Britain's grey squirrels are American: the species is native to eastern North America and was released on British estates from the 1870s. It has since displaced most of Britain's native red squirrels.
📍 Western Sahel (northern Mali)
Pearl millet was first farmed on the southern edge of the Sahara, around today's northern Mali, more than 4,000 years ago. It later spread to India, which now grows more of it than any other country.
📍 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.
📍 China
Garden chrysanthemums were bred in China for many centuries before they reached Japan. There the flower became the emperor's emblem, which is why the Japanese monarchy is called the Chrysanthemum Throne.
📍 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.
.jpg/330px-Snowboarder_at_resort_(Unsplash).jpg)
📍 Muskegon, Michigan, USA
In 1965 Sherman Poppen of Muskegon, Michigan, made the 'Snurfer' (snow + surfer), a binding-free board most consider the snowboard's direct ancestor.
📍 Cedar Rapids & Iowa City, USA
Iowa gymnast George Nissen and his coach Larry Griswold built the first modern trampoline in the mid-1930s, inspired by circus trapeze nets. Nissen named it after trampolín, Spanish for 'diving board'.