Audrey Servos, age 12, of St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada, for her question:

Who discovered popcorn?

The early civilizations of the Old World had to get along without our kind of fat, golden corn. The ancient stories that mention corn actually refer to the grain we call wheat. Our kind of corn is a plant native to the New World and was unknown elsewhere until Columbus discovered the Americas. The explorers that followed him here found a surprising number of plants they never dreamed existed. In fact, half the  plants of the modern world originated in the Americas.

The American Indians were growing crops of corn thousands of years ago. Modern experts still are uncertain when our corn originated or which wild cereal grasses were its ancestors. But the Amerindians were growing many different types of corn ages before Columbus. They were also growing a special kind and cooking it to make its puffy kernels pop open. This wonderful idea, invented by the original inhabitants of Central America, was improved upon by the settlers from the Old World. The result is the delicious, crunchy treat that we call popcorn.