Five Random Facts for Wednesday

Here are some random facts for you.

1.  Black pepper is not an actual “pepper.”  They’re the cooked, unripe dried fruit of the “piper nigrum” vine.  Green pepper is the uncooked version, and white pepper is the ripe fruit seeds.  And Sichuan peppercorns are the dried berries of the prickly ash tree, which is a member of the citrus family.

But these kinds of “pepper” are the OGs.  It was later, in the 16th century, when people began using pepper to also mean the New World, Capsicum chili pepper.  Those include the common hot, sweet, and bell peppers.

2.  The town of Ixonia in southeast Wisconsin got its name when the people there couldn’t agree on a name so they picked a bunch of letters randomly.

3.  Glenn Frey from the Eagles got the idea for the song Life in the Fast Lanewhen his drug dealer, who was called “The Count,” used that phrase as they were driving.

4.  Isaac Newton was the first person to recognize that the rainbow was divided into seven distinct colors.

5.  When you BREAK WIND, it travels out at about 10 feet per second, that’s about seven miles-an-hour.

 

(Wikipedia / Wikipedia / Wikipedia / Wikipedia / Muscle and Fitness)