This is an IHeart podcast.

Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, A production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

A fruit is a delicate thing.

Once it becomes ripe, a ticking clock begins.

How long will it last before an animal devours it?

Will it start to rot?

Or will it drop off and vanish into the dirt?

This is a calculation built into the genes of millions of plants. The sweet exteriors of fruits protect their seeds and

incentivize animals to eat and spread the plant far and wide. We sometimes forget that the foods

we consider ubiquitous have a very specific natural role, and it required

a lot of careful engineering to get them to where they are today. Some, even, had to be

invented from whole cloth. Take the sweet orange. Its first mention in writing comes from

Chinese literature of the 3rd century BC. It's a hybrid fruit that seems to have originated

in East Asia before spreading to the Middle East, Europe, and the rest of the globe. Along the way,

it spawn varieties like the Blood Orange and the Naval Orange, and its popularity speaks for itself.

However, as with all fruits, preservation was a significant problem throughout

recorded history. Limes, a sister fruit of the citrus family, became well known as a treat

for sailors at sea, but oranges proved to be somewhat more difficult to transport between continents.

Even after Christopher Columbus brought lime seeds to the Caribbean and introduced citrus fruits,

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