[Originally published in Proceedings of the Bristol Naturalists’ Society, New Series, vol. 3, part 3, 1882. Thanks to Desmond T. Donovan for bringing it to our attention.]
Mr. Tuckett’s attention had first been directed to the subjectof his communication by a remark made to him some time ago by Mr. Castle, hatter in St. Augustine’s Parade, to the effect that during the last twenty-five years the size of hats, as regards the dimensions of the head, had been gradually diminishing, the difference of the circumferential measurement during that period amounting to as much as half an inch.
Other hatters, both in Bristol and in different parts of England, were requested to communicate whatever information they might possess on the subject, and it appeared that this experience agreed with Mr. Castle’s.
Mr. Tuckett gave a tabulated form, drawn up by Mr. Castle from the hats supplied to him by Messrs. Lincoln & Bennet, the well-known London hatters, and showing the progressive rate of diminution since 1855, from which it appeared that the average size of hats sold by them had fallen from No. 7–1/25 in 1855 to 6–19/21 in 1880, the average shrinking in size being 1/7 in., or rather more than one size, which amounts to 1/8 in., the scale of measurement used by hatters being derived from the sum of the length and width of the head, divided by two, and is expressed in inches, and eights of an inch.
One hat manufacturer wrote: “Fifteen years ago the usual sizes of hats in England were from 6–3/4 to 7–3/8, and even 7–1/2 was not uncommon. But now, if a 7–3/8 hat was wanted, we should have to make a block purposely. The diminution in size has been attributed by some to the prevailing fashion of wearing the hair short; but as heads certainly average two sizes less than they did, and as the difference between long and short hair cannot amount to a quarter of an inch in length and the same in width, this solution of the matter is inadmissible.”
Dr. Beddoe produced evidence, collected for him by Mr. Garlich, hatter, of Castle Street, which very nearly agreed, as to the extent of the reduction, with that given by Mr. Tuckett. While in Scotland last summer, Dr. B. inquired of Mr. Kirsop, the principal hatter in Glasgow, what his experience was, and he fully corroborated what had been stated, so that the diminution appeared not to be confined to the southern portion of the islands.
Several explanations had been brought forward, but none were entirely satisfactory.
The most plausible of these rested on the different manner of wearing the hat, which was formerly drawn somewhat further down on the back of the head. Those which were based on supposed changes in the classes of people wearing hats did not appear to Dr. Beddoe to be of any value—the lower classes, who had the smallest heads, wore fewer stiff hats now than formerly.
There was a good deal of evidence, much of it collected by himself, pointing to a certain degree of physical degeneration in the population of large towns; and he thought it possible that heads as well as bodies might have dwindled somewhat; but the fact, if it were one, was not capable of proof.
_____________________
This article is republished with permission from the January-February 2012 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift! Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
I've been waiting for NASA's rover Curiosity to land safely so I can tell you that we now have Lincoln on Mars. Yes, Abraham Lincoln on the Red Planet.
The penny, a 1909 "VDB" penny, is used as a calibration target for the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) instrument, which is to be used to take extreme close-ups of rocks and soil. The penny, provided by MAHLI's principal investigator Ken Edgettt, is a nod to geologists' tradition to place a coin as a size reference in close-up photos of rocks.
Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Besides the penny, the MAHLI calibration target includes color chips, a metric bar graphic, and a stair-step pattern for depth calibration.
Even before The Pirate Bay and BitTorrent, people have been copying software. And along with that activity came anti-piracy public service announcements.
Here are two of our favorite anti-piracy ads of yore:
Don't Copy That Floppy
Produced by the Software Publishers Association in 1992, the video campaign starred actor M.E. Hart as "MC Double Def DP" (That DP stands for "Disk Protector") who warned kids "don't copy that floppy." The campaign was distributed to its target audience by mailing VHS to schools.
