In 1930 zoologist Israel Aharoni caught a mother hamster and her litter near Aleppo, Syria. DNA studies show all domestic golden hamsters descend from one female, probably that very mother.
📍 Iberia & southwestern France
Rabbits are Iberian natives: the oldest fossils of the species, 600,000 years old, come from southern Spain. Australia's rabbit plague began with just 24 rabbits released in Victoria in 1859.
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📍 South-central South America (N Argentina, Paraguay, S Bolivia)
Jacarandas grow wild in south-central South America, where the species is now listed as Vulnerable. Pretoria in South Africa has planted so many, some 60,000-70,000, that it is nicknamed the 'Jacaranda City'.
📍 West Africa (Gulf of Guinea coast)
The oil palm is native to West and Central Africa, from Gambia down to Angola, where people have used it for millennia. Only much later was it planted in Malaysia and Indonesia, now home to huge plantations.
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📍 China
Brushes with stiff hog bristles set in bone or bamboo handles were being used in China centuries before William Addis began mass-producing toothbrushes in England around 1780.
📍 Tokyo (Edo), Japan
Tycoon is Japanese taikun, 'great lord', a title foreigners used for Japan's shogun in the 1850s. Lincoln's secretary called him 'the Tycoon' in 1861; the business-mogul sense came after WWI.
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📍 Northern India
Today most wild cheetahs live in Africa, but their name is Hindi: chītā, from a Sanskrit word meaning 'variegated' or 'speckled'. Cheetahs were once abundant in India, and English borrowed the word by 1704.