Posts Tagged: ‘England’

There’s a new pepper in town.

Former security guard and sauce maker Nick Woods, of Grantham, England, crossbred some chillis and came up with the infinity chilli, which has a record-breaking Scoville Scale rating of 1,176,182, according to the BBC. Are you familiar with the Scoville Scale? It’s my favorite of the scales because it measures the harmless agony peppers cause. For example, a jalapeno scores between 2,500 and 8,000 on the scale. The ghost chili pepper (bhut jolokia), which the India military uses for grenades to aggravate terrorists out of their hiding places, used to be the hottest pepper in the universe at 1,041,427, according to Discover. But not anymore.

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One of the reasons I love reading Victorian novels during the winter is that they feel cold. How many of the stories feature a protagonist huddling in some drafty flat? Or a forgotten opium eater who’s frozen in his garret apartment? It makes me feel cozy by comparison when I’m curled up with a blanket in a well-insulated, well-heated home.

But perhaps I could read modern British fiction and catch a similar chill.

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It’s funny… Queen Elizabeth II meets the president …but it is also amazing. How many people on the planet have been able to do this? It’s a pretty small club. See also: Elizabeth II Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born in London on April 21, 1926, the first child of the Duke of York. (Her [...]

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Ever heard of Robertus Hood, Robert Fitz Odo (aka Fitzooth) or Gilbert Robynhood? As I learned in Jessika’s recent article, each could be the real Robin Hood (although probably is not).

But while the green-hosed bandit’s true identity has famously eluded historians and Robin Hood enthusiasts for centuries, one aspect of the legend is firmly grounded in fact: its setting. Sherwood Forest, Robin’s hangout, once covered western Nottinghamshire and stretched into Derbyshire, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica.

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Fiction lovers adore splendid underwater cities. It used to be the ancient, lost Atlantis (or its similarly mythical colonies) that made regular appearances in books and movies. Then it was high-tech underwater bases. Now it’s more likely to be real, recognizable coastal cities drowned in a global warming end game.

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The idea of a barn find excites me. Can you imagine the rush of excitement that comes with opening the door of a dilapidated old barn, shed or warehouse and discovering a vintage car or truck — or even better, a collection of vintage cars and trucks — that someone squirreled away decades ago? Of course, it doesn’t happen very often, and when a barn find reveals something rare, valuable or rich in automotive history, news of the find spreads fast.

With that said, did you happen to read about the latest reported barn find in England? More than 30 vintage cars discovered all at once. Actually, in this case, it may be more accurate to call this a barnyard find, as the cars were found outside — hidden by more than 50 years of undergrowth and even trees that had grown since the cars were parked there decades ago.

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You’ve heard of guerrilla fighting tactics, but how much do you know about guerrilla gardening? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about this “revolutionary” gardening trend.

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