What happened to some the people who starred in the clip? Craig Dykstra, the Neverwinter Nights game designer from AOL, was indicted for secretly taping nude teenager at his home. Marja Allen is an actress who stars in the Kimchi Chronicles (she's half Korean)
Don't Copy That Floppy 2
Seventeen years later, SPA's progeny, the Software and Information Industry Association, released the sequel: Don't Copy That Floppy 2, also starring M.E. Hart reprising the older and hipper cyberspace rapper (he's now "Digital Protector" because, well, floppy disk had become obsolete by then)
You'd be surprised to learn that M.E. Hart is now an attorney who's fluent in Russian. Whodathunk, huh? And yes, you did see dancing Klingons. Director M.J. Vilardi explains why:
"Klingons have a highly developed sense of personal honor; they would find common theft, such as software or movie piracy, quite offensive. Personal honor is a concept that should come up more often as people debate the issues surrounding intellectual property."
And that guy Jeremiah Mondello who got put in jail for software piracy? He racked up $300,000 in profit selling pirated software on eBay.
More than two centuries ago, French engineer Jacques Vaucanson built the Digesting Duck automaton, a mechanical duck that could eat and digest grains, and then ... poop them out!
The 18th century was the golden age for a type of self-moving mechanical device called the automaton, and Vaucanson was the era's most famous creator. When he was 18 years old, Vaucanson built automata that served dinner and cleared tables for guests. Later, he built a breathing, flute-playing automaton, as well as one that could play the fife-and-drum. But Vaucanson's most popular creation was undoubtedly the defecating duck he built in 1733-1734.
Vaucanson's gold-plated copper duck could not only move and quack like a duck, but it could eat like one, too. The duck swallowed kernels of grain, and as Vaucanson explained, digested the food in its chemical stomach, then poop them out through a mechanical sphincter.
(L) Vaucanson, from Illustrierte Geschichte der Medizin/Richard Toellner (M) Photograph of lost original or imitation in ruined state/Musée du Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Paris (R) Reproduction in Musée des Automates de Grenoble
There was no shortage of viewers, who each paid a week's wage to see the duck. Voltaire even mused that "without the shitting duck of Vaucanson, you will have nothing to remind you of the glory of France."
After Vaucanson became a rich man, he sold all of his automata to collectors and the duck was soon lost to history ... until it was found languishing in a pawnbroker's attic more than a hundred years later. The discoverer brought the duck to a magician named Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin (who's now considered the father of modern magic, and from whom Houdini took his name). Robert-Houdan found out that the duck was actually a clever hoax: Vaucanson had built a special chamber inside it to store a preparation of dyed green breadcrumbs that people thought was duck poop!
Before he became famous, British novelist Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) worked as an architect. One of his more unpleasant projects was the relocation of an old graveyard to make way for the expansion of London. He arranged for the relocation of the bodies, but without their accompanying headstones. These he arranged in a circle around an ash tree in the St Pancras Churchyard. You can view more pictures of this tree, popularly known as the Hardy Tree, at the link.
We never see the mason's face. He moves smoothly from brick to brick, the trowel an extension of his body, his mind, his artist's soul. It's beautiful. But also tragic, as YouTube commenter Trumacron points out:
Just think of all the hard skilled hours that go to waste every time the Cool-aid Man shows up
Nabisco's "Daily Twist" feature highlights great twists of fate over history. To mark the landing of the Curiosity space probe on Mars, it showed the rover moving over the surface of an open Oreo cookie.
Here's your heartwarming story for the day: piranhas are plaguing the waterways near the Chinese city of Liuzhou. So the local government placed a bounty on them, offering 1,000 yuan--that's about $160 USD--for each captured piranha. Guess what happened next:
The local government of Liuzhou in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region has ended its hunt for rogue piranha fish after offering a reward which attracted thousands of hopeful fishers to local rivers. The quest to capture the troublesome fish — whose presence in the river is unexplained — has become farcical, with online retailers offering to sell and deliver piranhas to the region for 12 yuan (US$1.80) apiece. [...]
Ads offering to sell piranhas proliferated meanwhile on Taobao, China's leading online trading platform, with one vendor offering express delivery of piranhas for US$1.80 per fish from Ningbo in the coastal province of Zhejiang — some 1,600 kilometers from Liuzhou, according to state broadcaster China National Radio.
