Nature

Where does Monstera (Swiss cheese plant) come from?

The Swiss cheese plant grows wild only in the rainforests of southern Mexico and Guatemala. Its name 'deliciosa' means delicious: the ripe fruit is edible.

Source: powo.science.kew.org ↗

More Animals & plants

Nature

Monterey pine

📍 Central coast of California, USA

Monterey pine grows wild only along a short stretch of California's central coast and on two Mexican islands. Yet it makes up about 90% of New Zealand's plantation forests.

Nature

Chicken

📍 Mainland Southeast Asia

Chickens descend mainly from the red junglefowl of Southeast Asia. The oldest known chicken bones, roughly 3,500 years old, come from Ban Non Wat in northeast Thailand, where wild birds were likely drawn to farmers' rice fields.

Nature

Golden hamster (the pet hamster)

📍 Near Aleppo, Syria

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.

More from North America

Game

Volleyball

📍 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”.

Game

Water skiing

📍 Lake City (Lake Pepin), Minnesota, USA

In 1922 Ralph Samuelson, aged 18, became the first recorded water skier, on Lake Pepin at Lake City, Minnesota. After trying barrel staves and snow skis, he made his own skis from pine boards and was towed by a motorboat.

Invention

Ferris wheel

📍 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.