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The earliest passports used written descriptions instead of photos.

  • Ancient Pakistan passport
Ancient Pakistan passport
Credit: David Parker/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bennett Kleinman

May 21, 2024

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Imagine trying to pass through border security when all you have to prove your identity is a piece of paper that says “brown hair and freckles.” While that wouldn’t fly today, it’s typically how things worked before passports had photographs. Early passports simply included details such as the holder’s name and the location they were traveling; photography wasn’t invented until the 1820s, and it took many more years for the technology to allow for easy passport photographs. Then around 1825, U.S. passports began to include written descriptions of the subject’s facial features, such as their eyes, forehead, and nose, to help aid in identification, and other countries followed suit. 

Though you’d occasionally find someone who described their nose as “Roman,” many passport applicants listed their features as “average,” thus rendering those descriptions rather unhelpful. What’s more, these physical descriptions were occasionally altered by officials to be less flattering than in the eyes of the applicant. One man who described his face shape as “intelligent” on his application was dismayed to find that it was later changed to “oval” by a government official.

In 1914, the year World War I began, many countries began mandating more secure passports with both photos and descriptions, as governments feared potential espionage. In 1920, the League of Nations established a set of global passport standards, requiring the use of photographic identification. These increased security measures led to a whole set of new issues, as many people viewed passport photos as demeaning and comparable to mugshots. Some border officials were also unprepared for changes in a person’s physical appearance — in one instance in 1923, a clean-shaven Danish man was required to regrow the mustache from his passport photo before he was allowed to leave Germany.

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The world’s rarest passport is issued by a medieval religious order.

The Knights of Malta are a religious order founded around the year 1099 in Jerusalem, originally established to care for sick pilgrims. The group was formally recognized by Pope Paschal II in 1113, which established the legal basis for sovereignty that the group maintains today. The order later fought battles in the Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries, and was ousted by Napoleon Bonaparte from the Maltese Archipelago in 1798. Finally, in 1834, the order established its headquarters in Rome, where it remains today. Despite owning no land, the order issues passports like a sovereign nation, including what’s considered the rarest passport in the world. This diplomatic document is held by roughly 500 key organizational figures who are tasked with performing duties abroad, including the grand master, the order’s leader. Each passport features a dark crimson cover and allows for travel throughout 113 independent states.

Credit cards were originally made of cardboard.

  • 1957 Diners’ Club card
1957 Diners' Club card
Credit: adsR/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine

November 5, 2025

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“Plastic” is synonymous with credit cards these days, but that wasn’t always the case. The first credit card was created in 1949 after businessman Frank McNamara forgot to bring his wallet to dinner one night in New York City. The acute embarrassment he felt was enough to inspire him to create a solution alongside his business partner Ralph Schneider. It came in the form of the Diners’ Club card, which was made of cardboard and allowed its users to pay their restaurant bills monthly rather than at the time of service. (Unlike with today’s credit cards, the balance had to be paid in full every month.)

The Diners’ Club was a hit, and a number of companies followed suit. One of them was American Express, which introduced a paper credit card in 1958 and the first plastic credit card a year later. The new material was more durable than its predecessors and also more fraud-resistant, as the letters and numbers were raised rather than simply written. Diners’ Club, which amassed 42,000 members within its first year and 1 million by 1959, was acquired by Citibank in 1981 and has been owned by Discover since 2008.

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Most women couldn’t get a credit card until 1974.

Prior to 1974, applying for and receiving a credit card was an uphill battle for women. Married women only received them under their husband’s name, and single women almost always needed a male relative to cosign their applications. Banks were well within their power to deny female applicants even if they were fully capable of paying off a credit card on their own. That came to an end when Congress passed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) in 1974, which banned the practice of discriminating against a prospective borrower on the basis of sex — language made famous by a brief cowritten by Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the 1971 Supreme Court case Reed v. Reed.

An American Civil War battle was fought off the coast of France.

