A Vatican official or a Muslim leader might have been able to turn down the onslaught of Russian vodka without losing face. Pearson and Ignatieff came from an Ottawa in which civil servants routinely drank quarts of beer for lunch. The Canadian delegation could barely put down their glasses before their host, Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev, ordered that it be refilled. Unknown to the Canadians that night, the Soviet premier may have been cheating. “We had earned medals that night for conviviality beyond the line of duty,” he wrote in his memoirs.

Source: National Post July 01, 2016 15:31 UTC