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The Easter Island ‘heads’ have bodies buried in the ground.

  • Moai head on Easter Island
Moai head on Easter Island
Credit: Thomas Griggs/ Unsplash
Author Anne T. Donahue

December 14, 2023

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Adding to the rich legacy of Easter Island, archaeologists have uncovered full bodies underneath each structure. (But breathe easy: The bodies, like the heads, are made out of stone.) Known as moai, the figures were built by the Indigenous Rapa Nui people between 1100 and 1600 CE, but as time took its toll, the statues’ lower halves became increasingly hidden by sediment and rock. 

Located in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, Easter Island is one of the most isolated places in the world, and managed to escape colonization until the first European explorer arrived in 1722. The island itself was formed by three extinct volcanoes, which explains why the moai are carved from volcanic stone. The statues were built to temporarily contain the spirits of Rapa Nui chiefs, who were believed to become divine after death. The structures also sit on stone platforms called ahu, and some moai are adorned with circular red stones (pukao) that sit on their heads and represent topknots of hair. Excavationists have also found cremated and buried human remains at some ahu, suggesting they were a place of Rapa Nui death rituals.

The moai bodies were initially discovered by archaeologists in 1914, and in 2010, the Easter Island Statue Project began excavating two of the bodies. Since Easter Island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the moai are protected from humans, though the monoliths still battle erosion, rising sea levels, and the effects of forest fires. 

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A new moai was discovered on Easter Island as recently as 2023.

For archaeologists, Easter Island is a gift that keeps giving. In February 2023, the dry lake of Rano Raraku (a volcanic crater) revealed a new moai — one smaller than most. The figure was uncovered by three Chilean scientific volunteers, who were working to restore the crater’s marshland. Experts estimate that the statue, which was found on its side gazing up at the sky, is at least 200 to 300 years old. The discovery is exciting for both historians and the Rapa Nui people, as it suggests there are even more moai to be found.

People protested the Statue of Liberty.

  • Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty
Guilherme Bustamante/ Unsplash
Author Nicole Villeneuve

November 15, 2023

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Upon its unveiling on October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty became one of the most recognizable figures in the world. But at the same time that “Lady Liberty” became an enduring symbol of freedom, the statue also stirred controversy, as early women’s rights activists decried the irony of using a female figure to represent liberty at a time when American women did not yet have the right to vote.

Members of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association were denied tickets to the statue’s unveiling on Bedloe’s Island, now known as Liberty Island, on the grounds that they were “unaccompanied women.” So, instead, around 200 women who were involved in the fight for women’s rights chartered a boat, joining the nearly 1 million onlookers who had gathered on the harbor to celebrate. Protesters, led by pioneering suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage, held up signs and banners; “American women have no liberty,” one sign read. Gage called the statue a “gigantic lie, a travesty, a mockery,” and “the greatest sarcasm of the 19th century.” As the suffragists sailed around the periphery of Liberty Island, the official unveiling was attended by between 2,000 to 2,500 men — and, it’s believed, just two women, who were there with their husbands or fathers.

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Before pantsuits, women’s rights activists popularized pantaloons.

Before trailblazing politicians started wearing pants on the Senate floor, and Hillary Clinton popularized the pantsuit, women’s rights activists in the mid-19th century started their own forward-thinking fashion trend, “pantaloons.” As the women’s rights movement gained momentum, women began to advocate for dress reform as a way to challenge traditional gender norms. Elizabeth Smith Miller of New York, an advocate and financial supporter of the women’s rights movement, introduced a new look in the 1850s that gained a lot of traction: a knee-length skirt and billowy Turkish-style pants gathered at the ankle. Activist Amelia Jenks Bloomer, in her women’s newspaper The Lily, helped popularize the look, which also became known as “bloomers.” Although the look spread across the country, it was also ridiculed as masculine, and the trend eventually faded away.

