
Pancake Race (Olney, London, UK)
Every year on Fat Tuesday, all Londoners are lured outside like a magnet by the smell of freshly baked pancakes, which literally float throughout the city. No, this is not a mistake and you read everything correctly. One day in 1445, in the town of Olney in southeastern England, one of the church parishioners was baking pancakes on Fat Tuesday, contrary to the rules of fasting. Hearing the bell ringing and coming out of the “pancake trance,” she immediately ran to church to atone for her sins, but it was still not easy for her to part with the pancakes (and she can be understood), so the lady turned the last one right on the go. The people of Olney were so amused by this spectacle that they turned it into a tradition.