Edward Burrow

What's a movie that genuinely made you sit in silence after the credits rolled - not sad, not happy, just stunned?

Hell on Earth.

In 1868, a bankrupt Louisiana banker with a ruined plantation and no income took some pepper seeds of unknown origin, mixed the mash with salt mined from underneath his own property, aged it in barrels, and bottled it in cologne bottles because manufacturing specialty glass after the Civil War was impossible. That bottle shape has not changed in 156 years... Edmund McIlhenny had lost almost everything in the Civil War. His banking career was gone. The Avery Island plantation he had married into was destroyed. When his family returned in 1865 they found the fields in ruin and allegedly a few volunteer chile plants still surviving in the wreckage. Nobody knows exactly how McIlhenny obtained the Capsicum frutescens pepper seeds that became the foundation of his sauce. What is documented is that he crushed the ripened peppers into a mash with rock salt mined from the natural salt dome underneath Avery Island, aged the mash in barrels, blended it with French white wine vinegar, strained it through cloth and bottled it in small cologne-type bottles with sprinkler fitments, sealed in green wax. Workers on the plantation used small red sticks called le petit bâton rouge to identify peppers at exactly the right stage of ripeness. In 1869 he sent exactly 658 bottles to grocers along the Gulf Coast at one dollar apiece. He secured a patent in 1870, and the sauce sold out immediately. Manufacturing specialised glass was essentially impossible in the post-Civil War South so McIlhenny used what was available. The sprinkler fitment on a cologne bottle turned out to be the perfect delivery mechanism for a concentrated pepper sauce best applied in dashes rather than poured. That practical wartime improvisation became one of the most recognisable pieces of packaging in the world. The original recipe, Tabasco peppers, Avery Island salt and vinegar, has not changed in 156 years. The salt still comes from underneath the same island. Every pepper seed used in production worldwide still originates from Avery Island. A bankrupt banker's post-Civil War improvisation, bottled in repurposed cologne bottles, became one of the most globally distributed food products in history. © Eats History

Things may be different in Germany; yes, there have been structural changes, but it’s a complex issue. My grandfather built a large house from scratch (brick-and-mortar) with his wife when he was 70, with a handful of Red Army shrapnel still in his body; my father worked every (!) day, built a house, and so on. - For younger colleagues, enjoyable experiences and consumption have a much higher priority (traveling, dining out, etc.) - At the same time, economic opportunities haven’t grown to the same extent as expectations for life. And: their standard of living is in any case higher than that of my father or his family at their age. People complain a lot, but no one would get into a time machine to travel back to the old days

Republican politician John McCain was one of the few people who understood from the beginning what Putin was all about. This interview is from 2014. It’s a shame most US politicians still lack this kind of clarity.

Zoomers on here are like "I'm 27 and can't buy a $400k house or afford to spend $50 on doordash, the system is rigged!" Like kid, I had 2 roommates till 29, and then 1 till 33 when I bought my own house. Cooked and meal prepped 90% of what I ate for 20 years. Y'all are bitches

Your favorite military commander once said: