Thousands of years after apples spread from their ancestral homeland in central Asia into Europe, a legendary golden apple is said to have sparked the Trojan War. Then the Romans mastered the art of grafting apple trees to feed soldiers in the far-flung empire.

Since then, apples have been enshrined in Celtic rituals, Christmas trees and imagery, Persian poetry and Turkish folklore. Eventually, a person could be "rotten to the core" or "the apple of someone's eye." And, of course, an apple a day really can help keep the doctor away.