The House of Plantagenet ruled England, among other lands, from 1154 through 1485. In 1499, Edward Plantagenet was beheaded in the Tower of London, bringing his line to an end. The French city of Angers, the ancesteral home of the Planganets, is still peeved over the affair. It wants compensation from the current occupant of the English throne. Specifically, it wants Queen Elizabeth II's crown jewels:
“As redress for the execution of Edward, Angers today demands that the Crown Jewels of England be transferred to Angers,” reads a petition posted on the city’s official website.
Recalling 25-year-old Edward’s “unfair and horrible death” at the hands of henchmen working for Henry VII, England’s first Tudor king, the city believes it is owed an apology and 513 years’ worth of compensation.
This would amount to billions in today’s currency, but Angers is prepared to accept the jewels to cover it all.
Think of it as a cheap replacement for the mechanical bull that your wife made you move to the garage after you got married:
From Korea, for those who like to ride the horse in front of TV and in home comfort of their own space. For all family member, this home mechanical equestrian system will meet for all the family need. It help device to fitness you up! And reach the health goal! Live longer for now! Be your Ace Power!!
Bacon is so om nom nomily good, but can it be the food of the devil? Check out these images of the Bacon Demon, presented in our new and very nifty Neatorama gallery (all in one page, without generating multiple pageviews, mind you!)
The first is via Obvious Winner (does anyone know the back story?), the next set is from Larissa Sayer of Cheeky Raven's Art Blog, who created her version of the Bacon Demon (complete with pickle horns) from 2.2 lb of bacon as a birthday gift.
I take two weeks off and what happens? The amount of My Little Pony content on Neatorama drops to almost zero. For shame, guys.
In Skyfall, the next James Bond movie, Rainbow Dash is Bond, Princess Celestia is M and Twilight Sparkle is Q. Dash shall have her appletini shaken, not stirred.
Remember playing with a toy that creates patterns in sand or Play-Doh? Well, artist Gunilla Klingberg took it to the next level: she used a tractor outfitted with special treads!
During the six Apollo moon landings, astronauts left American flags planted into the lunar soil. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has surveyed the moon for the past three years, has revealed that all but one of them are still standing:
The photos from Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter (LRO) show the flags are still casting shadows - except the one planted during the Apollo 11 mission.
This matches Buzz Aldrin's account of the flag being knocked over by engine exhaust as Apollo 11 lifted off. [...]
Prof Mark Robinson, the chief scientist for the spacecraft's camera instrument, LROC, said in a blog entry: "From the LROC images it is now certain that the American flags are still standing and casting shadows at all of the sites, except Apollo 11."
The Arizona State University scientist added: "The most convincing way to see that the flags are still there, is to view a time series of LROC images taken at different times of day, and watch the shadow circle the flag."
"Personally I was a bit surprised that the flags survived the harsh ultraviolet light and temperatures of the lunar surface, but they did. What they look like is another question (badly faded?)"
At the link, you can see a satellite image of one of those flag shadows.
From what I've seen so far, I'm pretty excited about the new Neatorama! Yes, there are quite a few bugs still to be worked out, and we thank you for helping us identify them. Still, I have access to the back end and some of the plans of things yet to be rolled out, and when everything is launched and working it will be awesome! If you haven't taken a good look around, be sure to read Alex's tour of the new site, in which he introduces some new features you can try out. If you run into something that doesn't work as it should, let us know at bugs@neatorama.com. Our engineer Rommel (pictured below) has worked his butt off and is still at it, fixing the glitches one by one. Posting may be a little light for a few days while that happens. After all, he needs to sleep a few hours a day! Oh yeah, there are a lot of comments from the old site yet to be imported. That will take a while, and it's not top priority, but they will get here eventually. Meanwhile, you might find what you're looking for in the FAQ page.
Alex rightly gave Rommel credit for putting this new site together, but you should also know that Alex has been working on it for months, putting his vision to work. Several other sites had notorious redesigns in the past couple of years that didn't get a great reception from users (cough, cough). The redesign here at Neatorama is focused on you, the user. The new features have several purposes, mainly to 1. making reading the site easy and pleasant for everyone, and 2. make it interactive for those who want to participate in the Neatorama community.
This weekly column of mine normally goes up on Saturday, but that was the time we were just waiting for the new site to launch. Sunday I was busy figuring out how to use it. But I still want to remind you of the great features we put up last week in case you missed them. They will eventually go into the archives that we call The Best of Neatorama, which hasn't yet been imported to the new site, but will be here eventually.
