Food
Where does Ciabatta come from?
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'.
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Food
Grapefruit
📍 Barbados
The grapefruit is a chance cross of two Asian imports, the pomelo and the sweet orange. It was first described on Barbados in 1750 as the 'forbidden fruit' and only reached Florida in 1823.
Food
Wasabi
📍 Japan (first farmed in Shizuoka)
Real wasabi is the grated stem of a plant that grows wild in Japan's cold mountain streams, first farmed about 400 years ago in Shizuoka. Most 'wasabi' served outside Japan is actually horseradish, mustard and green colouring.
Food
Couscous
📍 Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco & Tunisia)
Couscous isn't a grain: it's tiny balls of semolina, rolled by hand and steamed. It began with the Berber peoples of North Africa, and in 2020 Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia put it on UNESCO's heritage list together.
More from Europe
Game
Korfball
📍 Amsterdam, Netherlands
Korfball was created in 1902 by Amsterdam teacher Nico Broekhuysen, who adapted ringboll, a Swedish game he'd seen in Nääs. Each team mixes four women and four men.
Nature
European rabbit
📍 Iberia & southwestern France
Rabbits are Iberian natives: the oldest fossils of the species, 600,000 years old, come from southern Spain. Australia's rabbit plague began with just 24 rabbits released in Victoria in 1859.
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Nature
Icelandic horse
📍 Iceland
Icelandic horses descend from ponies brought by Norse settlers more than 1,000 years ago. Today no horse may be imported into Iceland, and one that leaves can never come back. Many can do an extra-smooth gait called the tölt.