Margen
Vanilla comes from a fussy orchid. In its native Mexico it's pollinated by one particular bee, and without her the flower withers without setting a pod. So when Europeans took the plant to other colonies, it grew beautifully but barren: plenty of leaves, no vanilla.
On the island of Réunion, in 1841, an enslaved twelve-year-old named Edmond Albius found the answer. With a thin splinter he lifted the membrane separating the male and female parts of the flower and pressed them together. Fertilisation in a matter of seconds, by hand, flower by flower.
His method is still used today: almost all the world's vanilla is pollinated this way, by fingertip. He turned an impossible orchid into the second most expensive flavour on the planet. Edmond, meanwhile, died poor and all but forgotten.