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Theodore Roosevelt named the White House.

The White House, 1900
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Author Bennett Kleinman
May 14, 2026

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America’s first 25 presidents didn’t live in the White House — or at least, they didn’t call it that. Upon its completion in 1800, the building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was known as the President’s Palace. Its name was then officially changed to the Executive Mansion in 1810 to avoid regal undertones. The building wasn’t formally named the White House until the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. 

The nickname “White House” first emerged around 1811, as evidenced by an April 24 letter from British diplomat Francis J. Jackson to former Secretary of State Timothy Pickering. The informal moniker arose because the building’s white-gray color made it stand out from the many nearby structures predominantly made of red brick.

While this nickname remained popular, the name wasn’t formalized until 1901, roughly one month into Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency. In an October 17 letter sent by the president’s personal secretary George B. Cortelyou to Secretary of State John Hay, staff were directed to “change the headings, or date lines, of all official papers and documents requiring his signature, from ‘Executive Mansion’ to ‘White House.’” 

According to Roosevelt’s Presidential Library, the name change was part of an ongoing effort to modernize the presidency and reaffirm the building as a symbol of the people it serves, rather than a private mansion.

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Three official presidential residences existed before the White House.

When George Washington assumed the presidency in 1789, the White House was still 11 years from completion and the national capital was in New York City. So from the start of Washington’s term on April 30 until February 23, 1790, his official residence was the Samuel Osgood House (named for the politician who owned it) in Lower Manhattan. Washington later moved into a nearby residence owned by land speculator Alexander Macomb, which served as the second official presidential home until August 30, 1790. In late 1790, the nation’s capital shifted to Philadelphia, and so too did its leader, who moved into a home owned by merchant Robert Morris. Washington remained there until leaving office in 1797. His successor John Adams lived in the Morris house for the first three years of his presidential term, before moving to the White House in Washington, D.C., on November 1, 1800.

Twelve percent of the U.S. population served in World War II.

U.S. recruitment office, 1940
Credit: Hulton Archive via Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine
March 13, 2025

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When Congress declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941, more Americans than ever before heard the call of duty. Some 16.1 million U.S. citizens served in the military by the time World War II ended in 1945, representing 12% of the total population of 132 million at the time. Around 39% of U.S. service members were volunteers, while the remaining 61% were draftees. It was the second-deadliest conflict in U.S. history, with the 407,316 fatalities surpassed only by the 620,000 or more who fell during the Civil War. 

The average duration of service was 33 months, with 73% of Americans serving overseas in countries such as France and Germany for an average of 16 months. An enlisted soldier earned an average of $71.33 per month, while officers made $203.50 per month — equivalent to about $1,436 and $4,107 today, respectively. 

The number of service members was even higher in Germany, where 18.1 million aided the Nazis’ effort out of a population of 69 million — a whopping 31%. No nation bore the brunt of the conflict quite like the Soviet Union, however, where 34.5 million people, including 35% of the male population, mobilized during the war.

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World War II was fought on every continent but Antarctica.

Though it was divided into two main theaters (Pacific and European), World War II was so expansive that it was fought on every continent but one: Antarctica. The North Africa campaigns lasted three years and saw battles take place in Libya, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, with the Allies emerging victorious in May 1943. The conflict also reached North America; the U.S. entered the war after the Pearl Harbor attack of December 7, 1941, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously declared “a date which will live in infamy.” Brazil was the only South American country to deploy troops, but naval battles such as River Plate occurred off the coast of Uruguay, and Germany attempted espionage in Latin America via Operation Bolívar. Australia was one of the first countries to declare war on Nazi Germany, and mainland Australia was first attacked by Japan on February 19, 1942.

Machu Picchu is younger than Notre-Dame Cathedral.

Machu Picchu
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Author Bess Lovejoy
May 14, 2026

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Perched high in the Andes, Machu Picchu feels like a relic from the deep past — a lost city swallowed by clouds and time. But despite its ancient aura, it’s actually younger than one of Europe’s most famous medieval landmarks: Notre-Dame Cathedral.

