….Things Aren’t What They Seem
1. Apparently, fortune cookies were invented by the Japanese even though everyone associates those tasty after-dinner snacks with China. According to a story in the International Herald Tribune, fortune cookies may have been invented in the late 19th century in Japan where they were originally called tsujiura senbei, or fortune crackers.
2. The Italians can’t take credit for inventing pizza. Pizza was actually created in Greece where the early Greeks baked large, round and flat breads that they adorned with oil, herbs, spices and dates. Pizza really took off in 1889 when Queen Margherita toured her Italian Kingdom, and saw many people eating a large, flat bread. Margherita had one of her aides bring her one of these pizza breads. She loved pizza, and would eat it every time she was out amongst the people.
3. Canadians invented basketball and the telephone. James Naismith, a native of Almonte, Ontario, created the game while teaching phys-ed at Springfield College in Springfield, Mass. The telephone, meanwhile, was invented by Brantford, Ontario’s Alexander Graham Bell, even though Italy’s Giuseppe Marconi claimed credit.
4. Google didn’t invented the pay-per-click concept even though AdSense has become the most lucrative way to make money online. In fact, CPC is the brainchild of Bill Gross, who started Overture Services. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin “borrowed” Overture’s business model as they scrambled to figure out a way for their popular search engine to generate revenue. Gross sold Overture to Yahoo! for $2.2-billion in 2003, while Google is currently worth $158-billion.
