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The U.S. Capitol has its own subway system.

  • Newly opened Senate subway, 1960
Newly opened Senate subway, 1960
Credit: Miscellaneous Items in High Demand/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-ppmsca-83157)
Author Michael Nordine
April 1, 2026

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Being a member of Congress comes with many perks, one of which may be especially appealing to public transit enthusiasts: the U.S. Capitol’s private subway system. With three lines — two on the Senate (north) side and one on the House (south) side — it has been ferrying senators and representatives around since 1909. The cars are quite small, resembling an amusement park tram more than a major metropolitan subway system. They stop at six stations within the Capitol complex, none more than a few hundred feet apart: Hart, Maintenance Spur, Dirksen, Russell, U.S. Capitol, and Rayburn.

Originally linking the Russell Senate Office Building to the Capitol, the system was expanded in 1960 to include an operator-controlled monorail from the Dirksen Senate Office Building and then again in 1965, when the Rayburn House Office Building was likewise connected to the Capitol. The monorail was replaced by an automatic train in 1993. The system isn’t open to the public, though it isn’t entirely uncommon for civilians to ride it while being escorted by their member of Congress or an official guide. 

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Congress almost left Washington, D.C., after the War of 1812.

Along with many other structures in Washington, D.C., the Capitol was set ablaze by the British on August 24, 1814, in a major escalation of the War of 1812. Benjamin Latrobe, who served as architect of the Capitol at the time, described the damaged building as “a most magnificent ruin.” As a result, Congress considered relocating not only to a different building but to a different city altogether — most likely Philadelphia, which had served as the nation’s capital from 1790 to 1800. The legislature instead convened at Blodgett’s Hotel until December of 1815, when it moved to the Brick Capitol (now the site of the Supreme Court) until the Capitol building was reopened in 1819. 

Thomas Edison went camping with a U.S. president.

  • Vagabonds summer camping, 1921
Vagabonds summer camping, 1921
Credit: Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bennett Kleinman
September 19, 2024

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In 1915, a group known as the Vagabonds embarked on a series of summer camping trips around the U.S. These wayfaring travelers weren’t just any old campers, but rather some of the most well-known figures in American history: inventor Thomas Edison, industrialist Henry Ford, naturalist John Burroughs, and businessman Harvey Firestone. The idea was conceived in 1914 when Ford and Burroughs traveled down to Florida to tour the Everglades with Edison. In 1915, Edison, Ford, and Firestone took a road trip throughout Southern California, and it was during that excursion that the group’s nickname was informally chosen.

Before long, these expeditions ballooned into a sophisticated operation, with some trips featuring as many as 50 vehicles filled with additional staff and equipment. The group journeyed through the Adirondacks, the Catskills, Appalachia, and many other stunning natural sites across the country. In time, the American public grew fascinated with these expeditions. The Vagabonds even attracted the attention of sitting President Warren G. Harding, who briefly joined them in 1921 for a camping trip in Maryland. During his visit, Harding chopped wood, rode horses, and sat around the campfire before returning to Washington, D.C. Three years later, the Vagabonds were invited to join President Calvin Coolidge at his childhood home in Vermont in 1924, where they spent an hour taking photographs, discussing politics, and exchanging gifts. Unfortunately, these trips began to attract too much unwanted public attention, forcing the Vagabonds to disband later that year.

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Warren G. Harding appointed a former U.S. president to the Supreme Court.

Warren G. Harding may not be the most famous president, but many unique events occurred during his time in office. For instance, Harding is the only POTUS to nominate a former U.S. president to the Supreme Court. On June 30, 1921, Harding chose William Howard Taft — who served as president from 1909 to 1913 — to fill the chief justice vacancy. Harding and Taft had known each other for several years; Harding even delivered the nominating address for Taft at the 1912 Republican National Convention. After his own election in 1920, Harding met with Taft to seek advice about the presidency and also to gauge the former president’s interest in sitting on the Supreme Court. Taft, who was initially surprised by the request, later replied to express interest in the role of chief justice. Harding eventually obliged, and Taft served on the Supreme Court from 1921 to 1930.

The flag draped over Abe Lincoln’s casket is on display at a steakhouse.

