HOT
REALLY HOT STUFF
So hot was one Vauxhall of its day that it was named after the cayenne pepper! Yes, the Vauxhall KN racer was given this moniker by its engineer FW Hodges, who thought it apt after it achieved a scorching 76.1mph at Brooklands race track in 1909. This sizzling tale inspired us to seek out what else is hottest of the hot… Words by Martin Gurdon, illustration by Tom Lane
You might not always think it if you live in Britain, but our own sun is pretty hot. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (run by NASA and the European Space Agency), reckons that part cooks at 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.
The hotness of chilli peppers is measured by something called the Scoville Scale, on which the Dorset Naga posted a reading of nearly 900,000.
According to The Times, the world's hottest chilli pepper is reared in the British poly tunnels of Dorset based market gardeners Joy and Michael Michaud. Called the Dorset Naga, this little scorcher is developed from plants originating in Bangladesh. The hotness of chilli peppers is measured by something called the Scoville Scale, on which the Dorset Naga posted a reading of nearly 900,000.
Anything claiming to be the world's hottest food is going to be a tough one to verify, but American condiment maker the Ashley Food Company reckons its 357 Mad Dog Collector's Edition sauce is the hottest thing you could dollop on the plate to go with it. On the Scoville scale (the one used to rate the mind bending Dorset Naga chilli) Mad Dog clocks in at a tongue tingling 600,000.
Temperatures may have been breaking records in recent years, but the place with the hottest ever recorded air temperature remains Al Aziziyab in Libya, situated quite close to Tripoli, and therefore the Mediterranean Sea. Despite its proximity to a large slab of atmosphere cooling water, the place saw temperatures reach 136 degrees Fahrenheit back in September 1922, when presumably people were keen to stay indoors.