Have you seen the remake of Total Recall in theaters now? Jill Harness got you ready for it with a look at the original novel and the first movie version in Things to Recall About Total Recall.
In the What Is It? game, the mystery item is a rope winder from a hardware store, it was expanded to the appropriate size and then rope was wrapped around it, the parts were then collapsed and the customer was left with a coil of rope. The first correct answer came from anonymous coward, who requested a donation to an animal shelter in lieu of a t-shirt. There were a lot of wonderful funny answers (you should read them all), but the prize for that goes to Phil and Buster, who said this is a tool for centering the hole in donuts. That's worth a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! Thanks to everyone who played, and check out the answers to all of this week's mystery objects at the What Is It? blog.
All of our regular social networking sites are still there as they always are, but the links to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and G+ have all moved down to the bottom of the main page. Join us on your favorite social site for further discussions and fun stuff you won't find here! And again, thanks for your patience while we fix things up. Like I said, when all the new features are rolled out, it's going to be awesome!
So you take pictures of Olympic divers all scrunched up in the middle of a difficult dive, reduce them in size, and paste them onto pictures of Olympic badminton players as if they are shuttlecocks. We've seen some goofy Olympics humor, but this takes the cake for being nonsensical yet funny. And there are twenty such pictures at Buzzfeed! Link
How well do you know your pop culture vampires? Test yourself with today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss! You'll be given 13 quotes from the books (not the movies), and you decide whether each line is from Bram Stoker's Dracula or Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. How hard can it be? Ha! I only scored 54%, probably because I've not read either vampire story. You will do better! Link
The woodland creatures are staging their own track and field events! This snail race may have been going on a long time before we joined them. Enjoy the latest in the Simon's Cat series from Simon Tofield. -via Laughing Squid
Usain Bolt set an Olympic record for the 100m dash at the Olympics last night, coming in at 9.63 seconds. That's mighty fast -for a human. But a cheetah named Sarah covered that distance in only 5.95 seconds!
Sarah's June 20 sprint is the fastest timed 100 meters ever run by anything on the planet, the officials said—though it was no suprise to Cathryn Hilker, founder of the Cincinnati Zoo's Cat Ambassador Program, who helped raise Sarah from a cub.
"Nobody can run like Sarah," Hilker said. "She's special. I always knew she could run under six seconds, but to see it happen like this is wonderful."
"She looked like a polka-dotted missile," added National Geographic photo editor Kim Hubbard. "I've never seen anything alive run that fast."
Cheetahs don't run to impress people. If you don't give them an incentive, they may do something like this. The Cincinnati Zoo race had cheetahs chasing a stuffed toy dog, an activity they have enjoyed before. See a video of Sarah in action at National Geographic News. Link -via the Presurfer
Jeremy Clarkson drives a Reliant Robin on the TV show Top Gear. The vehicle looks like a car, but has only three wheels, which means it is liscenced and taxed as a motorcycle. I laughed all the way through the segment, especially the stop at the mechanic shop. -via I Am Bored
A woman in Vancouver found a fish in her backyard. It had fallen out of a tree. Really.
Cindy Wilkinson got home on Monday to find a voice message from her friend Jan Bailey.
"She said, 'The strangest thing just happened. A fish just fell out of our cedar tree on to the ground.'" Bailey, who lives near Third Street and St. David's Avenue, had seen the fish make a dive worthy of an Olympian in her backyard. Her husband went out to investigate, and found the piscine drop-in covered in cedar needles but - incredibly - still alive.
It was an unusual looking fish, reddy orange and about 25 centimetres long. Bailey hauled out an old aquarium, filled it with water and put the fish inside. Then she called Wilkinson, who promptly called Lynda Taylor, another friend who knows her fish and has a big koi pond.
"I said, 'There's a fish that just fell out of a tree,'" said Bailey.