  • Lincoln flag at Keens Steakhouse in NYC
Lincoln flag at Keens Steakhouse in NYC
Credit: Image courtesy of Keens Steakhouse
Author Bennett Kleinman
March 26, 2026

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Though Keens Steakhouse opened two decades after Abraham Lincoln passed away, the 141-year-old New York City institution pays homage to the 16th president as if he were a beloved regular. The restaurant maintains a Lincoln-themed dining room with historic artifacts adorning its walls, including the American flag that was draped over Lincoln’s casket during a seven-state, 13-day funeral train tour prior to his burial.

At the end of the funeral tour, the 37-star flag fell into the possession of an Army doctor named Lewis Applegate, remaining in his family for more than a century. It was donated to a Florida museum in 1996 and put up for auction in 2024, when it sold for a reported $656,250 to businessman Tilman Fertitta — who had also acquired Keens that same month. The museum-quality antique was unveiled to patrons in Keens’ Lincoln Room on February 12, 2026, in celebration of Honest Abe’s 217th birthday.

In addition to the historic flag, the restaurant’s Lincoln Room showcases a framed, blood-stained playbill from Our American Cousin — purported to be the same playbill Lincoln was holding at Ford’s Theatre on the night he was assassinated. It’s said to have been picked up from beneath the president’s chair and taken home by a carpenter’s assistant. The steakhouse also displays a handwritten transcribed copy of the Gettysburg Address, among other Lincoln paraphernalia such as historic photographs and newspaper clippings.

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The flags raised at Iwo Jima go on display each year for 36 days.

For a limited time each year, the two American flags raised atop Japan’s Mount Suribachi during the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima are displayed at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Virginia. This annual exhibit begins on February 19 and lasts until March 26, commemorating the beginning and end of the 36-day conflict.

Both flags were flown on February 23, 1945. The first was a 54-by-28-inch flag raised by Marines after capturing the mountaintop. But Lt. Col. Chandler Johnson, who served as a commanding officer during the battle, wanted the flag to remain with his battalion, so he ordered it be replaced. A second flag raising occurred later that day, during which the first flag was lowered and replaced by a much larger 90-by-56-inch flag. This second ceremony was captured by photographer Joe Rosenthal in the iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning image.

Easter was banned in early America.

  • Public worship at Plymouth by the Pilgrims
Public worship at Plymouth by the Pilgrims
Credit: © The Print Collector—Heritage Images/Alamy
Author Michael Nordine
March 26, 2026

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“They for whom all days are holy can have no holiday,” the Puritans liked to say, which helps explain why Easter was banned in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. (It also wasn’t widely celebrated in other parts of colonial America, including Jamestown, where it was observed with little fanfare.) The Bible didn’t mention holidays, the Puritans reasoned, so even one like Easter — which commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ and is perhaps the holiest day in all Christianity — was verboten. 

The Puritans likened such celebrations to paganism, to which they wanted to remove all references. Christmas was banned alongside Easter in 1659 in Massachusetts, with the law stating that people caught observing the holidays “either by forbearing of labour, feasting, or any other way … shall pay for every such offence five shillings, as a fine to the county.”

The Puritans first arrived in New England in the early 17th century, settling around what’s now Boston. They believed that only “the elect” would be chosen for salvation and that most people would be damned, leading them to be as stringent as possible in their religious practices. Because Easter is always observed on a Sunday, banning it caused a problem for preachers delivering sermons on what would have been Easter Sunday — a pickle often solved by simply talking about something else.

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No one knows where the word “Easter” comes from.

There's a common theory that Easter is named after the Anglo-Saxon goddess Ēostre, a pagan deity associated with dawn, spring, and fertility. But that association is likely a myth. In fact, the roots of the English name for this Christian holiday remain unknown. It's possible the word comes from the Latin phrase in albis, which was used to describe the start of spring and evolved into eostarum in Old High German.

The O.K. Corral gunfight didn’t take place at the O.K. Corral.

  • O.K. Corral site in Arizona
O.K. Corral site in Arizona
Credit: alexandra buxbaum/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine
November 20, 2025

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A catchy name has a way of sticking — even when it’s not entirely accurate. Presumably because “Gunfight in an Alley Behind C.S. Fly’s Photography Studio” was too ungainly a moniker, one of the most iconic events of the Old West is known by another name: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. 

Lasting just 30 seconds on October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, the brief shootout between lawmen and outlaws has been enshrined as a vital part of Americana: Good guys on one side, bad guys on the other, and justice prevailing in the end. Yet as is the case with a lot of folklore, many details have been flubbed over time — including, notably, the fact that the shootout didn’t actually take place at the O.K. Corral, but rather down the block behind a photography studio on Fremont Street near Third Street.