Construction on Notre-Dame began in 1163, and the cathedral rose over the next two centuries into a defining example of Gothic architecture. By the time it was finished around 1345, it had already become a centerpiece of Parisian religious and civic life. 

Machu Picchu, by contrast, dates to the height of the Inca Empire in the 15th century, likely built as a royal estate for the emperor Pachacuti. For decades, historians placed its construction around 1450, but newer research using radiocarbon dating suggests the site may have been occupied as early as the 1420s (and possibly even a little earlier, as scientists continue refining the timeline). Still, Notre-Dame stood for centuries before it.
The comparison highlights two very different historical trajectories. While European builders were perfecting cathedral construction in the Late Middle Ages, the Inca were developing their own sophisticated architectural traditions in the Andes, shaping stone so precisely that structures could stand without mortar. But eventually, Machu Picchu was abandoned around the time of the Spanish conquest in the 16th century.

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Spanish chronicles don’t mention Machu Picchu.

When Spanish conquistadors swept through the Inca Empire in the 1530s, they left behind detailed written accounts of the places they encountered — but Machu Picchu is nowhere to be found in those records.

That silence has long puzzled historians. One leading theory is that the remote mountaintop site, tucked deep in the Andes above the Urubamba River, simply escaped the Spaniards’ notice. Another possibility is more intriguing: that Machu Picchu may have served as a kind of refuge during the early years of Spanish conquest, where some Incas could retreat beyond the reach of colonial forces.

There’s no definitive proof for that idea, and many scholars think the site was likely abandoned around the time the Spanish arrived, as the political and economic systems that sustained it collapsed. Still, the lack of any mention in colonial chronicles remains striking — especially for a site of such scale and sophistication.

John Wilkes Booth’s brother saved the life of Abraham Lincoln’s son.

President Lincoln and family
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Author Michael Nordine
December 7, 2023

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John Wilkes Booth will forever be infamous for assassinating the man widely regarded as the greatest president in American history, but not all Lincoln-Booth relations were strained. A year or two before Honest Abe’s death, in fact, Edwin Booth — the older brother of John and a prominent actor — saved the life of Lincoln’s son Robert Todd Lincoln, who was then in his early 20s. (The precise date is unknown, but the event is believed to have taken place in either 1863 or 1864.)

The younger Lincoln found himself on a crowded train platform in Jersey City, New Jersey, and was accidentally pushed off the platform as a train departed. “In this situation the train began to move, and by the motion I was twisted off my feet, and had dropped somewhat, with feet downward, into the open space, and was personally helpless,” Robert Todd Lincoln later wrote of the event that put him in the path of the oncoming train. It was then that Booth grabbed him by the coat collar, saving him. Booth was well known enough as an actor for Lincoln to recognize his rescuer and even thank him by name. In April 1865, the day after his brother assassinated Lincoln, Edwin vowed never to return to the stage — a short-lived promise, as he gave an acclaimed performance in the title role of Hamlet the following year.

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John Wilkes Booth originally planned to kidnap Lincoln.

“All plots tend to move deathward,” wrote Don DeLillo in the 1985 novel White Noise, and so it was with Booth and Lincoln. Booth, a disgruntled actor and fierce Confederate sympathizer, originally had a less violent plan — to kidnap the president, hold him in Richmond, Virginia (the capital of the Confederacy), and exchange him for a number of Confederate prisoners. He came close to carrying out this plan on March 17, 1865, before Lincoln’s schedule changed at the last minute and he did not attend the play where the kidnapping was to take place. “My love (as things stand to-day) is for the South alone,” Booth wrote to his brother-in-law in 1864. “Nor do I deem it a dishonor in attempting to make for her a prisoner of this man to whom she owes so much misery.” The plot was forever scuttled when the Confederacy surrendered less than a month later on April 9. Just five days later, Booth executed the more extreme version of his plan.

