Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

A full century after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Americans tasted bananas for the first time. At the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, foil wrapped bananas were sold for ten cents apiece.

Though the banana was a novel addition to the American diet in the late 19th century, people around the world had been eating them for hundreds of years. The earliest written evidence of the banana comes out of India in writings from the 5th century B.C. The plant was cultivated and transported throughout the tropics by traders, missionaries and settlers.

Bananas were brought to the western hemisphere in the early 16th century by Portuguese and Spanish colonists. They were later established in plantations throughout the Carribean islands and Central America.

The common name banana most likely originated in the coastal West African languages of Wolof and Malinke. Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus created the plant's genus name Musa, possibly from the Arabic word for banana, mouz or moz. Other sources claim that Musa is a commemoration of Antonius Musa (63-14 BC), the physician to the Roman emperor Octavius Augusts.

Radio Script > Banana