T. rex didn’t stomp — it ran on its tiptoes.

  • Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton
Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton
Credit: © leonello—iStock/Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine

April 23, 2026

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Despite being arguably the most imposing creature to ever walk the earth, T. rex wasn’t always intimidating. Rather than stomp around as it does in Jurassic Park, for instance, the “lizard tyrant” (as the name translates to) ran on its tiptoes. This birdlike movement “would have been something like an 8-ton chicken clucking about in the barnyard,” Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh, told The New York Times. This makes sense, given that birds are descended from dinosaurs, but it still doesn’t square with our typical image of the apex predator.

“Seeing how these dinosaurs move is part of the same evolutionary story as how birds began running around on the ground,” said Adrian Boeye, also to the Times, who led the study that made these findings in February 2026. T. rex could weigh more than 10 tons, so its gait and movement have long been of interest to researchers. Boeye and his colleagues examined fossilized footprints and the lower leg anatomy in their study, determining that T. rex used short, fast strides to cover distances of up to 37 feet per second — somehow even more terrifying than if it had lumbered about the way most of us assumed it did.

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There were dinosaurs bigger than T. rex.

Though its name and iconic portrayal have long made it the king of the dinosaurs in our collective imagination, Tyrannosaurus rex wasn’t the largest dinosaur — and might not have even been the largest meat eater. Reaching about 21 feet if it stood upright and weighing in at up to nearly 20,000 pounds, T. rex certainly wasn’t diminutive. But it wasn’t as big as Spinosaurus, which could reach 46 feet long, or potentially the aptly named Giganotosaurus, though paleontologists have yet to discover full skeletons of either species and thus can’t confirm the size. Because they lived millions of years and thousands of miles apart, however, these three titans never clashed.

There’s a tunnel hidden behind Lincoln’s head on Mount Rushmore.

  • Lincoln on Mount Rushmore
Lincoln on Mount Rushmore
Credit: John Brueske/ Shutterstock
Author Bennett Kleinman

November 29, 2023

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Mount Rushmore is one of the United States’ most recognizable landmarks, but it contains a hidden secret: a 70-foot-long tunnel located behind Abraham Lincoln’s head. The tunnel was created as the entrance to a Hall of Records conceived by sculptor Gutzon Borglum. The idea was to build a chamber inside the monument that housed important documents such as the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, which would be accessible by an 800-foot granite stairway that stretched up the mountain from Borglum’s studio to the chamber. Work began on the Hall of Records in July 1938 as crews constructed the 70-foot tunnel. However, in 1939, Congress halted work on the chamber and instructed Borglum to focus on carving the presidents’ heads instead. Borglum died two years later in 1941, effectively putting an end to the side project and leaving the Hall of Records unfinished.

Almost 60 years later, the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Society brought part of Borglum’s vision to life, installing a box at the chamber’s entrance containing 16 porcelain enamel panels. The panels explain the story of the United States and include biographies of the presidents featured on Mount Rushmore. They were sealed beneath 1,200 pounds of granite capstone as an homage to Borglum’s initial vision.

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The Lincoln Memorial contains a misspelled word.

On May 30, 1922, the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in a grand ceremony on Washington, D.C.’s National Mall. The project was an incredible investment, costing around $2 million to build (more than $36 million today). Construction lasted eight years and required 38,000 tons of marble. Despite all the time and effort, one mistake went unnoticed: The word “FUTURE” was accidentally etched into the marble as “EUTURE.” The error is found in the text of Lincoln’s second inaugural address, which is carved into the north wall of the monument. The extra line was corrected, but the slightly off-colored stone is still visible today. 

During World War I, cats were used in the trenches to boost morale.

  • French soldier feeds a cat in the trenches, 1915
French soldier feeds a cat in the trenches, 1915
Credit: Trinity Mirror / Mirrorpix/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine

January 10, 2024

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The Great War was such a difficult time, some soldiers sought out the assistance and comfort of four-legged friends — including cats, who were used in the trenches to boost morale. Dogs, homing pigeons, foxes, goats, lion cubs, and even raccoons also served their countries as pets and mascots throughout the “war to end all wars,” and some even carried out official duties. Cats did a bit of both: Though most kitties simply kept their compatriots in good spirits by providing them with loyal companionship (and fending off rats), some also used their heightened sense of atmospheric pressure to detect bombs in advance.

