster bar. One minute he is having the best bit of publicity he could imagine and the next his bar is being trashed by an angry crowd.

Chronicle 10 Jan 1925 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article87511595
Senor Herroro was having a very lucky day wasn’t he? First he wins the second prize in a Christmas lottery and then finds a large pearl in his plate of celebratory oysters. He quickly rushed out and sold the pearl to a dealer for 100 pounds.
While he was doing so the bar started doing a brisk trade in people expecting their luck to turn as well. Unfortunately the stock of oysters ran out and no other pearls were found.
As you can imagine the crowd were none too happy with this turn of events, but instead of going home to whinge to their families they wrecked the restaurant.
I did another search for unexpected pearls in meals and there was no shortage of them, including one found in a can! Clearly these were the days before quality control.

The Advertiser 22 Oct 1952 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article47430307
This quarter-inch pearl found by Mr Wauhop in 1952 was quite a prize wasn’t it. I wouldn’t be too sad about finding that in my dinner.
I was interested in Mr. Wauhop’s title though, Chairman of the State Licensing Court. I wonder if the pearl really was an amazing find or if it was supposed to be some sort of distraction or secret payoff 😉
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