Pitting lawmen brothers Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp and their friend Doc Holliday against outlaws Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury (also brothers), and Billy Claiborne, the brief fracas ended in the deaths of Billy Clanton and both McLaurys. The gunfight was preceded by a number of violent run-ins between the two groups, who were battling for control of Tombstone. The Earp brothers and Holliday, all of whom survived (though only Wyatt Earp was uninjured), were later charged with murder but found not guilty, with a Tombstone judge ruling they had been “fully justified in committing these homicides.” They don’t call it the Wild West for nothing.

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The California gold rush wasn’t America’s first gold rush.

Nor was it the second: Half a century before 300,000 prospectors descended upon California in search of riches, a boy named Conrad Reed discovered gold in his father’s field in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, in 1799, without realizing what it was. The family used what turned out to be a 17-pound gold nugget as a doorstop for three years until a jeweler identified its true nature and set off America’s first gold rush. The second rush was in Georgia in 1828. Because it took place on Cherokee land and led to the forced relocation of thousands of Cherokee people, it became known as the Great Intrusion. 

Ancient Greeks had no single word for the color blue.

  • Athens, ancient Greece
Athens, ancient Greece
Credit: © Prisma Archivo/Alamy
Author Bess Lovejoy
March 26, 2026

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Back in ancient Greece, there was no single word that neatly captured the hue of the sky, the sea, sapphire, and blueberries all at once. But that’s less strange than it might sound. If you think about it, the English word “blue” covers a wide range of shades, from the palest robin’s egg to the deepest navy. 

While it’s sometimes reported that ancient Greeks had no word at all for this part of the color spectrum, they actually used several terms that correspond to what we call blue, including kyaneos for darker blue shades and glaukos for pale and mid-toned grayish blues and greens. However, these words could also refer to other hues and were more dependent on context than our modern color categories.

Plenty of languages divide colors differently than English. Russian distinguishes between lighter blues (goluboy) and darker blues (siniy), and modern Japanese has a specific term for light blue (mizu). And while it’s sometimes said that people in ancient Greece couldn’t see the color blue, they definitely could — assuming normal vision, of course. The eyes of ancient Greek people worked as well as ours, and they knew how to dye and paint with blue pigments. 

However, it’s true that blue was far less important symbolically in the ancient Greek world than red, black, yellow, and white. Blue tones generally only appear as background colors in Greek art, when they appear at all. But the Greeks did hold blue in higher regard than the Romans did; the latter considered it a color of barbarians and mourning. (Having blue eyes was considered practically a character defect.) Imagine how surprised they’d be to discover that today, blue is one of the most popular colors in the world.

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English had no word for the color orange until the 16th century.

For most of history, the color orange didn’t have its own name in English. Before the 16th century, English speakers typically described the hue as “yellow-red” or simply “red.” The word “orange” originally referred only to the fruit, and its linguistic journey began with the Sanskrit nāraṅga, the name for the orange tree.

As the fruit spread west through trade, the word became the Arabic nāranj and eventually entered European languages. English lost the initial “n” through a linguistic shift called metanalysis, in which sounds migrate between words — the same process that turned “a napron” into “an apron” and “a nuncle” into “an uncle.”

By the 1300s, “orange” was widely used across Europe to name the fruit. But according to the Oxford English Dictionary, English speakers didn’t begin using it to describe the color until the 1500s, often in reference to fabrics and clothing. Before that, the color existed as a unique hue — but it didn’t have a name of its own.

A Civil War battle was briefly paused so that soldiers could watch a fistfight.

  • Civil War cavalry duel
Civil War cavalry duel
Credit: North Wind Picture Archives/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
June 17, 2024

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In one of the more peculiar moments of the Civil War, an entire battle came to a screeching halt so that everybody — Union and Confederate soldiers alike — could watch a fistfight. A Confederate soldier named John H. Worsham recounted the incident, which took place on May 5, 1864, on Saunders Field in Virginia during the Battle of the Wilderness, in his 1912 memoir One of Jackson’s Foot Cavalry. Worsham wrote that a small ditch ran down the center of the battlefield that was first used by Union soldiers to shelter them from enemy fire. When the soldiers vacated the ditch, one of them stayed behind. Soon after, a single Confederate soldier jumped into the ditch to find shelter — and it wasn’t long before the two soldiers noticed each other. 