  • Sinking of the CSS Alabama
Sinking of the CSS Alabama
Credit: Classic Image/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bennett Kleinman

April 3, 2024

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While most U.S. Civil War conflicts occurred on American soil, the Battle of Cherbourg was a rare exception — it took place all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of France. This sea skirmish occurred on June 19, 1864, between two opposing warships, the Union’s USS Kearsarge and the Confederacy’s CSS Alabama. The battle was the result of an effort by Union ships to track down Confederate raiders across the globe. Given the U.S. Navy’s loyalty to the Union, the Confederacy contracted various shipyards in Britain to help expand their fleet, which the neutral British government did little to prevent at the time. The Alabama had been secretly built in England, and set sail across the Atlantic in January 1863. The warship struck and sank the USS Hatteras off the coast of Galveston, Texas, before changing course toward Southeast Asia. During this global excursion, it captured 65 Union merchant ships before returning to Europe in 1864 for much-needed repairs.

The crew of the Alabama docked in Cherbourg Harbor on June 11, believing they’d likely be safe in neutral French territory. However, on June 14, the Kearsarge came upon the enemy ship and created a blockade out at sea. Over the next several days, Union Captain John A. Winslow and Confederate Captain Raphael Semmes prepared their respective ships for battle, and on June 19, the Alabama fired the first shots. The fighting drew the attention of spectators who gathered on the shore to witness the skirmish. After an hour, the Alabama began sinking, though most of its crew members were rescued by a nearby British yacht. While Semmes escaped into England and evaded capture, the battle was a decisive victory for the Union army, which had toppled one of the Confederacy’s most destructive warships.

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Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address lasted only two minutes.

The Gettysburg Address is one of the most famous speeches in U.S. history, but President Abraham Lincoln’s historic remarks were actually quite brief. On November 19, 1863, two years into the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was asked to speak at the dedication of the military cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Before the president took the stage, Massachusetts politician and orator Edward Everett gave a lengthy 13,600-word speech that lasted for two hours. Lincoln followed with his own address, beginning with the immortal opening line, “Fourscore and seven years ago…” He went on to deliver a quick two-minute speech that was just 272 words long. Initially, the Gettysburg Address was met with mixed reviews; it wasn’t until the 20th century that many Americans came to fully appreciate Lincoln’s words. Everett was immediately effusive, however. The next day, he wrote in a letter to Lincoln, “I should be glad… that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

The eagle once depicted on U.S. coins was a real eagle named Peter.

  • U.S. silver coins
U.S. silver coins
Credit: Milosz Bartoszczuk/ iStock
Author Michael Nordine

March 7, 2024

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Not unlike Leo the Lion, who roars at the beginning of many a movie produced by MGM, the eagle seen on early U.S. coins was a real creature with a surprisingly common name: Peter. In a rather patriotic confluence of events, none other than an eagle took residence at the U.S. Mint in the 1830s — roughly 50 years after the bald eagle was added to the national seal. The noble raptor would reportedly while away his days at the mint before being shooed away after working hours. As he and his human colleagues would eventually find out, however, industrial workplaces are no place for birds. Peter was mortally injured after his wing was caught in a coining press in 1836, and died a few days later despite workers’ best efforts to save him.

But his story does not end there. Peter’s friends and colleagues were not ready to say goodbye to him, as he’d become both a companion and mascot, so they hired a taxidermist and placed his stuffed remains on display in the building’s entrance; he still inhabits the current Philadelphia Mint. Historians believe the eagle featured on the silver dollar issued from 1836 to 1839 was based on the “magnificent specimen” that was Peter, as was the Flying Eagle one-cent piece issued in 1857 and 1858 — a fitting tribute to a bird who clearly inspired many.

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Bald eagles are no longer endangered.

As one of the United States’ most prized national symbols, the bald eagle is afforded certain privileges and protections — or at least it has been since habitat loss and DDT left the species teetering on the verge of extinction, with only 417 pairs remaining in 1963. Numbers began to rebound when DDT was banned and the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, and eagles were removed from the endangered species list in 2007 — making them one of the act’s greatest success stories. You can hardly look at one the wrong way without breaking the law, as the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act made it illegal to “take, possess, sell, purchase, barter, offer to sell, purchase or barter, transport, export or import, at any time or any manner, any bald eagle ... [or any golden eagle], alive or dead, or any part (including feathers), nest, or egg thereof” without a permit, which isn’t exactly given out freely.

A fake British ship fought the real ship it was disguised as.

  • RMS Carmania, WWI
RMS Carmania, WWI
Credit: Chronicle/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd

October 29, 2025

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Luxury ocean liners were at the height of their popularity at the beginning of the 20th century, and ships such as the RMS Mauretania attracted wealthy first-class travelers with lavish dining rooms, opulent lounges, and plush accommodations. When World War I struck, however, several ocean liners ended up being drafted into the war effort as hospitals, troop transport, and even battleships. Two of these converted ships met in battle — and, with one vessel disguised as the other and neither built for fighting, what followed was pretty awkward.

