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The first official sled dog race, the All Alaska Sweepstakes, was organised in Nome, Alaska, in 1908: teams ran 408 miles to Candle and back. Musher Scotty Allan said it was as big an event in Alaska as the Kentucky Derby.
📍 Huddersfield, England
Rugby league was born on 29 August 1895 at the George Hotel in Huddersfield, when 22 northern English clubs broke away so they could pay players for wages lost to Saturday matches.
📍 Kyoto (the Heian court), Japan
Kai-awase began as a pastime of Heian-period nobles in Japan. A clam shell fits only its own other half, so players hunted for matching pairs among painted shells, often showing scenes from The Tale of Genji. Later the shells graced upper-class weddings.
📍 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.
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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.
📍 Central Mexico highlands
Almost every wild dahlia species grows only in Mexico, the genus's home and centre of diversity. Spanish botanist Antonio José Cavanilles named the flower in 1791 after the Swedish botanist Anders Dahl.
📍 Jamaica
Jerk meat is rubbed with allspice and fiery Scotch bonnet peppers, then slow-smoked over pimento wood. The method grew in Jamaica's hills, where Maroons, escaped Africans, blended it with the Taíno way of smoking meat.