Agriculture

During the Siege of Leningrad (1941–1944) in World War II, at least nine Soviet botanists starved guarding a seed bank of 250,000 food crop samples. They refused to eat a single one—rice researcher Ivanov died amid thousands of bags of rice.

Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, built around 12,000 years ago, features T-shaped stone pillars weighing 10–20 tons each. It predates agriculture, suggesting humans first gathered not for food but for religious reasons.

Corn's ancestor is teosinte, a plant resembling foxtail grass with almost nothing edible. Humans spent centuries on selective breeding, picking the best mutations, to create modern corn. Today, a single corn kernel has more nutrition than an entire ear of ancient teosinte.