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After World War I, people used X-rays to try on shoes.

Shoe-fitting fluoroscope
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
June 26, 2026

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There’s a reason we typically receive X-rays only in a medical setting: Without the proper precautions, radiation is extremely dangerous. But for several decades following the discovery of X-rays in 1895, most people didn’t think twice about sticking their feet inside unregulated X-ray machines at the shoe store. Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes, which show moving images in real time, were developed during World War I to examine injured soldiers’ feet without removing their boots. After the war, they were adapted for commercial use to help fit people for shoes, and they became staples at shoe stores in many countries, including the United States.

The machines were tall wooden or metal cabinets with an X-ray tube encased in lead at the base, and an alcove for the customer’s feet just above. When the fluoroscope was turned on, X-ray beams created an image on a fluorescent screen above the feet, which could be viewed through eyepieces on top of the cabinet. The devices were heavily marketed to mothers and children, and some machines had three eyepieces: one for the seller, one for the customer, and one for the parent.

While some experts raised alarms about the potential dangers of the machines in the 1920s and ’30s, the public became more acutely aware of the effects of radiation after World War II. States started regulating and testing shoe-fitting fluoroscopes in the late 1940s. At least one shoe store employee suffered radiation burns on her foot from a leaky machine, and medical experts warned that radiation exposure could damage kids’ growing bones. However, it’s impossible to determine how many people were hurt, since radiation injuries come on slowly and nobody at the time was keeping track of who was using the machines or for how long.

In 1957, Pennsylvania became the first state to ban the shoe-fitting X-rays altogether, and most other states followed suit over the next few years, effectively wiping out their use in the United States. 

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Radium water was initially considered a cure-all.

Nobel Prize-winning scientists Marie Curie and Pierre Curie discovered radium in 1898, and it was immediately heralded as a miracle substance; people used it to make toys, makeup, toothpaste, and even condoms. Some doctors claimed that a little radium in the water could cure just about anything, from anemia to impotence to arthritis.

Customers had a few options for getting radium (or radon) into their water: They could fill a radioactive jar or water crock, place a radioactive bar or stone into a nonradioactive water bottle, or take a shot of Radithor, an ounce of triple-distilled water with at least 1 microcurie each of radium and mesothorium. One can safely say that it was actually the opposite of a cure-all. Radithor in particular caused one of the first high-profile deaths by radium poisoning. Athlete and businessman Eben Byers championed the drink and consumed around three bottles a day, which ultimately led to his death just a few years later in 1932. Around the same time, the case of the Radium Girls, factory workers who were killed by exposure to radioactive paint, was making headlines, and the world’s love affair with all things radium started to fizzle out.

Abraham Lincoln could plausibly have sent a fax to a samurai.

Vintage facsimile machine
Credit: © Luisa Vallon Fumi—iStock/Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine
June 25, 2026

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The 1860s weren’t eventful just in the United States. As the American Civil War raged in the first half of the decade and Abraham Lincoln became the first president to be assassinated, a way of life was ending in Japan: that of the samurai, who dwindled after the Meiji Restoration both modernized and westernized the country. 

Before that happened, though, there was a brief period of seemingly unlikely convergence during which the 16th U.S. president could theoretically have sent a fax to a samurai. The first fax (short for “facsimile”) machine was invented in 1843 by Scottish mechanic Alexander Bain, but English physicist Frederick Bakewell was the first to actually demonstrate facsimile transmission eight years later — at which time Lincoln was still a lawyer in Illinois and the samurai were still revered halfway across the world.

However, fax technology wasn’t commercialized until 1863, when Italian inventor Giovanni Caselli received a patent for his “telegraphic apparatus.” At the time, Lincoln was fairly busy trying to keep the Union intact and the samurai were fighting for their very existence. Still, Honest Abe could have sent a copy of the Gettysburg Address to a member of Japan’s legendary warrior class had he been so inclined.

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Fax machines are still widely used.

