January 22 is Hot Sauce Day.
People started using chili peppers and other such spices thousands of years ago. In South and Central America, there is evidence for chili peppers being used for cooking as early as 6,000 years ago, but they never reach Europe until the 16th century, when Portuguese and Spanish explorers began sending all sorts of unusual foods from the New World back home.
The first hot sauce to be available in a bottle appeared in shops in the state of Massachusetts in the year 1807, and then suddenly, hot sauce was everywhere, and being added to everything. Tabasco sauce is one of the earliest brands to have come into existence that still exists today, being bottled and sold for the first time in 1868.
Today in history: Roe v Wade
Roe v. Wade is a landmark decision issued on this date in 1973 by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of the constitutionality of laws that criminalized or restricted access to abortions. The Court ruled 7–2 that a right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman’s decision to have an abortion, but that this right must be balanced against the state’s interests in regulating abortions: protecting women’s health and protecting the potentiality of human life.
Arguing that these state interests became stronger over the course of a pregnancy, the Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the third trimester of pregnancy.
Weird fact: The Inventor of the Fire Hydrant
Fire hydrants. You see them on practically every street. They are a fundamental piece
of any municipality’s firefighting efforts, giving firefighters instant access to the water supply. Countless lives and properties have been saved thanks to this invention, but in a fine example of irony, no one knows who invented the fire hydrant, because the patent was destroyed in a fire in 1836.
Though there is no official record, the pillar type fire hydrant is typically credited to Frederick Graf, Sr., the Chief Engineer of the Philadelphia Water Works in 1801.