In 1957, as a joke, the BBC TV program Panorama reported a bumper harvest from the “spaghetti trees” of Ticino, Switzerland, thanks to a mild winter and the “virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil.”

Britons at the time knew pasta mainly as canned spaghetti with tomato sauce; hundreds of viewers called to ask for advice about growing their own trees.

The BBC reportedly told them to “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.”