It's National Banana Day, so we've got the story of people in the UK who went to great lengths to simulate having bananas when the real deal was off limits during World War II.
In Rambouillet, France, a startup is developing street lights that are bioluminescent - they’re powered by bacteria that glow. Plus: around this time in 1965, a woman sees a car selling for "1,395 bananas" and shows up at the dealership with actual fruit.
On this day in 1993, two new countries were born out of the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. The Czech Republic and Slovakia spent months negotiating all of the old country's assets, even which side got which verses of the national anthem. Plus: many of us have tried to learn new skills during our extra time at home. Anna Chojnicka was one of them, and the skill she chose was to make art out of bananas.
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have found a way to cover bricks with a special coating so they can store electricity, essentially turning bricks into batteries. Good news for the third little pig! Plus: Koji Kasatani is wowing the world with hyperrealistic, playful art made from ceramic bananas.
It was on this day in 1876 that the U.S. first fell in love with the banana, when it was introduced at the World's Fair in Philadelphia. Though, back then, eating a banana was quite a bit different than it is today. Plus: on National Doughnut Day, we mark the moment in 2012 when festival-goers in Ukraine proved doughnuts were as good for art as they were for snack time.
Artist Itsuo Kobayashi has been keeping an illustrated food diary since 1980, drawing and describing each meal, the ingredients, the price and how it made him feel.
The busiest travel season of the year is getting underway, so here's a story about a vehicle right out of Richard Scarry’s Busytown: the Big Banana Car, which is a 15 foot long banana with four seats on the frame of a Ford F-150. Plus: the Volkspod is a motor scooter made with upcycled parts from old-school Volkswagen Beetles!
Today is the start of the Banana Split Festival in Wilmington, Ohio, where the banana split was born. Of course, if you were in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, locals would point out their town had banana splits three years before Wilmington.
Pro tip: you save money when you buy bananas by the each.
Five lines worth remembering from the past week.
