In gorodki, "little towns" in Russian, players hurl a heavy bat to knock wooden pins out of a square called the "town". This old Russian game was a favourite of Peter the Great and Leo Tolstoy, yet it only got written rules in 1923.
📍 Stockholm archipelago (Utö to Sandhamn), Sweden
Swimrun began with a bar bet in 2002 on the island of Utö in Sweden's Stockholm archipelago: four friends raced to Sandhamn, swimming from island to island and running across each one. In 2006 the challenge became the ÖtillÖ race, Swedish for "island to island".
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📍 Nome, Alaska, USA
The first official sled dog race, the All Alaska Sweepstakes, was organised in Nome, Alaska, in 1908: teams ran 408 miles to Candle and back. Musher Scotty Allan said it was as big an event in Alaska as the Kentucky Derby.
📍 Great Lakes (Haudenosaunee & neighbouring nations), Canada & USA
Snow snake is a winter game of the Haudenosaunee and other Great Lakes peoples: players hurl polished wooden "snakes" with weighted tips down a long icy trough of snow. Haudenosaunee tradition says it is more than 500 years old.
📍 Adria (Veneto), Italy
Ciabatta seems age-old, but a baker in Adria, near Venice, created it only in 1982, as an Italian answer to the French baguettes that were taking over sandwich bars. Its name means 'slipper'.
📍 Genoa, Italy
Jeans goes back to Genoa (Gênes in French): English merchants called a hard-wearing fustian cloth from the Italian port 'Gene fustian', later just 'jean', and were importing it in bulk by the 1500s.
📍 Annonay, France
Paper-makers Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier first flew their hot-air balloon publicly in their hometown of Annonay, France, in June 1783. Chinese sky lanterns came first, but theirs carried the first passengers: a sheep, a duck and a rooster.