Not all feline soldiers’ deeds have gone unnoticed. Among the 75 animals who have received the PDSA Dickin Medal, which was established in 1943 to honor the military service of animals, is a cat named Simon. He served aboard the HMS Amethyst from 1948 to 1949 and received the medal for “disposing of many rats though wounded by shell blast. Throughout the incident his behaviour was of the highest order, although the blast was capable of making a hole over a foot in diameter in a steel plate.” In a newsreel of the ship returning home, Simon is rightly referred to as “a hero in his own right.” 

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Calico cats are considered good luck.

That’s the reason maneki-neko are so often depicted as calicos. The “beckoning cat” figurines found throughout Japan and at Japanese and Chinese establishments around the world are intended as tokens of good fortune, with one of their paws raised high in a waving motion. This dates back to the tradition of Japanese sailors traveling with calicos to bring about safe passage — the multicolored cats were believed to be able to chase away storms and ancestral ghosts. In the United States and England, meanwhile, male calicos are considered especially lucky because of their rarity.

Flying cars have existed since 1949.

  • Moulton Taylor Aerocar
Moulton Taylor Aerocar
Credit: © richard neville/Alamy
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd

April 17, 2026

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The 21st century has seen a lot of ideas that sound like the stuff of science fiction become reality, including self-driving cars, bionic limbs, and real-time language translation devices. But one futuristic invention straight out of The Jetsons actually existed before that classic sci-fi series even aired: flying cars.

The first prototype of what was called the Aerocar was completed in 1949, the brainchild of pilot and former naval engineer Moulton Taylor. It wasn’t the first airplane-car hybrid ever built, but unlike its predecessor, the Airphibian, which had to leave its wings behind to hit the road, the Aerocar could tow all its equipment along. The conversion process took less than 15 minutes.

Taylor staged the Aerocar’s first test flight for investors in December 1949 in Longview, Washington. He pulled up to the demonstration driving the Aerocar in its road configuration, drove a couple of miles away to Kelso, Washington, and then flew it back. The investors were delighted, but the car was ultimately a commercial failure. After it was certified by the Civil Aeronautics Administration in 1956, Taylor managed to build only six units and never found a path to mass production, although Ford considered taking it on.

Still, the invention attracted a good deal of attention at the time, and was featured in glossy magazines and television programs. The design evolved through four models (Aerocar I-IV), with most of the six cars produced being the Aerocar I. Two of the six Aerocars produced went on to modest fame: One featured prominently in the sitcom The Bob Cummings Show, which ran from 1961 to 1962, and another was used for weather reporting by a radio station in Portland, Oregon, from 1962 to 1963.

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Hopping cars have existed since 1917.

Before the Aerocar could fly, the Curtiss Autoplane had to hop. Developed by engineer Glenn Curtiss and billed as “an aerial limousine,” the Autoplane made its debut on display at the 1917 Pan-American Aeronautics Exhibition. When it came to actually testing the thing, however, it never achieved more than a few “hops” — briefly lifting off the ground for short periods, but not achieving sustained flight. Still, catching any air at all is pretty good for 1917.

Medieval scholars say 536 CE was the worst year to be alive.

  • World globe
World globe
Credit: Random Person/ Unsplash
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd

November 27, 2024

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If you’re ever despairing about the state of the world, you can — at least, according to some scholars — be thankful it’s not the year 536 CE. To be fair, it’s medieval scholars, not 21st-century ones, who called 536 CE the worst year to be alive. But hear them out, because it sounds pretty bad. That year, a massive volcano erupted, historians believe, filling the air with volcanic ash. Of course, the majority of people affected by the disaster had no idea what was happening — they just knew it was very suddenly very dark for a very long time. The sun didn’t shine in Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia for 18 whole months — or as the Byzantine historian Procopius put it, “The sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year.” 

