We’ll be back after this short break
In 1969, the first colour TV commercial broadcast in the UK was for Birds Eye frozen peas.
Unfortunately, the ad’s tagline really hasn’t aged too well so not gonna share here… Enjoy this cute still from one of their other commercials instead!
Proper etiquette
Don’t scoop peas chaos-pyramid-like onto your fork. Instead, use your knife to help position the peas so you can poke them onto the fork’s tines.
Hey Siri, set an alarm
Way before voice activated apps and analog alarm clocks, from the mid-1800’s up to the 1940’s, Londoners depended on knocker-ups (or knocker-uppers) to wake them up in the morning.
by Mr Douglas, issued by W.A. & A.C. Churchman, colour relief halftone cigarette card, 1938
Many used long sticks to tap on clients’ bedroom windows but Mary Smith and her daughter, Molly Moore, used rubber tubes to shoot dried peas at the glass instead.
My question though is: who woke the knocker-uppers up?
Learn more about Mary Smith in Andrea U’Ren’s adorable children’s book, which you can borrow here. You do need an account but it’s totally free! So worth it.
Peas of the seas
2500 pounds of fresh green peas were loaded aboard the Titanic for her maiden voyage. Size-wise, that would look like almost 10 standard bathtubs filled with the tiny green orbs.
The fine print
Botanically, peas aren’t considered a vegetable. They are in fact in the fruit family, the peas being the seeds of the pea plant, the pods being the fruit.
Don’t phunk with my…
Yeah no, sorry. Black eyed peas aren’t really peas, they’re a kind of bean.
In Australia, a bowler hat was also known as a pea-dodger.
Deep space peas
You’re probably familiar with the Milky Way, the nice and roomy spiral galaxy we call home. But have you heard of the more compact “green pea galaxies”?
As you can see in this telescope picture, they’re tiny, round and emit a green glow!
Even though they’re small, they’re super mighty factories: stars are being born at a crazy-fast rate in pea galaxies compared to bigger galaxies.
Apparently, pea galaxies are a little like “baby pictures” of what galaxies might have looked like in the early universe. Studying them could help us better understand how galaxies first started growing.
J122051+491255, a green pea about 170 million light-years away,
imaged by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
Le Curio 
Leave a comment