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The golden retriever is a Highlander. In 1868, at his Guisachan estate, Sir Dudley Marjoribanks mated a yellow retriever called Nous with a Tweed Water Spaniel called Belle, and their four yellow pups founded the breed.
📍 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.
📍 Inland Australia
Wild budgies live across the dry interior of Australia, and every wild one is green and yellow. The blue, white and yellow pets are colour forms bred in captivity, where budgies have been raised since the 1850s.
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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'.
📍 Western Russia
In gorodki, "little towns" in Russian, players hurl a heavy bat to knock wooden pins out of a square called the "town". This old Russian game was a favourite of Peter the Great and Leo Tolstoy, yet it only got written rules in 1923.
📍 Annonay, France
Paper-makers Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier first flew their hot-air balloon publicly in their hometown of Annonay, France, in June 1783. Chinese sky lanterns came first, but theirs carried the first passengers: a sheep, a duck and a rooster.
📍 London (Crufts at Olympia), England
Dog agility began as interval entertainment at the 1978 Crufts dog show in London, with dogs racing round a course modelled on horse show jumping. It became a proper competition at Crufts in 1980.