Everything comes from somewhere, as vague a statement as that may be. But sometimes the origins of things can be surprising, like how bagpipes don’t come from Scotland or pasta doesn’t come from Italy. And then there’s another level of surprising origins when you discover that multiple things all come from the same place. 

10. Black, White, Red, and Green Peppercorns All Come From the Same Plant

If you have taken cooking beyond the microwave, then there’s a chance you’ve dealt with peppercorns while making one of your tasty creations. Black pepper, arguably the most popular seasoning in the world next to salt, starts life as a peppercorn. But peppercorns come in a variety of colors which include black, white, green, red and pink. Surprisingly enough, the first four are actually all the exact same thing. And pink peppercorns aren’t even peppercorns at all, so they don’t really count.

Green peppercorns are the unripe version of the fruit that come from a plant, actually a vine, called Piper Nigrum. When these are picked and allowed to dry, they become black peppercorns. If they are kept in a brine so they don’t dry out,they retain their green color. They can also be flash dehydrated or freeze-dried to keep that green color as well.

Red peppercorns are the mature fruit of the plant, and the red color is from the outer hull or skin on the berry. If that hull is removed, a white peppercorn is what’s underneath. So technically red and white peppercorns are the same thing, or at least they have the same ripeness.

9. Black, White, Green, and Oolong Teas Are From The Same Plant

Word is that tea is the most popular beverage in the world, aside from water. And there are also nearly countless varieties of it available from Orange Pekoe to Earl Grey to Chai and Nighty Night. But four of the most popular varieties – black, white, green, and oolong – all share one thing in common. They’re all the same. 

The plant called Camellia sinensis can provide you with all four types of tea depending on how the leaves are treated during the tea making process. Considering how different all of those teas taste, that’s rather remarkable. 

Green tea is made from fresh tea leaves that have not had a chance to suffer the effects of oxidation. They are heated soon after being harvested to stop oxidation which allows them to retain the green color.

In direct contrast to green is black tea which endures the most oxidation of the four types. The leaves are allowed to completely wither and then they are crushed to enhance this process. They turn black once fully oxidized.

In the middle between black and green is Oolong. This tea is semi-oxidized, sometimes out in the sun, and just slightly crushed or bruised. They may be between 8% and 80% oxidized, it’s a decision that the maker of the tea will have to make which makes oolong more of a personal recipe than the other kinds. 

White tea is harvested before the buds are even fully matured and they still have little white hairs on them. These aren’t crushed or rolled at all.

8. Lychee, Ackee, Maple, and Many More Plants Come From the Same Family

Plant family trees can be somewhat confusing when you discover what’s related to what, but the Sapindaceae family probably takes the cake for the most unlikely cousins. In this single family of trees you’ll find ackee, the national fruit of Jamaica, the small, weirdly hairy fruits called rambutan, their spiky cousins lychee and smoother cousins longan. Guarana, a staple of energy drinks and source of caffeine, is also in the family, as is the sugar maple which is famous for maple syrup in North America.

There are actually 1,600 different species in the family and many of them have commercial value either for fruit, lumber, or other things they produce depending on where in the world you find them. 

7. Science, Schizophrenia, and Even Sh** Have the Same Root Word

Word origins can sometimes be very surprising as you learn the roots of certain words or what they may have meant in other languages before they were co-opted to English. It’s rarer to discover that an abundance of words, many of which seem unrelated in current usage, all trace back to the same source. In this case, we’re talking about a proto-Indo-European word “skei,” which means “to cut or split.” The number of English words that stem from this source is baffling. 

Schizophrenia starts with skei and adds “phren” which means wits or sanity so the word technically translates to “split wits.” Compare that to ski, as in the sport, which comes from a Norse and/or Old English term meaning “stick of wood” which was reduced to the act of splitting that wood to make the ski or, again, skei.

As pronunciations were tweaked across language and time, the hard “sk” sound was sometimes adapted to the softer “sh” sound and that gave rise to the word sh**. How does that relate to cutting or splitting? Because it’s splitting from your body. So initially, it was actually a polite euphemism and not something vulgar. 

Even science came from skei, in the sense that splitting or divide came to be discerning the difference between and then understanding things. No doubt it was a bit of a process to come up with that one. 

6. Numerous World Class Runners Come From the Same Jamaican Town

There’s an old saying that goes “there must be something in the water,” and it’s generally used when something unusual occurs multiple times in a small geographic area.  Like if a particular town had an unusual number of really tall people, or famous artists. And you could apply that saying to Trelawny Parish, Jamaica as well because the town and surrounding area have given rise to a truly unusual number of incredibly fast people. 

