You know what goes well with birthday cakes? Sticks of burning whale fat. That’s what the earliest surviving Candles of Han China, around 200 BC, were made from. Evidence shows that in India, candles were being made around the same time from a residue of boiling cinnamon, which is definitely more appetising than whale blubber.

However, according to the history books, it was the Ancient Greeks who first combined cake with candles. The idea behind this was to represent the glowing moon in honour of Artemis, the Goddess of the hunt and the moon. It only became a birthday tradition to top the cake with an increasing number of candles in the 1700s, as every candle represented another passing year.