The women did their research and determined that the fish, now named "Lucky," is a Midas cichlid, and was most likely carried off by a heron or other large bird, then dropped alive into the tree. They would like to reunite the fish with its original owner. Link -via Arbroath
The SlowMo Guys took a tennis ball, soaked it in gasoline, and lit it on fire. Watching it served in slow-motion is a hoot, but don’t try this at home! Also, NSFW language. -via The Daily What
In the 17th century, all Europe was mad to have the little brown nut from Indonesia- nutmeg. Especially the Dutch, who monopolized its cultivation and, in doing so, built their tiny nation into one of the wealthiest trading powers on the planet.
BACKGROUND
Spices have been used by human beings for millennia for food preparation and preservation, medicine, and even embalming. But until modern times they were largely an Asian commodity, and controlling their flow to the spice-obsessed West meant power and fortune for the middleman. Over the centuries, these hugely successful merchants were the Phoenicians, Persians, Arabs, and later, Venetians.
Many of the great European explorations of the 15th century were driven by the need to bypass the Arab and Venetian monopoly. Crying, "For Christ and spices," the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama shocked the Arab world when he sailed around Africa's Cape of Good Hope in 1498 and showed up in the spice markets of India. It marked the beginning of the decline of Arab dominance and the rise of European power. For the next 100 years, as Spain and Portugal fought for control of the spice trade, the tiny countries of England and the Netherlands looked on in envy, waiting for their chance to get a piece of the action. It came first for the Dutch.
THE DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY
Always in danger of being overwhelmed by their much larger neighbor, Spain, the Portuguese began subcontracting their spice distribution to Dutch traders. Profits began to flow into Amsterdam, and the Dutch commercial fleet swiftly grew into one of the largest in the world. The Dutch quietly gained control of most of the shipping and trading of spices in Northern Europe. Then in 1580, Portugal fell under Spanish rule and the sweet deal for Dutch traders was over. As prices for pepper, nutmeg, and other spices soared across Europe, the Dutch found themselves locked out of the market. They decided to fight back.
In 1602 Dutch merchants founded the VOC -the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, better known as the Dutch East India Company. Other trading nations had formed cooperative associations like it but none were more successful than the Dutch. By 1617 the VOC was the richest commercial operation in the world. The company had 50,000 employees worldwide, with a private army of 30,000 men and a fleet of 200 ships. Yet even with that huge overhead, the VOC gave its shareholders an eye-popping annual dividend of 40% of their investments. How'd they do it? With sheer ruthlessness... and nutmeg.
MUST-HAVE
By the time the VOC was formed, nutmeg was already the favored spice in Europe. Aside from adding flavor to food and drinks, its aromatic qualities worked wonders to disguise the stench of decay in poorly preserved meats, always a problem in the days before refrigeration.
Then the plague years of the 17th century came. Thousands were dying across Europe, and doctors were desperate for a way to stop the spread of the disease. They decided nutmeg held the cure. Ladies carried nutmeg sachets around their necks to breathe through and avoid the pestilence of the air. Men added nutmeg to their snuff and inhaled it. Everybody wanted it, and many will willing to spare no expense to have it. Ten pounds of nutmeg cost one English penny at its Asian source, but had a London street value of 2 pounds, 10 shillings -68,000 times its original cost. The only problem was the short supply. And that's where the Dutch found their opportunity.
BRUTAL RULERS
Why was nutmeg so rare? The tree grew in only one place in the world: the Banda Islands of Indonesia. A tiny archipelago rising only a few meters above sea level, the islands were ruled by sultans who insisted on maintaining a neutral trading policy with foreign powers. This allowed them to avoid the presence of Portuguese or Spanish garrisons on their soil, but it also left them unprotected from other invaders.
In 1621 the Dutch swept in and took over. Once securely in control of the Bandas, the Dutch went to work protecting their new "investment." First they preempted any resistance by the islanders by executing every male over the age of 15. Village leaders were beheaded and their heads displayed on poles to discourage any rebels who might have survived. Within 15 years, the brutal regime reduced the Bandanese population from 15,000 to 600. Next the Dutch concentrated all nutmeg production into a few easily guarded areas, uprooting a destroying any trees outside the plantation zones. Anyone caught growing a nutmeg seedling or carrying seeds without the proper authority was put to death. In addition, all exported nutmeg seeds were drenched with lime to make sure there was no chance a fertile nut would find its way off the islands.
