With a Scoville rating of 100,000 – 350,000, the Habanero chili is an exceptionally hot chili, and eating one for the first time, is an experience I would not recommend to any one. But, if for some insane reason you do decide to try one, here are some tips that might help with the excruciating experience you are about to have:

1. Be Prepared
The most import thing here is not to drink water. Capsaicin is an oil, and drinking water would only make it worse by spreading it around. So, what you need is something which would absorb capsaicin, like: milk, yogurt, rice, or bread. Or you can eat more Habanero till everything is numb, and you have lost all sensation.

2. Do It For Money
For the pain you are about to go through—make it worthwhile. Take it as a challenge, and have people put money on you eating a Habanero.

3. Don’t Over Do It
If you have never tried a Habanero before then don’t over do it, because the chili will get you, and will get you good.

4. Keep Your Composure
Your reaction to the Habanero is going to be severe and one that can easily shatter your toughness. But, this is a challenge you took on, so to save face, the best you can do is to try and keep your composure. With a mouth, esophagus, and stomach on fire, this is going to be a hard one.

5. Expect the Worst
How you react to this hot chili is unpredictable, so go into this challenge expecting the worst. If you have low tolerance to chilies and lack the toughness required for this challenge, then don’t attempt it; just watch it on YouTube!

PHOTO CREDIT: Tom Chamberlain

More than a decade ago, when I first heard “The Star Spangled Banner”, the lines—”The Rockets’ Red Glare”—intrigued me. I wondered about what rocket was Francis Scott Key’s referring to back in 1814 when the poem was written? Even though I was curious, at the time there was no Wikipedia at hand for reference, and over the years, I never really took time to look up more about this question.

But, strangely enough yesterday, after watching a video on YouTube about the Taj Mahal, I chanced upon a video about Tipu Sultan, The Tiger of Mysore, and there it was; the answer to the mysterious rockets in The Star Spangled Banner.

The story goes back to the three decade long Anglo-Mysore wars of 1766 to 1799, when first Haidar Ali and later his Son Tipu Sultan kept the invading British and neighboring princely states at bay. The main weapon which gave Tipu Sultan and his father the edge were rockets.

Even though rocket artillery were used by the Chinese, Mongols, Turks—and later found its way in to Europe; its use was limited. It was Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan who took it to the next level. Instead of the traditional bamboo casing, they used iron casings, with sharp blades and iron point attachments, making Tipu’s rockets a lethal and effective weapon.

The British received an unpleasant surprise in 1780 when Hyder Ali brought into action the Guntur iron-cased rockets weighing more than 12 pounds each, mounted a 10-ft bamboo pole, that had a range of nearly half a mile

Eventually, the relentless British defeated Tipu Sultan, seized some of his rockets and shipped them back to Britain for further scrutiny:

These experiences eventually led to the Royal Woolwich Arsenal’s beginning a military rocket R&D program in 1801, their first demonstration of solid-fuel rockets in 1805 and publication of A Concise Account of the Origin and Progress of the Rocket System in 1807 by William Congreve [31], son of the arsenal’s commandant. Congreve rockets were soon systematically used by the British during the Napoleonic Wars and their confrontation with the US during 1812-14. These descendants of Mysore rockets find mention in the Star Spangled Banner.

So there you have it, the story of the rockets in The Star Spangled Banner. A fascinating example of how precisely things had to happen in history to have affected the present and the future, and how a single word in a national anthem could have a story of epic proportions.

Even though I am glad I know this now, I am a little saddened too, for India has forgotten this wonderful part of her history. I remember learning about Tipu Sultan and the Mysore Wars in school, but I have never heard about his rockets and his brigades of rocket men being mentioned. But, the British have kept this history alive, and Tipu’s rockets can be seen on display at the Royal Artillery Museum in London.

PHOTO CREDIT: juvertson | NASA

After upgrading to the recently released WordPress 2.5, I have been noticing duplicate autosave draft posts. Looks like this issue is caused by the use of custom fields in posts. The number of duplicate draft posts increases with the number of custom fields being used. There is an issue logged for this, and a discussion related to this issue underway in the forums.

The duplicate drafts are not deleted after the post has been published, and would require manual deletion. If you are experiencing this issue, then here is the suggested work around from the forum:

Before creating your custom fields SAVE your post.

In a slip-up barely hours after the Shamshabad airport opened for business, a KLM flight from Amsterdam, which was supposed to land at Hyderabad, skipped the airport and flew across the country — first to Delhi, and then to Mumbai.

Imagine the ordeal of the 243 passengers on board!

This reminded me of something similar which happened to me about ten years back. I was on an Indian Airlines flight from Delhi to Ranchi and somehow the pilot got confused and headed to Jamshedpur to land, which is about 132km southeast of Ranchi. On his final approach he realized he was at the wrong place, and quickly aborted the landing and turned towards Ranchi. Everyone familiar with Ranchi, who looked out the window could tell the pilot was in the wrong city. It was only a few days later when we saw the news of the pilot error in the newspaper, was our suspicion confirmed.

Photo by: Mark D. Martin

Once when Picasso visited an exhibition of children’s drawings. He observed,

“When I was their age, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them.”

Photo Credit: Twistiti