Yap islanders carved limestone discs up to 3.6 m wide in Palau, about 400 km away, and brought them home by canoe. The stones rarely move: ownership passes by agreement, and one that sank at sea is still traded.
📍 Tokyo–Osaka, Japan
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.
📍 Chicago, USA
Engineer George Ferris built the first Ferris wheel, 80 m tall, for Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. It was meant to rival the Eiffel Tower from Paris's 1889 fair.
📍 Halifax, England
Cat's eyes were invented by Percy Shaw of Halifax, England, who patented them in 1934 and named them after a cat's eyeshine. Wartime blackouts showed their value and helped spread them across British roads.
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📍 Sydney region, Australia
Wombat comes from Dharug, the Aboriginal language of the Sydney area, and was first written down in 1798. Wombats leave cube-shaped droppings, and their pouches face backwards so they don't fill with soil while they dig.
📍 New Guinea
Sugarcane was first domesticated in New Guinea. Austronesian voyagers spread it across the Pacific and west to India, where Alexander's admiral Nearchus marvelled at “reeds that produce honey without bees”.
📍 Southeast Queensland & northern NSW, Australia
Macadamias are native to eastern Australia, the only widely grown food plant native to that continent. Seeds reached Hawaii in the 1880s, and Hawaii led world production for decades until Australia overtook it in 1997.