If you're in the vicinity of some yogurt right now, go grab it. Maybe you've got one in your

fridge, perhaps you're listening to this at a grocery store or bodega. Find a container,

flip it over, and you are all but guaranteed to see these two words listed in the ingredients.

Lactobacillus Bulgaricus, Or maybe L. Bulgaricus, for short.

Lactobacillus Bulgaricus is a bacteria that makes milk ferment, and perhaps you've gleaned from the

name, it has strong ties to Bulgaria.

Legend has it that this magical bacteria that turns milk into yogurt was born in the Balkans.

Bulgarians say that the climate, flora, and fauna of the Balkans is just right for this invisible organism to thrive.

It lives in the dewdrops of leaf tips, in the stomach linings of the mammals who roam

the hills.

And the humans who have called these mountains home have been using this bacteria to make

yogurt for millennia.

But it wasn't until the turn of the century, about 125 years ago, when the world started

paying attention to this region's bacteria, because they noticed something miraculous.

The people who were eating this yogurt every day, Bulgarian sheep farmers, were living past 100.

And this is really where our story begins.

In 1905, a Bulgarian decided to give this yogurt a closer look, and I mean really close.

He put a sample of Bulgarian yogurt under a microscope,

and through the lens, in his petri dish,

he discovered the bacteria that started it all.

I'm Eliza Rothstein, and this is Atlas Obscura,

a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

...