With a population of under three million, Jamaica is smaller than many US cities. Despite that, world famous runners like Usain Bolt, Linford Christie, Donovan Bailey, Ben Johnson, Veronica Campbell-Brown, Merlene Ottey, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Shericka Jackson all hail from the tiny island nation along with literally dozens of other world champions. 

Of those, Bolt, Ottey, Campbell-Brown and many others come specifically from Trelawny Parish. In fact, 37 of Jamaica’s 78 Summer Olympic medals were won by athletes from Trelawny, despite the town having a population of only 75,000.

5. Fuller, Tucker, and Walker as Surnames All Come From the Same Job of Fulling

Once upon a time, a person’s last name was a reflection of their profession. Family names like Smith and Miller and Farmer are pretty easy to figure out. But the names Fuller, Tucker, and Walker all have a unique origin in that they, too, all stem from a profession, but it’s the same one.

The name Tucker comes from an old English word, tukere, meaning “to torment” or “to beat.” Walker, on the other hand, comes from old English wealcere, meaning “one who trampled cloth in a bed of lye or kneaded it to strengthen it.”

Now compare those to Fuller, which was an actual job more properly known as a fuller of cloth. A fuller of cloth had to prepare clothing by cleaning it and thickening it by beating it in water, which was known as either tucking or walking. And that’s how Tucker, Walker, and Fuller all came from the same source and essentially mean the exact same thing. 

The different usage of them seems to be geographic more than anything else, with Tucker in the southwest, Walker in the north, and Fuller in the southeast.

4. Dozens of Names Can Be Traced to Yohanan 

There are countless websites that will help you name a baby these days, and many have lists of the most popular baby names from the prior year. But arguably the most popular name in history is Yohanan, even if you’ve never heard it. That’s because of all the names that are derivatives of it, and the list is long. 

Yohanan is a Hebrew name, and it means “God is Gracious.” At least 33 names can be directly linked to Yohanan, and many of them are very recognizable. John, Jack, Shane, Sean, Jane, Janet, Jean, Evan, Hank, Ivan, Juan, Giovanni, Hanna, Hans and so on come from Yohanan originally. 

3. There Have Been at Least 8 Mathematicians Named Bernoulli 

If you’ve ever heard of Bernoulli’s Principle, or Bernoulli Numbers, or any of the eight noted mathematicians who were named Bernoulli, then you are familiar with the Bernoulli family. All of those Bernoullis are from the same place.

Jacob, Johann, and Daniel were arguably the most famous members of the family. Jacob was responsible for Bernoulli numbers, while his nephew Daniel (pictured above) gave us the Bernoulli Principle, and Daniel’s father Johann made important contributions to the development of calculus. 

In addition to these three there were two Nicolaus Bernoullis, two more Johanns and one more Jacob. The whole family was a dominant force in math from Jacob’s birth in 1654 until Johann III’s death in 1807. 

In a curious twist, the Curie family is also related to the Bernoulli’s as Pierre Curie was a descendant of Johann and he and his wife would go on to win a Nobel Prize for their work in physics. 

2. Philadelphia Was The Origin Of Many Popular Candy Brands

While there may not be a real life Willy Wonka, for a time the closest you could get to his curious factory was Philadelphia, of all places. By the beginning of the 20th century, Philadelphia was a candy powerhouse with numerous popular brands starting there including Whitman’s, Peeps, Mike and Ike, Dubble Bubble, Good & Plenty, and candy corn. Hershey was also started nearby, as were several others. 

So what made Philly, now notorious for cheesesteaks and cream cheese, the candy capital of America? Sugar. Philadelphia was a major port for the sugar trade back in the day. Molasses kept coming into the city and refineries were set up to make refined sugar. Local refined sugar provided a new opportunity for candy makers and it made sense to keep it all local.

1. Football, Basketball and Hockey Are All Linked to Canada’s McGill University

In the grand scheme of things, Canada is not usually recognized on the world stage as being a sports powerhouse outside of hockey. But despite that, Canada can lay claim to being the birthplace of not just hockey but two of America’s greatest pastimes, football and basketball. But it’s not just Canada that claims them. All three sports were either started or chiefly innovated at the same Canadian school: McGill University. 

In 1874, the first football game was played at McGill against Harvard. The Harvard team liked McGill’s rules so much they took them home and shared them with Yale before they spread across the nation. 

Although they didn’t invent hockey, McGill was the home of the first official hockey team and, as such, helped develop the official rules and gameplay.

Most famously, basketball was invented by McGill grad James Naismith. And yes, he was in Massachusetts at the time, but McGill still laid claim to the man.