That summer, temperatures dropped more than 30 degrees in parts of Europe and Asia (it even snowed in China), so crops failed, leading to widespread famine, starvation, and economic stagnation. Many people who were literate wrote about this at the time — the sun disappeared overnight, after all — but academics didn’t take the accounts seriously until the late 20th century. In 1983, a volcanic eruption was theorized to be the source of the darkness, and researchers examining tree rings in Ireland in the 1990s noted a severe temperature drop occurred in the sixth century. In 2018, researchers published a study pointing to a volcano as the likely culprit after analyzing ice cores drilled from glaciers.

Historian Michael McCormick told Science that 536 CE wasn’t just the worst year up until then, but “the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive.” The climate still hadn’t recovered five years later when the first bubonic plague broke out, wiping out up to half the population of the Eastern Roman Empire. Two more eruptions in the 540s certainly didn’t help matters, either. The Late Antique Little Ice Age, as the period is known, lasted more than a century, clearing up between 660 CE and 680 CE, depending on the location.

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The eruption of Mount Tambora caused a year with no summer.

When Indonesia’s Mount Tambora erupted in April 1815, the resulting sulfur dioxide, ash, and dust blocked the sunlight and lowered global temperatures to the coldest in centuries. The following year, Europe and North America saw unusually chilly and wet conditions during summertime, leading 1816 to be known as the “year without a summer.” Even though the volcano erupted more than a year earlier, the volcanic ash was ejected into the upper atmosphere and carried around the planet by the jet stream, continuing to impact weather conditions. 

Helen Keller met 13 presidents.

  • JFK meeting with Helen Keller
JFK meeting with Helen Keller
Credit: © Circa Images—Glasshouse Images/Alamy
Author Michael Nordine

April 16, 2026

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The more you learn about Helen Keller’s life, the more remarkable it seems. The first deaf and blind person in the U.S. to earn a college degree, she also co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920 and met every president from the time she was 7 years old until her death more than 80 years later. 

The 13 leaders in question were Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. She met the same number of presidents as Queen Elizabeth II, who met every commander-in-chief from Truman to Joe Biden with the exception of Johnson. LBJ even awarded Keller the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 1964. At the ceremony, he described her as “an example of courage to all mankind” who “has devoted her life to illuminating the dark world of the blind and the handicapped.” 

Indeed, Keller often entreated the presidents to advocate for blind people, such as in 1947, when she wrote Truman a letter asking if he would “be so gracious as to send the blind of Japan a message of good-will warm from the heart of America whom you represent.”

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Helen Keller and Mark Twain were close friends.

A lot of quotes attributed to Mark Twain weren’t actually spoken by him, but this one was: “Helen Keller is fellow to Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, Homer, Shakespeare, and the rest of the immortals... She will be as famous a thousand years from now as she is today.” The feeling was mutual: “He [Mark Twain] has his own way of thinking, saying and doing everything,” Keller once wrote. “I can feel the twinkle of his eye in his handshake. Even while he utters his cynical wisdom in an indescribably droll voice, he makes you feel that his heart is a tender Iliad of human sympathy.”

The two became close friends after meeting at a luncheon held in Keller’s honor in 1895, and remained so until Twain’s death 15 years later. Built on mutual admiration and respect, their relationship spanned Keller’s college years (which Twain persuaded a friend to sponsor after learning of her financial hardships) and the death of the writer’s wife.

During the French Revolution, most of the country did not speak French.

  • Maximilien Robespierre
Maximilien Robespierre
clu/ Shutterstock
Author Darren Orf

December 7, 2023

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In the early years of the French Revolution, a revolutionary named Henri Grégoire conducted a survey of language throughout the fledgling republic and discovered a concerning truth: Most people living in France at the time didn’t actually speak French. On June 4, 1794, Grégoire reported the results of his survey to the revolutionary assembly, stating that there were no more than 3 million French speakers (11% of the population), and even fewer who were able to write it. In fact, the language was spoken more in the Netherlands and German states than it was in some parts of France.

