Did you ever hear the one about the world leader who couldn’t land his plane to meet with another world leader because he was allegedly too sauced to get out of bed?
Well, if not, that’s about to change.
This is a story from 1994, a time a lot of people thought maybe the world was getting more peaceful and less chaotic.
The Cold War was over, and many former Communist countries were opening up to build new ties to their former rivals in the West.
The leader of one of those countries, Russia’s Boris Yeltsin, had just wrapped up a series of meetings and events in the United States.
The Russians decided that it would be good to make a stop in Ireland on the way home and make some inroads with that country’s leadership.
There were two problems here.
One was that Albert Reynolds, Ireland’s Taoiseach (head of government), was on his own trip to Australia at the time.
So he had to rush home so that he and other Irish officials could give their guests a warm welcome, complete with an honor guard, a military band, and a fancy meal ready at a nearby castle.
But then there was the other problem: by the time the Russian plane reached Irish airspace, Yeltsin was, we’ll say, not well.
The officials on board apparently decided to stall for time, and had the pilots just circle over Shannon’s airport for an hour… while the Irish leaders stood around on the ground waiting.
Eventually the plane landed, but the Russian president wouldn’t come out.
The official line was that he was sick, and it was well understood that he was not in the best of health.
But it was also well understood, accurately or not, that Yeltsin’s poor health was largely due to a little something we call vodka.
So many people watching the situation understood “sick” to mean “drunk” or “hung over” or both.
The Taoiseach said later, “I offered to go up on the flight to see him because I was told he was still asleep. I wasn’t told he had a few too many. It was up to yourself to read between the lines if you wanted to.”
He met with Yeltsin’s deputies instead, while the Irish media wrote story after story about how the Russians had snubbed their leaders.
After returning home, Yeltsin made the situation even more confusing by claiming he’d overslept and his bodyguards hadn’t woken him up!
Decades later, most of the hard feelings have softened, seeing as how there are much bigger problems on the world stage than a president who misses an airport meeting.
Though the incident did at least give us a great euphemism: according to Urban Dictionary, the phrase “circling over Shannon” means “when an individual stalls for time in order to appear somewhat sober when in reality, they likely are far from sober.”
In 2024, authorities in Germany came across a pizza restaurant in Düsseldorf with an illicit side hustle: customers who ordered pizza No. 40 from the menu would get a side of cocaine.
It was one of their top selling items, at least until the police knocked on the door of the pizza place’s manager.
He tried to throw all the coke out the window, but it fell into the arms of officers on the ground.
So I guess next time you’re in Düsseldorf you’ll have to get a side salad or some garlic knots instead.
1994: Sleepy Boris ‘snubs’ Irish leader (BBC)
Secret menu at pizza parlor included “topping” of cocaine (Boing Boing)
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