Napoleon almost wasn’t French.

Portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte
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Author Bess Lovejoy
May 14, 2026

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Napoleon Bonaparte is one of France’s most famous figures, but at birth, his identity was far less straightforward. He entered the world as Napoleone di Buonaparte on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, the capital of the Mediterranean island of Corsica. At the time, France had only just acquired the island from Genoa the previous year, after 500 years of Genoese control. In practical terms, Napoleon was born into a place that had only just become French — and didn’t yet fully feel it.

Corsica itself had long been shaped by Italian influence, and that cultural imprint was evident in Napoleon’s family, language, and name. French was not his first language (it was a local dialect similar to Italian), and as a young man, he was more interested in Corsican politics than in France’s future. That outsider status became even clearer when he was sent to mainland France for school. There, classmates mocked his accent and made fun of his name.

Napoleon’s transformation came later. After the French Revolution, he aligned himself with France’s new political order and began reshaping his identity along with it. He dropped the more Italian-sounding elements of his name and became “Napoleon Bonaparte,” a figure who would rise through the French army and eventually rule the country. In retrospect, it’s striking that the leader who came to embody France was born at the margins of it — culturally, linguistically, and politically.

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Napoleon and his family had to flee Corsica in 1793.

Napoleon’s path to embracing a French identity wasn’t just gradual — it was forced. In the early 1790s, amid the upheaval of the French Revolution, Corsica descended into political conflict. The island’s independence leader, Pasquale Paoli, broke with revolutionary France and sought autonomy for Corsica, with British support. The Bonaparte family sided with the French Republic, a dangerous choice. By June 1793, Paoli’s followers had branded the Bonapartes as traitors. Their home in Ajaccio was looted, and the family faced what contemporary accounts describe as mortal danger. They fled the island for mainland France. The exile proved decisive: Up until then, the young Napoleon had been closely tied to Corsica, returning often and focusing on Corsican politics. Losing that foothold pushed him to fully commit to a career in the French army.

Genghis Khan was the leader’s title, not his name.

Genghis Khan
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
March 20, 2025

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The mighty conqueror Genghis Khan is one of history’s most formidable world leaders, but his legacy is far better known than his actual name. He was born to a ruling Mongol family and was given the name Temüjin, which means “of iron” or “blacksmith” in the Mongolian language. Temüjin was sent into exile with his mother and siblings when he was 9 years old, after his father was poisoned by political enemies. Despite living in poverty and even a brief enslavement, he clawed his way back to power by killing leaders of rival tribes and gathering allies. By his early 20s, he had emerged as a tribal leader with a large, loyal army.

In 1206, when Temüjin was in his late 30s to mid-40s (his birth year is the subject of debate), he gathered leaders — the ones he hadn’t killed — from all over the Mongolian Steppe to unite them as one nation, ready to conquer neighboring lands. At this assembly, called a kurultai, he was given the title of Genghis Khan. “Khan” is a Mongolian word for “leader” or “ruler,” although its use spread more widely in the following centuries. “Genghis,” also spelled “Chinggis,” is usually translated as “universal,” although it could have also meant “ocean” or “just.”

While he had risen to power as Temüjin, the leader built his empire as Genghis Khan. By his death in 1227, the Mongol Empire reached north to Siberia, south to Tibet, west to the Caspian Sea, and east to the China Sea. His children and grandchildren, including the famed ruler Kublai Khan, went on to grow the territory to around 9 million square miles, making it what is still the largest contiguous land empire in history. Genghis Khan’s immediate successor, Ögödei, used the title khagan, meaning “Great Khan.”

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The Mongol Empire had its sights on Western Europe.

