Game
Where does Volleyball come from?
Volleyball was invented in 1895 by YMCA instructor William G. Morgan in Holyoke, Massachusetts, as a gentler alternative to basketball. He first called it “mintonette”.
More Games & sports
Game
Parkour
📍 Lisses (near Paris), France
Parkour took shape in Lisses, near Paris, where David Belle and friends trained together. They called themselves the Yamakasi, from a Lingala phrase meaning “strong man, strong spirit”.
Game
Netball
📍 London, England
Netball grew out of basketball at a women's PE college in Hampstead, London, from 1893, and its first rules were published in England in 1901. It then spread across the British Empire.
Game
Dog agility
📍 London (Crufts at Olympia), England
Dog agility began as interval entertainment at the 1978 Crufts dog show in London, with dogs racing round a course modelled on horse show jumping. It became a proper competition at Crufts in 1980.
More from North America
Word
Tomato (the word)
📍 Central Mexico
Spanish tomate comes from tomatl in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Italy only received its first tomatoes around 1548 and called them pomi d'oro, 'golden apples'.
Food
Nachos
📍 Piedras Negras, Mexico
In 1943, maître d' Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya created tortilla chips topped with cheese and jalapeños for American customers at the Victory Club in Piedras Negras, Mexico, and named them after himself.
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.