Despite being thought of as a relic of the analog past, fax machines are still widely used — and, by some metrics, the fax market is growing, not shrinking. It’s estimated that as many as 17 billion faxes are sent each year, the health care industry being by far the world’s biggest contributor. This is largely due to HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which sets standards for protecting patient medical information. Fax machines with dedicated phone lines can be HIPAA-compliant, which can’t be said of newer technology such as text messages. Indeed, the vast majority (89%) of health care organizations still use fax machines. Because every fax transmission includes the date, time, and both the sender’s and recipient’s numbers, many legal, governmental, and tax agencies continue to use them for similar reasons. Courts, for instance, have been accepting faxes as legal proof for decades and continue to do so today.

When Charles Dickens visited the White House, no one answered so he let himself in.

Charles Dickens
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Author Timothy Ott
June 25, 2026

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As part of an extensive tour of the United States that encompassed most of the first half of 1842, English author Charles Dickens earned an invitation to meet President John Tyler at the White House. However, this visit left a lot to be desired on the part of the author, beginning with his attempt to actually locate the commander in chief. As explained in his travelogue American Notes, Dickens and an unnamed official, “having twice or thrice rung a bell which nobody answered,” simply entered the White House and attempted to find the president on their own.

After wandering upstairs and catching the attention of a servant, Dickens noticed how the others gathered in a waiting room had no compunction about spitting tobacco juice as they pleased. He wrote, “Indeed all these gentlemen were so very persevering and energetic in this latter particular, and bestowed their favours so abundantly upon the carpet, that I take it for granted the Presidential housemaids have high wages.” While he didn’t have to wait long to see President Tyler, the meeting soon unfolded into an awkward spectacle. Tyler commented on the youthful appearance of the 30-year-old writer, who failed to reply in kind to the “worn and anxious” 51-year-old president. The two then sat in silence near a hot stove until Dickens excused himself, sarcastically noting that his host was clearly very busy.

The disappointing visit to the Executive Mansion was a microcosm of Dickens’ overall experience in the United States. Overwhelmed by the mobs of people who gathered to see him, dismayed by the ongoing institution of slavery, and frustrated by his inability to generate interest in international copyright laws, the author vented his criticisms of the titular country when American Notes was published later that year, in turn igniting the ire of U.S. citizens until Dickens returned to make amends in 1867.

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Visitors enjoyed near-unfettered access to the White House for most of the 19th century.

While the concept of someone breezing into the White House seems unusual in this day and age, it was actually pretty common for several decades before and after Dickens’ visit. The practice began with the mansion’s second resident, Thomas Jefferson, who encouraged visitors to the building by displaying artifacts from the Lewis and Clark Expedition and even placing taxidermied bears on the lawn. While James Monroe installed gates around the premises, visitors could still largely enter the building as they wished, except for mornings or when the president was out of town. The near-unfettered access was first curtailed in the mid-1890s, when First Lady Frances Cleveland ordered the gates locked over safety concerns for her young daughter, Ruth. Although Warren G. Harding reopened the grounds to the public in the early 1920s, the arrival of World War II brought stricter security measures that all but closed off the “People’s House” to the people, save for those with previously approved appointments.

Julius Caesar was once kidnapped by pirates.

Julius Caesar captured by pirates
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Author Timothy Ott
June 25, 2026

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Before he emerged as a military hero and the envy of Roman senators who feared his popular reach, Julius Caesar demonstrated his ability to manipulate minds during a reported encounter with pirates around 75 BCE.

Although the tale varies based on the historian who relayed it, the general outline holds that Caesar was captured off the coast of modern-day Turkey. According to Plutarch’s Life of Caesar, the young nobleman laughed when he heard that his ransom was set at a mere 20 talents of silver (a huge sum of money, possibly worth millions today) and suggested it be raised to the more appropriate sum of 50 talents. After sending his men to fetch the money, Caesar proceeded to boss around his captors: He forced them to listen to his poems and speeches, calling them illiterate savages when they didn’t approve; ordered them to keep quiet when he tried to sleep; and brazenly announced that they would all be executed once he was free. 

Released when the ransom arrived after 38 days, Caesar proceeded to the nearby port of Miletus (an ancient Greek city in modern Turkey), raised a fleet, and hunted down the pirates. When the governor of Asia wavered over the fate of the imprisoned men, Caesar took charge of the situation and had them all crucified.

Given that the story may well have originated with Caesar himself, one could be forgiven for finding the details of this seafaring adventure a little fishy. Nevertheless, it fits in well within the biographical narrative of a powerful man who wrested control of a war-torn republic and helped usher its transition to the Roman Empire.

