Intriguing fact for today, from Gentleman’s Gazette:
“You might be surprised to learn that the wool used to manufacture a great many suits globally comes from sheep which are descended from just two rams and four ewes. In 1789, King Charles the fourth of Spain gifted six sheep to the Dutch East India Company; these sheep were then shipped to South Africa. In 1795, a British immigrant to Australia named John McArthur bought 26 of the offspring of these original six sheep and transported them back to botany bay. These 26 sheep were then bred to form the backbone of what’s now the Australian wool industry which has sheep that now number more than one hundred and twenty million.”
