I was having a conversation about this very topic with one of the invitees of my one of my neighbors in the parking lot of my apartment complex this very afternoon during a shish kabob cookout, so I did some Googling/Wikipedia'ing. Here are some partial results:
Marco Polo was born in the year 1254 (his exact date of birth is unknown, so I will be unable to light a candle on his birthday) and died on January 9, 1324. He is of course most famous for going behind the Great Wall of China and initiating trade relations between China and the Western World.
Banjos with fingerboards and tuning pegs are known from the Caribbean as early as the 17th Century. As some of my Math 111 students may remember from my problems for them on using carbon dating to establish authenticity of ancient artifacts as an application of exponential functions, this would pretty much put Marco Polo out of the running to have invented (or imported from Chinese culture - another hypothesis that initially may have seemed scientifically viable) the song "Dueling Banjos" for the banjo by about 300 years.
However, it is possible that the song was invented for another, older instrument circa 1300 AD and "ported" to the banjo. Unfortunately, a cursory internet search reveals that the song was composed in 1955 by Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, putting the aspiring musician Mr. Polo out of the running by about 500 years this time.
That's all for now. Next week, I hope to talk a little bit about the element manganese (if you don't know what that is, you might try Googling/Wikipedia'ing it) and the Lingerie Football League's Lingerie Bowl IX.
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