Food
Where does Jerusalem artichoke come from?
Neither from Jerusalem nor an artichoke: it's the tuber of a sunflower native to central North America. 'Jerusalem' is probably a garbling of girasole, Italian for sunflower.
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Food
Tea
📍 Yunnan, southwest China
Tea drinking may have begun in China's Yunnan region, where leaves of the native tea plant were first used as medicine. Chinese legend credits the mythical ruler Shennong with discovering it.
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Food
Peanut
📍 Southern Bolivia & NW Argentina
Peanuts were domesticated in South America, most likely in southern Bolivia or northwestern Argentina, where the most wild-like varieties still grow. The oldest known remains, about 7,600 years old, come from Peru.
Food
Peach Melba
📍 London (the Savoy), England
French chef Auguste Escoffier created Peach Melba at London's Savoy Hotel in 1892 or 1893 to honour Australian soprano Nellie Melba, then starring at Covent Garden.
More from North America
Nature
Monterey pine
📍 Central coast of California, USA
Monterey pine grows wild only along a short stretch of California's central coast and on two Mexican islands. Yet it makes up about 90% of New Zealand's plantation forests.
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Invention
Ski chairlift
📍 Sun Valley, Idaho, USA
The world's first ski chairlifts opened in 1936 at Sun Valley, Idaho. A railroad engineer, Jim Curran, designed them by swapping the hooks of a banana-loading conveyor for chairs.
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Game
Water skiing
📍 Lake City (Lake Pepin), Minnesota, USA
In 1922 Ralph Samuelson, aged 18, became the first recorded water skier, on Lake Pepin at Lake City, Minnesota. After trying barrel staves and snow skis, he made his own skis from pine boards and was towed by a motorboat.