Those yellow, and white, kernels of corn that pop when heated took an interesting journey to become a favorite snack food. October is National Popping Popcorn Month. Americans consume some 14 billion quarts of this tasty treat each year.

There is evidence of popcorn throughout the history of the Americas. Popped kernels, in New Mexico and Utah caves, were found to be up to 5,600 years old. Some unpopped kernels still popped. French explorers discovered popcorn being made by the Iroquois Native Americans. Besides as a food, it has been used as a decoration on clothes, ceremonial embellishment, and for decorating. The fluffy popcorn we know today is, in part, the result of thousands of years of careful cultivation of a few different strains of corn by the early tribes of the Americas. Improvements in cultivation, marketing, uses and flavor, continue today.

As colonists moved about North America and as the United States of America came to be, people began to adopt and use popcorn m...