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Caesar was allegedly not a talented poet.

Those “illiterate” pirates may have been on to something when they rejected Caesar’s poetic efforts. Although the Roman dictator is credited with composing several verses during his life, including a poem dedicated to Hercules and another describing a journey to Spain, only a few lines from his oeuvre survive today. This is partly due to the failure of medieval monks to copy what they considered to be minor documents, but also due to deliberate censorship by Caesar’s esteemed successor. As explained by the historian Suetonius, some of Caesar’s early works were set for posthumous publication, until Emperor Augustus abruptly squashed the idea. That was just as well, according to the historian Tacitus, who asserted that Caesar’s overall reputation benefited from the lack of access to his poetry.

Four U.S. presidents were cheerleaders.

Cheerleader pom poms and megaphone
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
June 18, 2026

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Despite its modern association with women, cheerleading started in the mid-19th century as what was considered a masculine sport — an ideal pastime for charismatic, athletic young men. Women were actively excluded at first, but started taking the field during World War II when many college-aged men were fighting abroad, and they didn’t really overtake the sport until the 1960s; as women cheerleaders became more common, the sport was trivialized and viewed as not athletic enough for men. So even though the United States has not had a female president, it’s not necessarily surprising that four former occupants of the White House — Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush —  spent time hyping up a crowd as cheerleaders for their school sports teams.

Though FDR didn’t play any other college sports himself, he was an avid football fan, devoting many column inches to the Harvard team while editor of the Harvard Crimson newspaper, and he eventually became head cheerleader. Eisenhower desperately wanted to play baseball and football at West Point in the 1910s, but after a career-ending knee injury during a football game (which he promptly reinjured horseback riding a few days later), he expressed his love for the game as head cheerleader.

Cheerleading at basketball games was just one of Reagan’s laundry list of athletic extracurriculars at Eureka College in the 1930s, along with track, football, and serving as captain and coach of the swim team. And Bush, who attended boarding school at Phillips Academy Andover in the 1960s, where athletic participation was mandatory, became a cheerleader after warming the bench in basketball, baseball, and football. He eventually rose to the rank of head cheerleader his senior year. Bush took the megaphone amid a cultural shift: While cheerleading was still considered masculine at Andover, back in his home state of Texas it was largely viewed as a feminine activity.

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Samuel L. Jackson was a cheerleader in college.

Actor Samuel L. Jackson became a cheerleader at the all-male Morehouse College in Atlanta in 1966 so that, according to him, he could travel with the basketball and football teams to meet women. Jackson eventually declared a major in drama, a department shared with the all-female Spelman College, where he met his wife LaTanya Richardson — so it turns out he didn’t have to travel too far after all.

Italy once called for the abolition of pasta.

Macaroni maker in Naples
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Author Nicole Villeneuve
June 17, 2026

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Pasta is a culinary staple worldwide, but in Italy it’s also a cultural institution — which is why it’s shocking to consider that the country once tried to abolish the food.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Benito Mussolini’s fascist government pushed a campaign against pasta that was framed as an attempt to improve public health. Some officials and allies of the regime argued that a modern, stronger nation would be better off with fewer carbohydrates and more protein. People who ate pasta, proponents claimed, were sluggish and bloated, and merely trying to fill an insatiable emotional emptiness.

But the campaign had ulterior motives. Since pasta relied heavily on imported wheat, the anti-pasta rhetoric was really an effort to reduce foreign economic dependence and to tighten control over everyday civilian life by increasing domestic crops such as rice. 

Many Italians, perhaps unsurprisingly, resisted Mussolini’s efforts. In the rice fields of northern Italy, working-class women known as the mondine organized strikes and protests over poor wages and conditions. Elsewhere, the mayor of Naples defended pasta by saying, “The angels in Paradise eat nothing but vermicelli al pomodoro.” By the 1940s, the fascist control over Italians’ everyday diet had shifted, overtaken by the realities of World War II and a population far more concerned with eating at all than with the details of the menu.

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America’s first pasta factory ran on horsepower and sunlight.

