Food
Where does Maize (corn) come from?
Corn was bred about 9,000 years ago from a wild grass called teosinte in Mexico's Balsas River valley. It was domesticated only once, then spread throughout the Americas.
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Food
Mango
📍 NE India, Bangladesh & Myanmar
Mangoes originated in the region between northeastern India, Bangladesh and northwestern Myanmar. The English word came via Portuguese from Malayalam “manga”.
Food
Cloves
📍 North Moluccas, Indonesia
Until colonial times, cloves grew only on a few small islands in Indonesia's Moluccas, the original “Spice Islands”, such as Ternate and Tidore. Chinese merchants sailed there to trade for them.
Food
Buffalo wings
📍 Buffalo, New York, USA
Named after Buffalo, New York, not the animal. The Anchor Bar says co-owner Teressa Bellissimo first tossed fried wings in hot sauce there in 1964, though local chef John Young said he was frying wings in Buffalo from 1961.
More from North America
Invention
Trampoline
📍 Cedar Rapids & Iowa City, USA
Iowa gymnast George Nissen and his coach Larry Griswold built the first modern trampoline in the mid-1930s, inspired by circus trapeze nets. Nissen named it after trampolín, Spanish for 'diving board'.
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Game
Crossword puzzle
📍 New York City, USA
The modern crossword began as a “word-cross” by Liverpool-born journalist Arthur Wynne, printed in the New York World on 21 December 1913. Britain's first newspaper crossword followed only in 1924.
Nature
Monterey pine
📍 Central coast of California, USA
Monterey pine grows wild only along a short stretch of California's central coast and on two Mexican islands. Yet it makes up about 90% of New Zealand's plantation forests.