Moonshine Has Its Own Day!
It's National Moonshine Day, so I dug up some interesting facts to commemorate this day!
Moonshine has taken on several names over the year. A few nicknames include mountain dew, white lightning, and see 7 stars (hmm I wonder why?). Moonshine started in Britain and is actually a reference that means illegal activity done at night. During the Civil War, taxes on alcohol shot through the roof, so people started making it at home -- and to be able to get away with it, they had to make it at night.
During Prohibition, bootleggers had to make sure they could get away from the police so they souped up their cars for speed. Soon some guys in Georgia started racing each other and thus came NASCAR.
The process of making moonshine did not use to be as safe as it is now. In fact, the possibility of going blind from moonshine was a real fear. Moonshine has a byproduct called methanol and the good distillers would remove it from their 'shine. But there were people who didn't care about your safety and would leave the methanol to make it stronger.