Peas Please, Louise
The humble pea, and what it means for us
What a tragedy it is, the modern world.
While he also invented the mousetrap, hair curling irons and the steam pump, Sir Hiram Maxim’s most famous invention was the machine gun, and for doing that, he has a blue plaque in his honour on the wall of a house he once lived in during the early 20th century in Hatton Garden, London.
In England, we put blue plaques on the houses of famous people to remind those strolling by they are in the presence of someone who was once in the public eye.
Maxim was an American who lived in England, and he died in 1916, just giving him time to see his machine gun invention add massively to the bloody tragedy in the trenches of the First World War. It was used on both sides.
How sad it is that the inventor of such a heinous, murderous weapon should have a plaque dedicated to him, when the honest and wholesome pea goes completely unrepresented.
Current scientific thinking has peas being first cultivated in the Near East about 11,000 years ago from a now-extinct ancestor called Pisum, which is where the name pea comes from. Peas contain no saturated fat, no cholesterol and no sodium hence are wonderfully good for you.
