Banana Trivia -Bananas have a curious way of capturing everyone’s imagination...

Bananas have a curious way of capturing everyone’s imagination. They can really play on your mind if you have a sense of humour, a bent for the extraordinary or a passion for trivia. This is the section to delve into for all those weird and wonderful facts about bananas, fun stories from around the world. In the United States town of Council Bluffs in Iowa, it was against the law to sell bananas without warning the buyer on the dangers of casting the peels on the footpath. Bananas are grown Iceland.

The fruit is grown in greenhouses heated by water pumped up from volcanic underground springs. Angel Castro, Father of Fidel Castro, was a banana plantation owner. When young, Fidel tended the bananas on his father’s 10,000 acre estate.

 The sap of the fe’i banana is a reddish colour and was once used by missionaries to make copies of the Bible by dipping bamboo pens in the red sap. In the former Belgian Congo European soldiers during colonial times used the sap from the banana plant to heal wounds made by arrows of the natives.

 A half eaten banana was sold on the Internet auction site Ebay for US$2500, with the money going to charity. The other half of the banana was eaten by a British television presenter. The successful bidder was a United Kingdom stockbroker.

 In the 17th and 18th centuries it was considered bad luck to carry bananas on board a sailing ship. Back then, ships undertaking transatlantic crossings would stop at tropical islands to replenish their provisions of food and water.

 Passengers and crew would purchase wooden crates of bananas from the locals and bring them abroad. These crates often harboured bugs, spiders, vermin and snakes that would make their way into the bilges of the ships, multiply, and then find their way into the captains’ quarters. It is believed the captains circulated rumours that bananas were bad luck in an attempt to keep unwanted exotics off the ship.

 An urban myth propagated by those opposed to the formation of the European Union is that the European Commission had decreed that bananas destined for the European market must be straight, not curved as nature intended. This myth originates from one aspect of EU Regulation 2257/94 that states that ‘bananas must be free from malformation or excessive curvature of the fingers”.

In fact the European Commission was asked by national agriculture ministers and the banana industry to draft legislation to establish uniform banana quality standards, and did so after extensive consultation with the industry. There are in excess of 500 banana varieties in the world. They come in all shapes and sizes, from small finger fruits to purple plantains. Bananas are harvested green because they keep ripening even after they are picked. Unlike most other fruits that grow on trees, bananas grow on plants. The phrase 'going bananas' was first recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary, and is linked to the fruit's 'comic' connections with monkeys.
Source:australianbananas.com.au