The blues grew out of African-American songs in the Deep South around the 1860s. In about 1903 bandleader W.C. Handy heard it at a Mississippi railway station, from a man sliding a knife along his guitar strings: 'the weirdest music I had ever heard'.
📍 Hasselt, Belgium
The audio cassette was designed at Philips' factory in Hasselt, Belgium, by Lou Ottens's team; he sized it with a wooden block that fitted his jacket pocket. Unveiled in Berlin in 1963, it was licensed to other makers for free.
📍 Arnhem Land, Australia
Aboriginal peoples of northern Australia, probably in Arnhem Land, developed it centuries before Europeans arrived. The name 'didgeridoo' isn't Aboriginal; it's an imitative English word first printed in 1908.
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📍 Northern China (Gansu to Luoyang)
The oldest paper scraps, from the 2nd century BC, were found in China, and Han court official Cai Lun refined papermaking around 105 AD. Egypt's papyrus was a different material.
📍 California, USA
Despite its name, the Bengal cat was created in the United States: breeder Jean Mill crossed a wild Asian leopard cat with a house cat in 1963 and founded the breed in California in the 1980s. 'Bengal' comes from the leopard cat's scientific name.
📍 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'.
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📍 Sonoran Desert (Arizona, USA & Sonora, Mexico)
The giant cactus of Western films grows wild only in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and northwest Mexico. It grows so slowly that its first arms appear after 50 to 100 years, and it can live for more than 150 years.