How a 19th-century slave kickstarted the world's vanilla-farming market

By the 19th century, the vanilla plant had long been used as a flavor, but it was generally gathered wild. That's because it's devilishly hard to farm. As this fascinating piece by Dan Nosowitz in Atlas Obscura notes, vanilla plants have a very small window where pollination can occur, and no-one's quite certain how vanilla plants are pollinated in the wild. — Read the rest