Westerners didn't encounter sushi until the mid-1800s

A television show helped popularize sushi in the US in the 1980s

"Shogun," a miniseries released in 1980, followed a British sailor's journey through 17th-century Japan. Nearly a third of American households watched its five installments, and it was used as an instructional text in classrooms throughout the '80s, inspiring a wave of American interest in Japanese culture, including sushi.

The first sushi bar in the US opened in the 1960s in Los Angeles

Kawafuku opened in the city’s Little Tokyo neighborhood in 1923 and installed its sushi bar in the mid-1960s. The restaurant primarily sourced local seafood, including abalone, though it also imported fish from Japan, attracting many Japanese expatriates.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

The rice in sushi wasn't originally intended to be eaten

In Southeast Asia in the third century, rice, mixed with salt, was used to preserve fish for several months. The rice was considered too salty to eat and was often thrown away, though adventurous eaters, over time, began eating the rice. In 16th-century Japan, rice was often mixed with vinegar rather than salt, a practice that eventually led to the modern version of sushi. “Sushi” roughly translates to “vinegared rice.”

Norway is responsible for salmon sushi

Japanese sushi did not include salmon until the mid-1990s because Pacific salmon was known to contain parasites. Norway, meanwhile, had an abundance of Atlantic salmon, which was safe to eat raw. The country smelled an opportunity and launched Project Japan, which successfully convinced the country that Atlantic salmon was safe to include in its cuisine.

Chef Hanaya Yohei invented modern sushi in the early 1820s

The enterprising chef created nigiri sushi—fresh fish placed on top of vinegared rice balls that are then hand-molded together—as a way to quickly serve fish to busy Edo workers who could take their food to-go.

Sinaloan sushi is a Mexican take on the Japanese classic

Sushi became popular in Mexico in the early 20th century, thanks to Japanese immigrants who settled in Sinaloa, a Mexican state that runs along the Pacific Ocean. The region’s modern-day sushi blends both cultural traditions, evident in items like the Mar y Tierra roll, which includes carne asada and shrimp.

Conveyor belt sushi was invented in 1958

Yoshiakai Shiraishi had trouble staffing his sushi restaurant with waiters. When he saw a conveyor belt moving beer bottles at a brewery, he realized the technology could solve his problem. He unveiled his innovation at his Osaka restaurant in 1958, introducing a style, kaitenzushi, that would be replicated by others—and contribute to sushi’s growing popularity.

A Netflix documentary ignited an omakase sushi craze

Before 2012, edomae omakase was an expensive sushi experience that was not particularly popular in the US. That changed with “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” a 2011 film about the 85-year-old owner of Sukiyabashi Jiro, an omakase restaurant with three Michelin stars, that earned rave reviews. Demand for omakase exploded, and restaurants responded by raising their prices.

The surprising economics of sushi

How exactly does a patron of a sushi restaurant in Omaha, Nebraska, get to eat fresh fish caught off the coast of Japan? This episode of the Freakonomics podcast answers this question and explains the impressive feat. Listen to learn about the tricky economics and time-sensitive process behind importing fresh catches to sushi-lovers across America.

The US used military pressure to force Japan to open to foreign trade in the 1850s

Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Edo Bay (now Tokyo Bay) with heavily armed warships, pressuring Japan to open its ports. His expeditions led to the 1854 Treaty of Kanagawa, which opened two ports for supplies and established formal US-Japan relations. Full commercial trade followed later under the 1858 Harris Treaty.

Sushi contains cooked or raw fish, and comes in various rolls and styles

In the US, most sushi restaurants serve maki and uramaki, which feature fish wrapped in rice. But those are far from the only styles of sushi out there.

Globalization is increasing the demand for cheese

The increased popularity of Western cuisine has affected the cheese market in historically cheese-averse regions like East Asia. Japan has gotten particularly excited about exploring what cheese has to offer, with festivals and creative fusion dishes featuring the versatile ingredient.

Sushi apprenticeships often last for at least 10 years

Sushi is often treated as a precise art form, with master chefs taking on apprentices who must slowly earn the responsibility of preparing the food. In the video below, Oona Tempest, an apprentice at Tanoshi Sushi NYC, explains what the years-long process entails.