Everything comes from somewhere. It’s a statement so preposterously obvious it’s rarely worth even making. And yet the implications of it are rarely explored. Where do you come from? Finding the precise time and place that humans began is no easy feat, and it’s the same for most life forms. But there are some things we can trace back with a fair degree of accuracy, often with surprising results.

10. Modern Cattle Can Be Traced Back to One Herd About 11,000 Years Ago

The average American eats 55lbs of beef per year, so there’s a lot of love for cow meat there. Our ancient ancestors never had that pleasure because, while there were herds of animals like aurochs back in the day, the modern cow as we know it never existed in the wild. We can actually trace our current world-wide cattle family back to a herd of 81 female animals that were bred nearly 11,000 years ago.

Researchers from across Europe analyze DNA samples from living cattle as well as from DNA extracted from bones taken from archaeological sites that date back to the beginning of farming as we know it. The differences in genetics seen in modern cattle could only exist if the original herd was limited to a size of about 80 animals which descended from the ancient aurochs which was kind of similar to a modern cow, but not exactly the same thing and certainly much bigger and wilder.

9. Domesticated Hamsters All Trace Back to One Pair in Syria

A lot of attention is paid to the domestication of both cats and dogs, the two most common house pets in the world. Most of us know that dogs were domesticated long ago from wolves, and cats seem to have domesticated themselves alongside mankind as an almost strategic move that ensured food and shelter. But humans do keep a lot of other animals as pets, like hamsters for instance. 

A wild hamster is probably not something most of us have ever come across, but they do exist and the modern domesticated hamster can be traced back to a specific breeding pair from Syria. Their story is a curious and remarkable one.

Jewish biologist Israel Aharoni had made it his mission to identify the animals listed in the Torah. The problem was that the animals didn’t have names, just very vague descriptions. And one animal that he had a special interest in had a name that translated to English as “Mr. Saddlebags.” The only description of it stated it was golden. Not much to go on. 

In 1930, Aharoni traveled to Syria and hired a hunter. They traveled the countryside looking for clues and then, on a farm, dug a hole and discovered a nest of small, golden animals. He had discovered hamsters. Mr. Saddlebags. 

Aharoni took the hamsters, and things quickly spiraled out of control. The mother ate several babies. A handful more escaped and were never found. But one pair of siblings bred, as hamsters tend to do. They became the Adam and Eve of the modern hamster world. That pair had 150 babies. They were transported to labs around the world and continued to breed. Today if you see a hamster in a pet store anywhere in the world, it’s almost guaranteed to be a descendent of that breeding pair.

8. White Mushrooms Can Be Traced to a Pennsylvania Farm in 1925

If you go to the grocery store looking for mushrooms right now, you will probably have a small handful of options, depending on how much variety your store has. But if they sell fresh mushrooms at all, then they’re going to be those white mushrooms sometimes called table or button mushrooms. They’re probably the most common type in the Western world and they can all be traced back to a single Pennsylvania farm in the year 1925.

Prior to 1925 mushrooms were chiefly brown. Your local store may sell brown cremini mushrooms next to white button mushrooms today and they look identical except for the color. That’s because they basically are. 

Louis Ferdinand Lambert was growing brown mushrooms at Keystone Mushroom Farm when he discovered a white one in the mix. It was a mutation, just a random chance. But he was an amateur mushroom scientist in the making, so he took that one back to his lab and cultivated the spores. 

The white mushrooms grew faster and were more uniform in shape and size. By 1933 it was the leading mushroom crop in the country and soon tens of millions of pounds were being produced each year. Customers were more attracted to the color and shape and it’s still the most popular mushroom today, all thanks to one little mutant in 1925.

7. 200 Million Rabbits in Australia Came From Just a Handful in the 1800s.

Australia is home to a wild rabbit population of around 200 million. Is that a lot of rabbits for a country the size of Australia? Definitely, when you consider it’s supposed to have none. As one of the many invasive species that has caused problems down under, rabbits were never meant to be there in the first place. Those 200 million all come from a handful that were released in the year 1859.

Though the animals had been on the continent as early as 1788, it’s believed that either 13 or 24 of them were let loose in 1859 from the farm of settler Thomas Austin. He had let the animals run in his yard and may have set them free for hunting. Obviously he didn’t manage to hunt them all. 

Australians have been fighting the losing battle against rabbits ever since. In the late 1800s they were killing two million per year and getting nowhere. Most famously they tried to erect a rabbit-proof fence across the entire country which is effective against larger animals but did not work on the rabbits. They were already on the far side of the fence before construction was finished.