The first U.S. pasta factory was surprisingly low-tech. It was opened in 1848, not under Italian ownership, but by French immigrant Antoine Zerega. Along the waterfront in Brooklyn, New York, dough was kneaded with horse-powered machinery, then shaped and laid out to dry on the rooftop. In the open air, the sun and sea breezes did most of the work long before modern industrial drying systems existed.

As Italian immigration increased and urban food markets expanded, pasta gradually shifted from a niche import to an everyday staple in the U.S. Additional small factories began appearing in industrial centers such as Philadelphia and Jersey City, and by the 1960s, Zerega’s modest operation had grown to distribute pasta nationally, helping the food become a fixture of American pantries.

Manhattan was once ‘traded’ for a tiny Indonesian island.

New Amsterdam, 17th century
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
June 18, 2026

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In the 17th century, the Netherlands, through the Dutch East India Company, had control of the tiny, remote archipelago of Banda where all of the nutmeg trees on Earth grew — except for one island, Pulau Rhun, which was under British control. The Dutch were pretty unhappy about that holdout, and spent four years fighting their way onto the island, eventually seizing it in 1621. Then, in 1664, as part of a larger conflict over international trade and shipping, the British sent frigates to New Amsterdam, a marshy Dutch colony and fur trading outpost on the Atlantic coast of North America, to claim it for the British Empire.

Both nations were adamant about taking over these territories — and neither was putting up much resistance at that point — so in 1667, when the Treaty of Breda ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War, they struck a deal. The Netherlands, presented with an opportunity to control the entire world’s nutmeg supply, ceded control of New Amsterdam, which comprised what is now lower Manhattan in New York City, to the British. (Today, neither country has control of either territory — the United States won independence from Great Britain, and the Banda Islands are officially part of Indonesia.)It may seem surprising from a modern perspective: A country traded what became an economic and cultural powerhouse for a volcanic island less than 2 miles long. But at the time, the so-called Spice Islands, which included the Banda archipelago, were extremely valuable territory to European colonial forces, which had been violently competing for shares of the spice trade for more than a century. The remote islands were the only source of many seasonings we take for granted today, including not only nutmeg, but also cinnamon, ginger, cumin, and black pepper.

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New York was briefly called New Orange.

It didn’t take the Dutch long after the Pulau Rhun “trade” to take another shot at controlling the island of Manhattan. In 1673, the Netherlands briefly reconquered the city — but instead of reverting the name back to New Amsterdam, it was dubbed New Orange in honor of Dutch leader (and later king of England) William of Orange. After about a year, the British retook the city and reinstated the New York name.

Napoleon wrote a romance novel.

Eugénie Bernardine-Desireé Clary
Credit: © The Print Collector—Heritage Images/Alamy
Author Michael Nordine
June 17, 2026

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“Like all men,” Napoleon Bonaparte once wrote, “he desired happiness, but he had found only glory.” That observation comes not from a journal entry or an essay on military strategy but from Clisson and Eugénie, a romance novella the future emperor wrote at age 26. 

Said to have been inspired by Napoleon’s own relationship with Bernardine Eugénie Désirée Clary, the story details the doomed romance between a revolutionary French soldier and a woman he meets at a public bath. At just 17 pages, it’s less a major literary work than an interesting footnote in a fascinating life.

“Their eyes met. Their hearts fused,” Napoleon wrote of Clisson and Eugénie’s meet-cute, adding that she “was like a piece by Paisiello which transports and elevates only those souls born to appreciate it, leaving ordinary people unaffected.” Only Clisson — a stand-in for Napoleon — is wise enough to see what makes Eugénie so special, though the protagonists’ star-crossed love affair ends tragically. Clisson eventually returns to war, during which time Eugénie is seduced by one of his friends; after learning of her infidelity, Clisson leads a suicidal charge and dies in battle. 

The novella wasn’t translated into English until 1972, but the current edition claims — perhaps dubiously — that it “makes the reader regret that Napoleon Bonaparte did not write more fiction.”

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Napoleon could have been a hand model.

Along with his military prowess and writing ability, Napoleon’s hands are said to have been among his proudest features. “His hand was the fattest and prettiest in the world,” wrote Betsy Balcombe, who befriended the exiled emperor during his time on St. Helena, “his knuckles dimpled like those of a baby, his fingers taper and beautifully formed, and his nails perfect.” Indeed, Napoleon was reportedly quite vain about his hands, which his valet Louis Étienne Saint-Denis claimed “were of the most perfect model; they resembled the beautiful hands of a woman.”