What Americans ate after WWII

Returning from World War II, the American cultural landscape saw a vast number of changes. Cuisine, in particular, diversified and modernized thanks to traveled soldiers and wartime innovation. From inventions like powdered cheese to the popularization of instant coffee and Chinese food, explore the changes to the American food industry that continue to influence what we consume today.

Many early Chinese restaurants were aimed at travelers

As trade expanded throughout China's north and south in the 12th century, restaurants opened to offer traveling tradesmen their home region's cuisine while they were on the road: southern cooking for people visiting the north, and northern cooking for people visiting the south.

Inspired by the burrito, wraps took over the food scene in the 1990s

Using the burrito as a model, World Wrapps in San Francisco pioneered the fast-casual concept with a menu of wraps filled with gourmet ingredients like sauteed salmon and saffron rice.

Natural food stores began sprouting up in the US in the 1960s and 1970s

Health food stores began opening in the ‘50s, though they were primarily focused on vitamins and holistic supplements. Natural food stores, however, provided pesticide-free produce and often relied on local farmers for their products. One of the first was New Age Natural Foods, in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, which opened in 1965.

'Vacation' wasn't common for Americans until the mid-1800s

Although we now consider vacation to be an integral part of the summer season, the concept didn't exist in the US until the middle of the 19th century. Even then, it was still a luxury and didn't become a middle-class norm until the early 20th century.

Danish cookies became a treasured Lunar New Year gift, thanks to their unique tin container

Hong Kong experienced an economic boom in the 1970s, which led to snacking, including on Western foods, becoming a cultural norm. Kjeldsens butter cookies became a popular treat, and their packaging, a distinct tin container, presented them as more refined than a simple snack. Instead, they were considered a worthwhile present for Lunar New Year.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

Western swing merged country with jazz

For as long as country music has been set to record, its artists have experimented with the genre’s boundaries. Look no further than this track from 1946, Bob Wills’ “Roly Poly.” The song is a classic example of Western swing, a country subgenre that blended country and jazz.

Traveling yogis spread the practice across the US

After a 1923 Supreme Court decision ruled that Asians were ineligible for citizenship, many South Asian immigrants had relatively few job opportunities and began moving around the country teaching yoga and spirituality. At the time, yoga was viewed less as a physical practice and more as a mystical one, something many of the teachers embraced to attract students. South Asians regained the right to citizenship in 1946.

How Western psychedelics research fell to the wayside

Psychedelics' modern era began when LSD was discovered in the 1930s. By the 1950s, clinical trials were underway. US user experimentation outside of medical settings (and high-profile violence, like the Manson murders) inspired negative attitudes toward psychedelics, leading to use restrictions that prohibited companies from patenting psychedelic compounds. This strangled psychedelics' profitability until the 1990s when the government loosened its grip and psychedelics research began seeing a resurgence.

The Indigenous people of the central Californian coast made many advancements

The Indigenous people of the central Californian coast made advancements in basketry, small stone tools, the use of shell beads as currency, and plank canoes for seafaring. In the years before European contact, their numbers reach 25,000 across 150 settlements.

There's a legal loophole behind California Champagne

In the late 19th century, sparkling wine production took root in California before France began the fight to own the term “Champagne.” Many American winemakers already used it for easy recognition. The battle continued for over a century before reaching an agreement in 2005, stipulating that American sparkling wine couldn’t be labeled as Champagne unless the producer was already calling it such.

A free archive of firsthand historical documents from explorers of America

Maintained by the Wisconsin Historical Society, the American Journeys collection contains more than 18,000 pages of primary source documents—journals, letters, maps, and accounts written between roughly 1000 CE and the early 1800s. These include eyewitness records of the Norse arrival in North America, Spanish conquistador expeditions, and the Lewis and Clark journey. Browse this list of highlights where pages from the original texts are specified (clicking a link opens a PDF).

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

Volcanic activity may have triggered the Black Death by spewing gases that led to crop failures in Europe, thus forcing the import of grain ships with plague-infested fleas.

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

In 2026, Finland was named the world's happiest country for the ninth consecutive year based on its wealth, social safety network, and high life expectancy, among other factors.