Game
Where does Candlepin bowling come from?
Candlepin bowling, with thin pins and a ball that fits in your palm, began around 1880 in Worcester, Massachusetts. You get three rolls per frame, and the knocked-down pins stay on the lane.
More Games & sports
Game
Pesäpallo (Finnish baseball)
📍 Helsinki, Finland
Pesäpallo was created by Finnish athlete Lauri 'Tahko' Pihkala, who mixed an old Finnish bat-and-ball game with American baseball. The first match was played in Helsinki in 1920, and the pitcher throws the ball straight up.
.jpg/330px-Muddy_motorcycle_(Unsplash).jpg)
Game
Motocross
📍 Camberley, Surrey, England
The first known motocross race, then called a 'scramble', was run on Camberley Heath in Surrey, England, on 29 March 1924. The name motocross came later, blending French 'motocyclette' with 'cross-country'.
Game
Surf lifesaving (the beach sport)
📍 Bondi & Bronte, Sydney, Australia
Surf lifesaving began on Sydney's eastern beaches once daytime swimming was allowed in the early 1900s; Bondi and Bronte both claim the first club. Its carnivals turned rescue skills into races, like rowing heavy surf boats through the waves.
More from North America
Invention
Blues (music)
📍 Deep South, USA (Mississippi Delta)
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'.
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
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.