A history of apples would have to include some legendary figures -- because they were real people. In the 14th Century William Tell had to shoot with a crossbow an apple from his son's head to secure the freedom for his native Switzerland. Johnny Appleseed was born as John Chapman in 1774. He moved west with the frontier, planting apple trees wherever he travelled. People gave him the name Johnny Appleseed. A poem about him is printed in this pamphlet. The McIntosh apple was named after another real person. John McIntosh, the son of a Scottish immigrant, discovered a seedling tree in Ontario in 18 1 1 , By 1820 he was selling seedlings from his 'trees to other settlers. John learned to bud and graft and in 1835 grew apples known as McIntosh Red. By the turn of the Century the McIntosh apple had become very popular and it is still popular today. There may have been crab apples in North America before the arrival of the Europeans, but true apples were brought over from England, along with seeds and cuttings, and that was the start of apple growing on farms on this continent. by 1914 Ontario growers were confident that their province produced the best apples in the world. They experimented successfully with imported apple trees from Russia (the "Charlamoff"), Sweden (the "Astrachan"), Germany (the "Gravenstein"), France (the "Fameuse" or Snow), England (the "Duchess") and the US (the "Seek-no-further"). The apple is a very ancient yet constantly changing fruit.

New York City is often referred to as the BIG APPLE. The " Big Apple" was a term originally used by U.S. Jazz players in the 1930s to mean any large city, this planet or any large place, especially up North. (Source: Handbook of Harlem Jive, Dan Burley, 1944.) In 1937, the most popular jazz dance was "the big apple". The apple even appears in songs dating back to the Swing era: Benny Goodman popularized a jazzy tune called "Stealing Apples", while the Glenn Miller band with Tex Beneke and the Modernaires sang a song called "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree". This song was written at the time when many GIs went overseas during the Second World War. In it a girl reminds her soldier boyfriend not to sit under any apple tree with anyone else but her. Josephus, an ancient church historian had the answer to the question what the Sodom or Dead Sea Apple was. It was said to grow near Sodom and was fair in appearance but turned to smoke and ashes when plucked. In England the apple Cox Orange Pippin used to be very popular; no doubt there is a connection between pippin and pip; apple seeds used to be called "pips.' Newton claimed that the apple aided him in the d iscovery of gravity. "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." The saying refers to the 1 6th century belief that apples have curative powers. Indeed, in some European countries like Holland the average boy or girl is known to eat an apple a day. In North America the average person consumes about one apple every four to five days. A Spanish proverb puts the above in a different wording: "It will beggar a doctor to live where orchards thrive. " Apples contain 5 different vitamins (A, B l , B2, C and Niacin), 6 Minerals (Calcium, Phosphorus, Magnesium, Sodium, Iron and Potassium). The fruit is a good source of fibre with no cholesterol and about 80 calories. In an early romantic saying a young man woos his girl friend by calling her "the apple of my eye" William Shakespeare •knew how to go to the "core" of the matter very succinctly when he wrote in his famous tragedy Macbeth: "A goodly apple rotten at the heart; O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!