Champagne-Bottle Sizes and Acronym

I was recently skeptical when a friend used the term  Jeroboam in a game of eye-spy recently. I had never considered the size of champagne and bottles and to use a bit of foreshadowing the word really sounded like a splendid belching noise. Anyway a bottle of champagne is 75cl and is the standard measuring unit we will use. 2 bottle is a magnum and I would imagine most people, like me, would have hear about this far.

Next at 4 bottles we have Jeroboam and at 6 bottles the similar sounding Rehoboam. The latter was a son of Solomon and thus a grandson of David. For some reason the 10 northern tribes were not happy with Rehoboam's ascension and invited Jeroboam to become King of a new state and is thus the first King of Isreal. Rehoboam is the first King of Judah and the last King of the United Kingdom of Isreal.

At 8 bottles we have Methusaleh, who may have been the oldest person to live at 969 years* - his Grandson Noah also lived to 950 years. Methusaleh died 7 days before the great flood. Apparently he is a direct descendant of Adam but then isn't everyone - interestingly it was Adam's third son Seth who got the whole populating the world ball rolling.

* although the Guinness Book of World Record does not recognise him.


At 12 bottles we have Salmanazar, which is anglicized Shalmaneser,  and their appear to have been 5 of him.  The most of which number 3 is the most likely candidate for the eponym as he was the first Assyrian ruler to come into contact with an Isreali monarch.

At 16 and 20 we have the Babylonian combo of Balthazar and Nebuchadnezzar. Balthazar was the ruler when Babylon  fell and Nebuchadnezzar was the ruler responsible for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which were not actually in Babylon.

So how do we remember all this? Magnum, Jeroboam, Rehoboam, Methusaleh, Salmanazar, Balthazar, and Nebuchadnezzar?

My July Really Makes Splendid Belching Noises