After the men exchanged some words, they decided to have what Worshom called a “regular fist and skull fight,” in which the winner would take the loser prisoner. The soldiers took their duel to a road midway through the battle lines, and both sides stopped fighting and rushed closer to get a better view. Ultimately, at least according to Worsham, the Union soldier lost and let himself be taken prisoner — but bear in mind that the tale comes from a book of Confederate, not Union, war stories.

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Harriet Tubman led a Union raid that freed 750 enslaved people.

Harriet Tubman is perhaps the most famous “conductor” of the Underground Railroad, a network of people who helped enslaved people escape to freedom in the 1850s. But during the Civil War, she worked as a nurse and a spy. On June 1, 1863, after gathering intelligence from enslaved people about Confederate torpedoes along the Combahee River, she led 150 Black soldiers in a military operation against the plantations of wealthy secessionists. Tubman guided three gunboats down the river and destroyed several prominent plantations. Along the way, her boats picked up around 750 enslaved people and brought them to freedom. She was the first woman to lead a major military operation in the United States.

Early shoes made no distinction between left and right feet.

  • Shoes, circa 1650
Shoes, circa 1650
Credit: © Penta Springs Limited/Alamy
Author Michael Nordine
March 26, 2026

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Like a lot of life-changing products, shoes are much more precise now than when they were first brought to market. In fact, it wasn’t until 1860 that left and right shoes were made en masse after centuries of a different approach. From the 16th century until the Industrial Revolution, nearly all shoes were “straights” made to be worn on either foot. 

Of course, this wasn’t because cobblers and consumers were under the false impression that their feet were identical. It’s just that straights were more economical and easier to produce than mirrored shoes — something of a one-size-fits-all philosophy. Right and left shoes date back to the ancient world, including the Romans, but “straights” were preferred in the leadup to the Industrial Revolution, whose many factories then made it easier to mass produce lefts and rights.

Footwear has existed in one form or another for at least 50,000 years, since people first began protecting their feet from frigid conditions; footwear with actual soles is believed to date back around 40,000 years. The Fort Rock sandals, which were discovered in a cave in Oregon in 1938, are the oldest known shoes in the world at more than 9,000 years old. 

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The world’s oldest leather shoe was discovered in a cave.

Like the oldest known footwear, the world’s oldest leather shoe was found in a cave — this one in Armenia. (Older shoes, including the Fort Rock sandals, were made of cheaper material such as shredded sagebrush bark.) The aptly named Areni-1 shoe is approximately 5,500 years old and was found in the Areni-1 cave, which is located in the Vayots Dzor province in southeastern Armenia. Thanks to the cave’s cool, dry conditions and several layers of sheep dung keeping it in pristine condition for several millennia, the one-piece shoe was nearly perfectly preserved (including intact laces) when researchers discovered it in 2008. 

During World War II, people ate mock bananas made from parsnips.

  • Little girl eating a banana, 1945
Little girl eating a banana, 1945
Credit: © PA Images/Alamy
Author Bess Lovejoy
March 26, 2026

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In 1940, as Britain endured the Blitz and struggled under strict food rationing, one unexpected loss loomed large in the national imagination: the banana. Before the war, the island imported roughly 20 million tons of food a year, including most of its fruit. But when German naval attacks threatened supply routes — and refrigerated ships were diverted to military use — the Minister of Food ordered a complete halt to banana imports. For many children, who had grown up with the fruit as a sweet staple, the ban felt especially cruel.

Enter Marguerite Patten, a home economist hired by the Ministry of Food to teach Brits how to cook under wartime constraints. Patten became famous for her “mock” recipes — mock sausages made with lentils, mock oyster soup built on artichokes, and, notably, mock bananas.

Her substitute relied on a humble root vegetable: the parsnip. Boiled or roasted until soft, then mashed with sugar and a splash of artificial banana essence, the mixture took on a surprisingly banana-like texture and taste (though it was still far from the real thing). Some thrifty cooks even tinted the result yellow. Children who had never tasted a real banana often believed the ruse; adults tended to be less convinced. One wartime diarist recalled her husband eagerly devouring the treat — until he learned the truth and refused to eat it again.

When the first postwar shipment of bananas — 5 million of them — arrived in 1945, the country staged a celebratory parade. Children were the first allowed a taste. After years of ersatz fruit fashioned from parsnips, the real thing was nothing short of magical.

