All Peeps come from one place. A single sugar-dusted city—Bethlehem, Pennsylvania—where the Just Born factory cranks out more than 5.5 million Peeps a day, every one of them hatched by machine. Here’s your marshmallowy FactSlap:
Peeps FactSlaps
Factory-born chicks: Every Peep in the world is made in Bethlehem, where Just Born has operated since 1923. From 27 hours to 6 minutes: In the 1950s, Bob Born revolutionized Peeps by inventing a machine that dropped the production time from 27 hours to just 6 minutes. Yellow rules the roost: The first Peeps were yellow chicks, and to this day, yellow remains the top seller. Wax eyes, sugar skin: Those beady eyes? Made from carnauba wax. Each Peep is coated in colored sugar, built on a base of sugar, corn syrup, and gelatin. Wings, clipped: Peeps used to have little wings. They were trimmed in the late 1950s for efficiency—and sleekness. Holiday shapeshifters: Peeps now come in over a dozen flavors and nine colors, molded into bunnies, pumpkins, ghosts, and even hearts for Valentine’s. Bethlehem’s ball drop: On New Year’s Eve, the town of Peeps drops a 4-foot tall, 200-pound Peep instead of a disco ball. Built to last (maybe forever): Peeps are so packed with preservatives that some experiments have failed to dissolve them in water, acid, or even acetone.
One of the oldest religious practices in ancient Rome was augury, or reading signs from the gods through the behavior of birds, the idea being that the birds were deliberate divine messengers. Augurs, or bird divination experts, would sometimes draw diagrams on the ground to help them interpret behavior from owls, woodpeckers, crows, and other wild birds.
These avian messages, called auspices, were taken extremely seriously, but wild birds weren’t always around to deliver them — so eventually, ancient Roman priests started keeping “sacred chickens” that they could call upon at any time. These fortunetelling chickens were especially prized for military decisions, and would be consulted before any major moves to make sure the gods approved.
When their services were required, the chickens would be released from their cages and fed so that augurs could interpret their eating patterns. Broadly, a chicken refusing to eat was a very bad sign, while a chicken gobbling up its food while stomping its feet was a very good one.
The most notable cautionary tale about not heeding the fowls’ warnings came in 249 BCE. According to the ancient scholar Cicero, one Roman consul commanding a fleet of ships dismissed some bad omens before going into battle. When he was told the chickens wouldn’t eat, he ordered them thrown overboard, commenting, “Let them drink.” He was soundly defeated, and later recalled by the Roman Senate