6. Golden Retrievers Come From Two Dogs Named Nous and Belle

According to the American Kennel Club, the Golden Retriever was the third most popular dog breed in America in 2021. It’s consistently in the top ten breeds, in fact. They’re loveable and a bit goofy and they seem to make good family dogs. The entire breed can also be traced back to two specific dogs named Nous and Belle in the year 1868.

A Scotsman named Sir Dudley Courts Marjoribanks was the owner of the first of the breed, the dog named Nous who was said to be a yellow retriever of some kind. The original story was that Nous was a Russian circus dog but there’s no evidence of that being true. The real story seems to be that he was just out walking one day, saw the dog, and bought it off a cobbler.

Sir Dudley, as a breeder, kept detailed breeding logs. The records are still available today which show that he bred the dog with another named Belle, a Tweed Water Spaniel, in 1868 and they had a litter of four puppies. The resulting mix of Retriever and Water Spaniel made a light-coated sporting dog that clearly struck a chord with people. 

5. South Dakota’s Mountain Goats Come From Six Escaped Canadian Goats

Mountain goats, more properly known as Rocky Mountain Goats, can be found across Western Canada and the United States. Their population estimate is somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000. The ones found in the Black Hills can all be traced back to six goats from Canada. They were gifted to Custer State Park back in 1924 but goats being goats; they were not content to stay in their pens.

The six goats escaped and made their way into the wild where they took up residence in the granite mountains. That number is up over 200 today with no sign of slowing down any time soon. 

4. A Majority of Macadamia Trees Can Be Traced to One Australian Tree

Hawaii is famous for a lot of things from beautiful beaches to the luau. Macadamia nuts are also huge in the state with 40 million pounds being produced in 2019. While the bulk of macadamia nuts in the world come from Australia and South Africa, their origins are not so diverse. Seventy percent of all the macadamia nuts in the world can be traced to one single tree in Australia. 

Biodiversity in plants is a big deal. The lack of diversity in bananas cause an entire strain of them to die out once already, so this field is of great interest to scientists. When trying to trace the origins of macadamia trees they tested samples from farmed trees in Hawaii and wild ones in Australia and found they all linked back to a very small population on a private island called Moloo. The genetic differences between trees was so small that they believe they all probably descended from the same individual tree. 

3. Most Thoroughbreds Can Be Traced to the Darley Arabian

When a horse proves itself on the racetrack, it often gets retired to life as a stud where breeders try to continue and improve upon his genetic line. No horse seems to have done a better job of that than the Darley Arabian.

There are 500,000 Thoroughbred horses in the world. Thoroughbred, which is sometimes used as a synonym for “purebred,” is more properly a distinctive breed of race horse. These are typically considered the best racehorses in the world and nearly all half million can trace their lineage back to 28 specific horses. And among those, 95% of all males can be traced to one specific stallion – the Darley Arabian. 

Thomas Darley was said to have purchased, or maybe stolen, the colt from a sheik in Syria. The horse’s name was Manak or Manica. Many famous horses were sired by the Arabian back in England and it’s said the horse lived to be 30, which is a pretty advanced age for a horse. 

2. Almost 150,000 Faroese People Are All Descended From One Guy

The Faroe Islands are located in the North Atlantic Ocean near Iceland. There are about 158,000 people who live or have lived there and a stunning 149,000 of them can all trace their lineage back to the same man. The family reunions must be epic.

The prolific ancestor of most of the Faroese Islanders is known as Clemen Laugesen Follerup. Back in the 17th century he had 23 children. That turned into 66 grandchildren in 27 villages. 

Back in 2006, the people of the island were registered in something called the Genetic BioBank, a sort of national registry of genetics for the Faroese people. The computer program kept reading errors because everyone it registered turned out to be a cousin of everyone else. 

1. Blue Eyed People Can Be Traced to One Ancestor

Blue eyes are the second most common eye color in the world, though only about 10% of people have them. The color itself is a genetic mutation and scientists have traced it all the way back to a single common ancestor that lived between 6,000 and 10,000 years. Back then there were only brown eyed people. Mutation in a specific gene that governs eye color occurred in one individual and was passed down through the generations to the 10% of blue eyed people who exist today. 

The gene mutation worked in a way that switched off the brown allele for the affected individual and their ancestors. Basically, the option for brown eyes was removed because the body’s ability to produce melanin is reduced due to the mutation. That means brown eyes can’t fully form and you get blue eyes instead. There’s no genetic advantage to the mutation, but there’s no disadvantage either, and it seems to be one of those random chance things that pops up in nature.