Each trail starts somewhere ordinary and ends somewhere you would not expect. Every step says why one article leads to the next.
Coffee to Lloyd's of London
4 articles · 3 connections
Start
Coffee
Coffee spread through Europe in coffeehouses.
After the first coffeehouses opened in the Ottoman Empire, they appeared in Venice in 1647 and soon in Oxford and London, where they became places to trade news.
Source: Coffee links to Coffeehouse on Wikipedia.
One London coffeehouse, Lloyd's, catered to the shipping trade.
Edward Lloyd's coffee house, opened in 1686, drew sailors, merchants and shipowners, and Lloyd kept them supplied with reliable shipping news.
Source: Coffeehouse links to Lloyd's Coffee House on Wikipedia.
Step 3 of 4
Lloyd's Coffee House
Insurance deals struck there became Lloyd's of London.
Underwriters met at Lloyd's to insure ships and their cargo, and their business grew into the Lloyd's of London insurance market.
Source: Lloyd's Coffee House links to Lloyd's of London on Wikipedia.
Destination
Lloyd's of London
Why it’s unexpected: One of the world's best-known insurance markets is named after a seventeenth-century coffee house.
All trails
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How trails are made
Every step follows a link that exists in the earlier article on Wikipedia, and every explanation restates what the articles themselves say: no step is a guess. Trails are written by hand and checked against Wikipedia automatically.