The Mongol Empire was vast, and included significant parts of Eastern Europe. The Golden Horde — the western portion of the empire, led by Genghis Khan’s grandson Batu — conquered Kyiv in 1240. They laid waste to Hungary and mounted the head of Henry II, Duke of Silesia (now Poland), on a pike. Some Silesians were so terrified of the approaching army that they torched their own city and hid. Batu’s cavalry pushed its way into Bohemia in the spring of 1242, but abruptly turned back and pulled out of Hungary altogether instead of pushing further into Western Europe. There’s some debate as to why, but there are a couple of compelling theories. First, Ögödei, the Great Khan, had died in December 1241, and word may have just reached Batu that he needed to go back and help pick a successor at the kurultai. Second, the climate in the region had recently taken a really, really bad turn: The temperature was cold, the path was marshy, and food was scarce for both humans and horses, so the Mongols may have realized that moving forward wasn’t feasible.

Dreams were used for medical diagnoses in ancient times.

Illustration of Roman woman sleeping
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Author Michael Nordine
May 14, 2026

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Dreams mystified the ancient Greeks and Romans even more than they puzzle us, and both civilizations’ greatest minds attributed all manner of meanings to them: prophetic, divine, and even medical. (And you thought asking ChatGPT for medical advice was questionable.) 

Dreams were used as diagnostic tools by ancient physicians, including one of the most influential doctors in history: the Greek physician Galen, who wrote about the practice in a text called On Diagnosis in Dreams in the second century CE. He and others of his time believed that health was governed largely by the four humors — blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile — and that too much or too little of any one humor resulted in illness. 

According to the theory, a person’s dreams corresponded with their ailments. “Someone dreaming a conflagration is troubled by yellow bile, but if he dreams of smoke, or mist, or deep darkness, by black bile,” Galen wrote in On Diagnosis in Dreams. “Rainstorm indicates that cold moisture abounds; snow, ice, and hail, cold phlegm.” The idea that dreams could be used in this diagnostic manner was a controversial one even then, and Galen wrote his text in defense of the practice. Humorism fell out of favor by the mid-19th century, when the development (and, in the following decades, acceptance) of the germ theory of disease changed medicine forever.

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Rome was the first city with a population of 1 million.

Rome is not currently among the 100 most populous cities in the world, but it reached a significant milestone more than 2,000 years ago: the first city with a million people, which it achieved in 133 BCE. Cities that have been the most populous in the world since then include Baghdad, Iraq; Cordova, Spain; Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka; Ayutthaya, Thailand; and London, England. Tokyo, Japan, recently lost the title to Jakarta, Indonesia, which is home to roughly 42 million people.

One of the most famous naval heroes in history suffered from seasickness.

Horatio Nelson aboard the HMS Elephant
Credit: Hulton Archive via Getty Images
Author Timothy Ott
March 13, 2025

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Britain’s celebrated Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson was essentially the living embodiment of the hardscrabble “Four Yorkshiremen” of the classic Monty Python sketch. As a young naval officer, he lost sight in his right eye from gravel strewn by an incoming cannonball. A few years later, he had his right arm amputated — without anesthetic — after being shot in the heat of another battle. Lord Nelson also weathered the debilitating effects of malaria, yellow fever, tuberculosis, scurvy, and dysentery at various points in his life. But the cruelest affliction may well have been the seasickness that plagued him for the duration of his three-plus decades at sea.

This unfortunate condition was revealed to many with the public display of an 1804 letter in which Lord Nelson, then head of the British fleet in the Mediterranean, described his longtime struggles with boat-rocking waves. “I am ill every time it blows hard and nothing but my enthusiastic love for my profession keeps me one hour at sea,” he wrote. Yet the seasickness hardly kept him from achieving stunning victories at the 1798 Battle of the Nile and the 1801 Battle of Copenhagen, the latter of which famously featured him holding a telescope to his blind eye and pretending not to see an order to retreat. While his death amid the British triumph over Napoleon’s army at the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar kept him from enjoying the spoils of success like the Monty Python characters, Nelson did them one better by becoming the first nonroyal to receive a state funeral at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

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A painting contest was held to depict Lord Nelson’s heroic death.

