Chili Peppers have quite the history, and random facts are just the thing to keep game night exciting as you serve some tasty grub drowning in hot sauce.
We uncovered some interesting historical facts about chili peppers and hot sauce - not alternate facts, but actual facts that date back to our forefathers.
Here are some of our favorite random facts.
- George Washington and Thomas Jefferson loved peppers so much, they grew them behind their residences.
- Christopher Columbus got props for discovering chili peppers in the Caribbean and taking them back to Europe even though the clever and resourceful Mayans actually began using them way before.
- Japanese samurai soldiers would eat chili peppers before a battle because it made them feel invincible.
- Wilbur Scoville, an American pharmacist, created his own scale in 1912 called The Scoville Scale to measure the heat index of different peppers.
- Chili Peppers as cash? In the early days of civilization, the Mayans, Incans, and Aztecs used peppers as currency.
- In ancient Asia, peppers and chilies would be ground up and placed in bags and thrown at their enemies during battle.
- In early times, spicy foods using chili peppers were considered meals only for the rich as these and other exotic spices were expensive and hard to get during the trade.
- During the Aztec period, chilies were used to prevent illness and even witchcraft. You were not trusted if you did not eat chilies and thus marked as an evil sorcerer.
