Author Archives: JonelleGoforth

That Time Badass Feminist Queen Elizabeth II Gave Saudi Arabia’s King a Lesson in Power

Mother Jones

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Great Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II is known to have a wicked sense of humor, and some mean driving skills. One day back in 1998, she deployed both spectacularly to punk Saudi Arabia’s late King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz. Back then, Abdullah was a Saudi crown prince visiting Balmoral, the vast royal estate in Scotland. The Queen had offered him a tour of the grounds—here’s what happened next, according to former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles:

The royal Land Rovers were drawn up in front of the castle. As instructed, the Crown Prince climbed into the front seat of the Land Rover, with his interpreter in the seat behind. To his surprise, the Queen climbed into the driving seat, turned the ignition and drove off. Women are not—yet—allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, and Abdullah was not used to being driven by a woman, let alone a queen. His nervousness only increased as the queen, an Army driver in wartime, accelerated the Land Rover along the narrow Scottish estate roads, talking all the time. Through his interpreter, the Crown Prince implored the Queen to slow down and concentrate on the road ahead.

Royal custom discourages repeating what the Queen says in private, Cowper-Coles explained, but the anecdote was corroborated by Abdullah, and became, in the diplomat’s words, “too funny not to repeat.”

Abdullah went on to cultivate the image of a reformer as king. One thing he didn’t change, despite the Queen’s badass stunt: women still can’t drive in Saudi Arabia.

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That Time Badass Feminist Queen Elizabeth II Gave Saudi Arabia’s King a Lesson in Power

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You Probably Had No Idea the US Military Is Obsessed With Giant Cakes

Mother Jones

Yesterday was the United States Marine Corps’ 239th birthday. Jarheads and leathernecks celebrated as they long have—with big-ass cakes like the one above, which commemorated the Corps’ 233rd birthday in 2008.

The Marines’ big birthday cake bashes date back to at least 1935. They’re such a part of Marine tradition that there’s even a protocol for cake serving, including the ceremonial use of the Mameluke sword (below) and who gets the first slices (the guest of honor, followed by the eldest and youngest Marines present).

National Archives

And it’s not just Marines who love their cake. The entire military appears to be preparing for the day when the Pentagon has to hold a bake sale. That means plenty of sheet cake with white frosting—but also some more elaborate creations like the ones collected here.

(How much of the Pentagon’s $600 billion budget goes to cakes? It’s not clear, though this 2010 Marines memo notes that there are strict rules for pastry funding: Only three to four slices of each cake may be paid for with appropriated funds.)

Now, 10 delicious deployments of military cake:

1. For the Army’s 237th birthday in 2013, a cupcake tank rolled into the Pentagon. The confection included 5,000 cupcakes, more than 200 pounds of camouflage fondant, and a functioning “cupcake cannon.” It also came in massively over budget at a total cost of $1.2 billion. (Not really.)

US Army

2. The 40th anniversary of the Air Force Defense Support Program is observed with a cake shaped like a missile-detecting satellite. (According to the after-action report, “an anomaly prevented the cake from entering the ballroom as planned.”)

Manisha Vasquez/US Air Force

3. To welcome the USS Theodore Roosevelt in March 2002, the commissary at the Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, Virginia, baked this 750-pound, 12-foot cake, complete with “an edible aircraft carrier layer on top.”

DoD News

4. Last year, three Marines spent five days making this 500-pound cake to commemorate the Marine Corps’ 238th birthday.

US Marines

5. The 150,000th safe arrested landing on the aircraft carrier George Washington was celebrated with a cake shaped like an aircraft carrier.

William Pittman/US Navy

6. In 2007, the Food Network’s Ace of Cakes wheeled out an M-1 Abrams cake for the Army’s 232nd birthday.

US Army

7. A cake resembling the painted rocks at the Fort Irwin National Training Center, California, made for the Army’s 239th birthday in June.

Gustavo Bahena/US Army

8. An enormous, creepy George Washington hovered behind Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno (third from left) as he engaged in a show of symbolic bureaucratic redundancy at the Army’s 239th birthday party.

Eboni Everson Myart/US Army

9. Two Air Force service members slice an otherwise ho-hum cake with an airplane propeller to commemorate the 59th anniversary of Special Operations Command Europe (whose acronym, SOCEUR, is clearly meant to test the loyalty of our European allies).

U.S. European Command

10. If a propeller isn’t handy to make your cake ceremony more exciting, there’s always a guest appearance by Vice President Joe Biden, who popped up at Camp Liberty in Baghdad in January 2010 just to make Dick Cheney jealous that he’d found the missing Iraqi yellow cake.

Kristina Scott/US Army

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You Probably Had No Idea the US Military Is Obsessed With Giant Cakes

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