Britain’s national love affair with Lord Nelson was perhaps best exemplified by a contest held for the painting that most dramatically captured his final heroic moments. One well-regarded entry came from former Royal Academy of Arts President Benjamin West, who all but replicated 1770’s “The Death of General Wolfe” by showing Lord Nelson lying in the arms of his crew on the deck of the HMS Victory. But the winner was the handiwork of Arthur William Devis, who secured his release from prison by promising to pay off his debts with the grand prize of 500 guineas. Devis was allowed on to the Victory to interview and sketch the crew members, resulting in the realistic touches that appeared in “The Death of Nelson, 21 October 1805.” And yet it was undoubtedly the liberties taken with the Christ-like portrayal of the revered naval commander, his shirtless body bathed in light and the backing pillow resembling a halo, that led to Devis claiming the award.

In 1960, one in five American households didn’t have a car.

Classic convertible at 1960s home
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Author Michael Nordine
May 7, 2026

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There were more than 278 million registered vehicles in the United States as of 2022, which is to say there are almost as many cars and motorcycles in America as there are Americans — about 342 million at last count. The number of vehicles was a good deal lower in 1960, when one in every five households didn’t own a car at all. 

That year, about 57% of American households had one car, 19% had two, and 2.5% had three or more. Today, only 9% of households don’t own a car at all, while 33.8% have one, 37.6% have two, and 19.5% own three or more. Trucks are especially popular, accounting for 170 million of the 278 million vehicles in the country.

Car ownership soared in the economic boom that followed World War II, with the number of registered vehicles rising from 27.5 million in 1940 to 61.5 million in 1960. Automobile culture has become only more entrenched in the decades since, especially in rural areas: More than 96% of households in both Idaho and Wyoming report owning at least one car, the highest rate in the nation. On the other end of the spectrum is New York City, where just 44% of households own a vehicle — the only major city in the country where car ownership is under 50%.

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The Toyota Corolla is the bestselling car of all time.

Since its introduction in 1966, the Toyota Corolla has sold more than 50 million units worldwide — the most of any car ever made. It’s gone through many iterations in its nearly 60 years of production, but the humble economy car has remained popular from one generation to the next for its sheer reliability in getting drivers from point A to point B. You might even consider the Corolla an automotive example of nominative determinism, as its name means “small crown” in Latin.

The Corolla has sold twice as many units as the similar Honda Civic (24 million), which entered the market in 1972 and has been the top seller in the U.S. since 1997. Other bestselling vehicles include the Volkswagen Golf (35 million sold worldwide) and Ford F-Series (41 million), while Ford’s influential Model T sold more than 16.5 million units between 1908 and 1927.

Only one U.S. president has had a Ph.D.

Woodrow Wilson at Princeton
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Author Michael Nordine
September 25, 2024

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Most U.S. presidents have attained some form of higher education, and there are a number of commanders in chief with law degrees, but only one received a Ph.D.: Woodrow Wilson. After beginning his undergraduate career at Davidson College in 1873, Wilson transferred to the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and studied political philosophy and history. He next attended the University of Virginia School of Law, though he withdrew during his second year. He managed to become a lawyer anyway, but quickly grew bored and chose to pursue a Ph.D. in history and political science instead. He did so at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, completing his doctorate in 1886.

While there, he wrote a book called Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics that was published before he graduated. Wilson’s time in academia didn’t end there, however. After teaching at Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University, he returned to his alma mater — first as a professor, and then as the 13th president of Princeton. He served in that role from 1902 to 1910, when he launched his successful bid for governor of New Jersey, and later won the 1912 presidential election with 435 electoral votes. 

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Several U.S. presidents never attended college.

As impressive as Woodrow Wilson’s education is, there’s also something to be said for reaching the highest office in the land without ever receiving a college degree. Twelve presidents did just that, including George Washington. Washington’s father died when he was 11, preventing the future president from receiving a higher education; Washington felt embarrassed by this throughout his life, though that didn’t stop several colleges and universities from being named after him. The other commanders in chief who never graduated from college are James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Millard Filmore, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and Harry Truman. 

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