Posts from May 17, 2026

On 17 May 1527, Pánfilo de Narváez departed Spain with 600 men to colonise the Gulf Coast of Florida. By 1536, four of them had made it back. The rest died in swamps, hurricanes, arrow attacks, and on a barrier island in Texas that the survivors named the Island of Misfortune.

Almost every vineyard in Europe today dates from after the 1860s. The reason is a tiny American insect called phylloxera, which arrived with well-meaning botanists and proceeded to kill nearly every grapevine on the continent. There is still no cure.