I'LL TAKE MANHATTAN
The Dutch had their monopoly ...almost. One of the Banda Islands, called Run, was under control of the British. The little sliver of land (a fishing boat could only make landfall at high tide) was one of England's first colonial outposts, dating to 1603. The Dutch attacked it in force in 1616, but it would take four years for them to finally defeat the combined British-Bandanese resistance.
But the English still didn't give up; they continued to press their claim to the island through two Anglo-Dutch wars. The battles exhausted both sides, leading to a compromise settlement, the Treaty of Breda, in 1667 -and one of history's greatest ironies. Intent on securing their hold over every nutmeg island in Southeast Asia, the Dutch offered a trade: if the British would give them Run, they would in turn give Britain a far-away, much less valuable island that the British had already occupied illegally since 1664. The British agreed. That other island: Manhattan, which is how New Amsterdam became New York.
MONOPOLY OVER
The Dutch now had complete control over the nutmeg trade. A happy ending for Holland? Hardly. By the end of the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company was bankrupt. Constant wars with rival powers, rebellion from the islanders, and just plain bad luck -some might say bad karma- eventually broke the back of the Dutch spice cartel.
Strike 1: In 1770 a Frenchman named Pierre Poivre ("Peter Pepper") successfully smuggled nutmeg plants to safety in Mauritius, an island off the coast of Africa, where they were subsequently exported to the Caribbean. The plants thrived on the islands, especially Grenada.
Strike 2: In 1778 a volcanic eruption in the Banda region caused a tsunami that wiped out half the nutmeg groves.
Strike 3:In 1809 the English returned to Indonesia and seized the Banda Islands by force. They returned the islands to the Dutch in 1817, but not before transplanting hundreds of nutmeg seedlings to plantations in India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Singapore. The Dutch were out; the nutmeg monopoly was over. While they would go on to have success trading steeland coal (not to mention tulips), the Netherlands declined as a colonial power, and they never again dominated European commerce.
____________________________________
The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader, a fantastic book by the Bathroom Readers' Institute. The 19th book in this fan-favorite series contain such gems like The Greatest Plane that Never Was, Forgotten Robot Milestones, Ancient Beauty Secrets, and more.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!
by F.F. Tuckett and Dr. Beddoe, F.R.S.
Mr. Tuckett gave a tabulated form, drawn up by Mr. Castle from the hats supplied to him by Messrs. Lincoln & Bennet, the well-known London hatters, and showing the progressive rate of diminution since 1855, from which it appeared that the average size of hats sold by them had fallen from No. 7–1/25 in 1855 to 6–19/21 in 1880, the average shrinking in size being 1/7 in., or rather more than one size, which amounts to 1/8 in., the scale of measurement used by hatters being derived from the sum of the length and width of the head, divided by two, and is expressed in inches, and eights of an inch.
This article is republished with permission from the 
by Gaby Wood
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From what I've seen so far, I'm pretty excited about the new Neatorama! Yes, there are quite a few bugs still to be worked out, and we thank you for helping us identify them. Still, I have access to the back end and some of the plans of things yet to be rolled out, and when everything is launched and working it will be awesome! If you haven't taken a good look around, be sure to read 
In the 
All of our regular social networking sites are still there as they always are, but the links to 
A woman in Vancouver found a fish in her backyard. It had fallen out of a tree. Really.
The following is an article from 
In 1602 Dutch merchants founded the VOC -the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, better known as the Dutch East India Company. Other trading nations had formed cooperative associations like it but none were more successful than the Dutch. By 1617 the VOC was the richest commercial operation in the world. The company had 50,000 employees worldwide, with a private army of 30,000 men and a fleet of 200 ships. Yet even with that huge overhead, the VOC gave its shareholders an eye-popping annual dividend of 40% of their investments. How'd they do it? With sheer ruthlessness... and nutmeg.
Strike 1: In 1770 a Frenchman named Pierre Poivre ("Peter Pepper") successfully smuggled nutmeg plants to safety in Mauritius, an island off the coast of Africa, where they were subsequently exported to the Caribbean. The plants thrived on the islands, especially Grenada.
The article above is reprinted with permission from 
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