GRANNY MARIA ANN SMITH

In 1868, Australian sexagenarian Maria Ann Smith bought a crate of French crab apples. After she used them to bake pies, she discarded the scraps in a compost pile, and, later on, she noticed a sprout growing from that piles. She tended it for a while, and eventually it yielded more apples. Smith passed away in 1870, but her family continued cultivating the apple. Eventually, it grew into an orchard, and other farmers in New South Wales started growing it. In 1890, it won a cooking prize under the name Granny Smith's seedling, and after that, things really escalated. By World War I, Granny Smith apples were widespread. Now, according to Google Trends, Granny Smiths are the third most searched for of all apple varieties, after Honeycrisp and Gala. Search queries, of course, peak every October and November.