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The hit song “Yes! We Have No Bananas” grew out of a real banana-killing fungus.

During World War II, when Britain banned banana imports and rationing took hold, the jaunty novelty tune “Yes! We Have No Bananas” enjoyed a surge of popularity. Its cheerful absurdity suited a moment when real bananas were nowhere in sight. But the tune actually dates to 1922 — and may itself have sprung from an earlier banana shortage. According to popular lore, New York songwriters Frank Silver and Irving Cohn wrote the song after stopping at a greengrocery run by a Greek immigrant. When they asked for bananas, the proprietor apologized by saying: “Yes! We have no bananas today.” (Reportedly, the greengrocer answered the beginning of all questions with “Yes!”) Introduced by Eddie Cantor in the Broadway revue Make It Snappy, the song became a runaway hit, topping the charts for five weeks and later recorded by artists such as the Muppets. The shortage itself was much less fun. The world’s preferred banana at the time, the Gros Michel (aka the “Big Mike”), was being ravaged by Panama disease, a soilborne fungus that attacked the plant’s roots and quickly spread through genetically identical plantations. From the 1910s through the mid-20th century, the disease devastated Big Mike crops and ultimately ended its use as an export crop. The Cavendish banana eventually replaced the Gros Michel, but it, too, now faces its own fungal threat, Tropical Race 4, a successor strain to the original species behind Panama disease. So while “Yes! We Have No Bananas” began as a joke about a local shortage, its punchline was rooted in a very real agricultural menace — one that continues to haunt banana growers today.

The U.S. government paid farmers not to grow crops.

  • Farmers wait in line to receive AAA checks
Farmers wait in line to receive AAA checks
Credit: © nsf/Alamy
Author Bess Lovejoy
March 24, 2026

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In the early 1930s, American farmers faced a crisis — not of scarcity, but of surplus. Years of increased production (encouraged by high demand and new technology), combined with the economic collapse of the Great Depression, caused U.S. crop prices to plunge. Farmers were growing more and more food but earning less and less for it.

The federal government’s solution was counterintuitive. Under the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) — part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal — the government paid farmers to produce less. The idea was simple: Reduce supply, and prices would rise. 

Farmers were offered subsidies to leave portions of their land unplanted. In some cases, the government went further, overseeing the destruction of existing crops and livestock. Millions of acres of cotton were plowed under and millions of animals slaughtered, all in an effort to shrink the glut of agricultural goods flooding the market.

The policy did help push prices upward, but it also sparked outrage. At a time when many Americans were unemployed and hungry, the spectacle of food being destroyed — and the fact that farmers were being paid not to grow it — struck many as deeply unjust. 

Parts of the original law were ruled unconstitutional in 1936, but a revised version that passed in 1938 kept many of its core ideas. Farmers continued to receive payments for limiting production, sometimes by leaving land fallow or following crop quotas, although efforts were framed more around soil conservation in the wake of the Dust Bowl. (Years of intensive plowing, combined with drought, had stripped the Great Plains of its topsoil, demonstrating the need for more careful soil management.)

Variations on the idea behind the AAA persist today, including programs that pay farmers to take environmentally sensitive land out of cultivation. What started as a widely criticized policy has, over time, come to include ideas that align with sound ecological practices and help ensure there are good crops for generations to come. 

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During the Great Depression, farmers dumped milk in protest.

In the early 1930s, American dairy farmers faced a grim reality — milk was abundant, but prices had collapsed. As the Great Depression deepened, demand fell and supply remained high, pushing prices to unsustainable lows. In Iowa and Wisconsin, farmers were paid as little as 2 cents per quart, far below the cost of production.

Frustrated and desperate, many farmers turned to protest. Beginning in 1931, groups such as the Farmers’ Holiday Association organized strikes across the Midwest, urging farmers to withhold their products from the market. When that failed to raise prices, a few took more dramatic action: dumping milk onto roads, ditches, or fields rather than selling it at a loss.

The protests were meant to reduce supply and force higher prices, but they also drew public attention to the crisis facing rural America. In some cases, striking farmers stopped delivery trucks or blocked roads, escalating tensions between producers and authorities. The spectacle of milk being discarded while many Americans struggled to afford food highlighted a central paradox of the Depression — not a lack of resources, but a breakdown in the system that distributed them. The crisis helped spur federal intervention, including New Deal programs such as the AAA.

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