Instead, a majority of French people spoke local dialects — for instance, a large southern population spoke Occitan, a Romance language influenced by Latin. This was seen as particularly embarrassing for the revolutionary cause, as three years earlier, diplomat Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand declared that “the multitude of corrupt dialects, the last remnants of feudalism, will be forced to disappear: necessity dictates so.” Grégoire’s survey only added fuel to the fire. Little more than a month after the survey, the revolutionary administration declared that “no public act may be written (or registered) other than in the French language, in any part of the territory of the Republic.” Luckily, France’s linguistic multiculturalism survived the prescriptive onslaught, and regional languages such as Occitan and Basque flourish to this day. 

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Bread played a major role in igniting the French Revolution.

While the cause of the French Revolution is complex and multifaceted, one of the major grievances against the French crown was the availability of bread. To put it mildly, bread was a staple of the daily diet of a typical 18th-century French citizen. In fact, bread was so central to French society that the king became known as “le premier boulanger du royaume,” or “the first baker of the kingdom.” It’s estimated that 60% to 80% of a typical wage-earner’s family budget went to buying bread alone. Yet as France’s population increased throughout the 18th century, the monarchy implemented disastrous regulatory policies while neglecting to increase domestic production of bread. Then, disaster struck when a severe winter in 1788 delivered low crop yields, sending the price of bread soaring. With most of the French population living without sufficient access to bread, anger fomented in rebellion. On July 14, 1789, a band of Parisians stormed the Bastille in search of arms and also grain for making bread, marking the start of the French Revolution.

A Roman emperor renamed every month of the year after himself.

  • Commodus fighting as a gladiator
Commodus fighting as a gladiator
Credit: © Sunny Celeste—imageBROKER/Getty Images
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd

April 16, 2026

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Ancient Roman emperors did a lot of wild things while they were in power. Nero built a spinning dining room with an ivory ceiling. Elagabalus played elaborate pranks on his dinner guests. And Commodus, who ruled from 177 CE to 192 CE, named every single month of the year after himself. 

To come up with 12 separate names, Commodus (whom you may remember from the fictionalized portrayal in the 2000 film Gladiator) used his numerous imperial titles. Some of them came from his lineage, but others he bestowed upon himself, resulting in: Amazonius, Invictus, Felix, Pius,⁠ Lucius, Ælius, Aurelius, Commodus, Augustus, Herculeus, Romanus, and Exsuperatorius. 

“Exsuperatorius” meant “all-surpassing conqueror.” “Amazonius,” according to the historic text Historia Augusta, honored Commodus’ mistress Marcia, whom he thought of as an Amazon woman. And “Herculeus” was chosen because the emperor liked to picture himself as the mythological figure Hercules. 

These month names fell out of use after Commodus was assassinated, but they were legitimately used to express dates while they were in effect. Of course, Commodus wasn’t the first Roman emperor to name a month after himself — even today, July and August are named after Julius Caesar and his heir Augustus—but none went quite as far.

In addition to the months of the year, Commodus renamed the entirety of Rome after himself, calling it Colonia Commodiana (Commodus’ Colony). It’s no surprise that toward the end of his reign, he had the Roman Senate declare him a god.

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“Commode” used to mean something very different.

When you hear the word “commode” today, you probably think of a toilet — but that’s a relatively modern use. Starting in the late 17th century, the French term actually referred to a very fancy French headdress. The headdress trend supposedly started when a mistress of King Louis XIV tied her hair up with a garter while hunting. The name likely came from the adjective “commode,” which meant “easy or convenient.” That ease and convenience was ultimately lost, though: What started as a simple accessory became increasingly ornate and eventually grew so tall that the garment had to be supported by wire frames.

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