The world's first high-speed railway, Japan's Tōkaidō Shinkansen, opened on 1 October 1964 between Tokyo and Osaka, just before the Tokyo Olympics. Its round-nosed trains reached 210 km/h and cut the trip to four hours.
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📍 Oslo, Norway
Norwegian chemical engineer Erik Rotheim of Oslo applied for the first aerosol spray can patent in 1926. Americans later made spray cans famous with WWII 'bug bombs' that sprayed insecticide against malaria mosquitoes.
📍 Kyoto–Nara, Japan
The folding fan was invented in Japan. In 988 a Japanese monk presented folding fans to the Chinese emperor, and the Chinese long called them 'Japanese fans'. Portuguese traders later brought them to Europe, where Spain made them famous.
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📍 Ecuador (Montecristi to Cuenca)
Panama hats are woven in Ecuador from toquilla palm straw. They got the wrong name because travellers, including Gold Rush prospectors crossing the isthmus, bought them in Panama. UNESCO listed the weaving craft in 2012.
📍 Mainland Southeast Asia
Chickens descend mainly from the red junglefowl of Southeast Asia. The oldest known chicken bones, roughly 3,500 years old, come from Ban Non Wat in northeast Thailand, where wild birds were likely drawn to farmers' rice fields.
📍 Tian Shan, Central Asia
The apple's wild ancestor, Malus sieversii, still grows in Central Asia's Tian Shan mountains, where apples were first domesticated before travelling along the Silk Road to Europe.
📍 Thailand (formerly Siam)
Siamese cats come from Thailand, once called Siam, where old manuscripts of 'Cat-Book Poems' describe them. In the late 1870s the American consul in Bangkok sent one, named Siam, to President Rutherford B. Hayes: the first documented Siamese in the US.