Where does Dahlia come from?
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.
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.
📍 South America (Brazil & neighbours)
Bougainvillea, the flower of Mediterranean balconies, is a South American native that grows wild from Brazil to Peru and Argentina. It is named after French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, whose expedition recorded it.
📍 Mountains of northern Greece & Albania
The conker tree of British playgrounds is a Balkan native: wild horse chestnuts survive only in a few mountain forests of northern Greece, Albania and nearby. Everywhere else, it was planted.
📍 Fertile Crescent (Zagros & Taurus mountains)
Goats were domesticated about 10,000 years ago in the hills of the Fertile Crescent. The oldest known herded goats come from Ganj Dareh in Iran's Zagros Mountains, where their wild ancestor, the bezoar ibex, still lives.
📍 Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA
Volleyball was invented in 1895 by YMCA instructor William G. Morgan in Holyoke, Massachusetts, as a gentler alternative to basketball. He first called it “mintonette”.
📍 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.
📍 Piedras Negras, Mexico
In 1943, maître d' Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya created tortilla chips topped with cheese and jalapeños for American customers at the Victory Club in Piedras Negras, Mexico, and named them after himself.