According to Saint-Denis, Napoleon wore gloves only when he went horseback riding, and even then often kept the garments in his pockets — all the better to show off his hands, apparently. Even his longtime adversary Germaine de Staël wrote, “I recollect once being told … that Bonaparte’s nails  were perfectly well made. Another time a courtier exclaimed, ‘The first consul’s hand is beautiful!’”

Alaska was sold to the U.S. for 2 cents an acre.

Negotiating the Alaska Purchase, 1867
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Author Nicole Villeneuve
June 15, 2026

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Before it was part of the United States, Alaska belonged to the Russian Empire. By the 1860s, however, Russia was eager to sell the territory. The country had been weakened by the Crimean War, and Alaska’s remote location made it difficult to defend and maintain. So in 1867, the United States agreed to purchase the frozen expanse for $7.2 million (roughly $162 million today) — or just 2 cents per acre for a territory that is more than double the size of Texas.

Secretary of State William H. Seward negotiated the deal; he had long supported American expansion, envisioning a nation whose borders might stretch from the tropics to the polar circle. A handful of critics, most notably the New-York Tribune, questioned the value of the icy land and popularized mocking the deal as “Seward’s Folly.” 

In hindsight, of course, the deal was less folly than it was foresight. Alaska proved rich in natural resources including timber, gold, and oil, and geographically it was valuable to U.S. trade and national security — benefits that came to far outweigh its modest purchase price.

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Quaker Oats once put Yukon land deeds in cereal boxes.

The north has long been imagined as a land of gold rushes and opportunity, and in 1955, Quaker Oats turned that reputation into a clever marketing promotion. Inside boxes of Puffed Rice and Puffed Wheat cereal, children could get an official-looking certificate claiming ownership of 1 square inch of land in Canada’s Yukon Territory.

The documents were designed to look legitimate, complete with seals, serial numbers, and legal-sounding language. But while Quaker Oats had indeed purchased about 19 acres of wilderness near the Yukon’s Dawson City for the promotion, the nearly 21 million “deeds” that were distributed amounted to nothing more than a gimmick (and today, perhaps a collectible).

The stethoscope was invented because a doctor felt awkward pressing his ear to a woman’s chest.

Rene Laennec with a stethoscope
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Author Nicole Villeneuve
June 18, 2026

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In 1816, a French physician named René Laennec found himself in a delicate situation. He needed to listen to the heart of a young female patient but didn’t have an ideal way to do so based on the standard practices of the time. Doctors in the early 19th century relied primarily on touch to assess the heart, pressing their hands to gauge its strength and rhythm. This method often wasn’t reliable, especially, as was the case in Laennec’s situation, if the patient was of a heavier weight. Applying the ear directly to a chest was another approach, but Laennec felt that would be inappropriate and uncomfortable given his patient’s age and gender. 

Laennec also happened to be a skilled musician. Drawing on a basic principle of acoustics — that sound travels better through solid materials than through air — he rolled a sheet of paper into a cylinder and placed one end on the patient’s chest and the other to his ear. The heartbeat came through far more clearly and distinctly than it would have with touch or direct ear contact. Three years later, he published his findings and the first design of a monaural stethoscope, the name of which comes from the Greek words stethos, meaning “chest,” and skopein, meaning “to explore.” 

The device was a simple wooden tube about 10 inches long that carried sound to one ear. The stethoscope marked the start of mediate auscultation — diagnosing conditions by listening to the body’s internal functions. Laennec’s design was used until flexible rubber-tubed binaural models appeared later in the 19th century.

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Whipping people with stinging nettle plants was a popular medical treatment.

Long before defibrillators and CPR, medical practitioners in 16th-century Europe were in the practice of whipping people with stinging nettles in an attempt to revive them if they drowned or passed out. The tiny hairs on nettles inject compounds such as histamine, acetylcholine, and formic acid into the skin, creating a sharp sting, redness, and heat that boost circulation and alert the nervous system. The Romans were thought to have used the nettles’ sting for warmth, and Indigenous peoples in North America have long used the plant’s stimulating properties to relieve muscle pain and improve blood flow, a practice known as urtication. 

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