One of the involved ships was the SMS Cap Trafalgar, a German three-funnel passenger ship that was docked in Buenos Aires when the war broke out. Planning to use the ship to disrupt British trade in the region, the German navy outfitted it with guns and a crew of more than 300 soldiers. For a final touch, they removed one of the funnels and painted the remaining two to look like the two-funnel British ocean liner RMS Carmania. Meanwhile, the British navy armed the Carmania with its own wartime makeover — and a more militaristic all-gray paint job.

The Carmania was sent to Trindade, a small island off the coast of Brazil, to check on intelligence suggesting a German ship coaling facility. There, they found the German Cap Trafalgar that was posing as the Carmania — suddenly a much less effective disguise.

The ensuing battle was sloppy: Crews on both ships had no way to coordinate with one another like they would on a real warship, so gunners just fired whenever they saw a target. Both ships were badly damaged, but Britain’s Carmania ultimately prevailed when the Cap Trafalgar fled and sank.

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The RMS Mauretania’s speed rivals that of modern cruise ships.

One of the most storied ships from the golden age of luxury ocean liners was the RMS Mauretania, which held the record for the fastest trip across the Atlantic for more than 20 years. Its service speed was 25 knots, or just under 29 miles per hour. By comparison, Royal Caribbean cruise ships have speeds up to 20 knots, and Holland America’s fastest vessel reaches speeds up to 22.5 knots. Granted, some passenger liners have traveled much faster than the Mauretania ever did — the SS United States hit more than 35 knots in 1952 — but compared to the typical ship, the century-old Mauretania’s speed still feels quite modern.

Phone numbers used to start with letters.

  • Woman dialing phone
Woman dialing phone
Credit: Harold M. Lambert/ Archive Photos via Getty Images
Author Bess Lovejoy

October 29, 2025

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Long before everyone’s phone fit in their pocket, phone numbers began with letters — specifically, the first two letters of the telephone exchange name. These exchange names, sometimes drawn from local neighborhoods or landmarks, served as mnemonics to help people — operators and callers alike — remember and route phone numbers. 

For example, the Ricardos’ phone number on I Love Lucy was MU 5-9975. “MU” was for Murray Hill, which evoked a familiar locality and was used for the whole east side of Manhattan’s telephone exchange. When an exchange name was written out, the first two letters were usually capitalized, as in, “MUrray Hill 5-9975.” The corresponding digits for “M” and “U” on the telephone dial were 6 and 8, so the operator could reach the Ricardos at 68 5-9975.

The first phones were connected to one another with wires, but as the number of phones grew, that became less practical, so phones were connected to telephone exchanges — those central switchboards you may remember from movies. When you dialed a number, you were actually dialing the exchange first, and they would connect your phone line to the person you were trying to call. Each exchange handled calls in a particular region or neighborhood. Referring to your phone number by the exchange name simplified things — “CEntral 6-0123,” “MArket 7032,” or “ENglewood 3-1234” were common formats. (Some phone numbers only had six digits, or even five in small locales.)

However, as cities and telecommunications systems expanded, this scheme began to strain. Exchange names and letter prefixes limited the number of combinations available. With the advent of automatic dialing (which required every line to have a unique, machine-readable number), long-distance direct dialing, and the need for more capacity, the industry eventually shifted to phone numbers with digits only in the mid-20th century.

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People protested the switch to numbers-only dialing.

When the phone company began phasing out lettered prefixes in favor of all-numeric dialing in the 1960s, not everyone welcomed the change. Many people felt that exchange names such as “PEnnsylvania,” “TRafalgar,” or “YUkon” added a sense of place and personality to the act of calling someone. Replacing them with just numbers, critics said, stripped away the literary charm of the phone system and made communication colder and more difficult. In San Francisco, a group calling itself the Anti-Digit Dialing League mounted a witty, if ultimately futile, campaign against what it called the “dehumanization” of the telephone system, and even filed lawsuits to stop the conversion. They were soon joined by the more grandly named Committee of Ten Million To Oppose All-Number Calling, which voiced similar complaints on a national scale. These groups knew that 736-5000 simply didn’t have the ring — or the romance — of “PEnnsylvania 6-5000,” the phone number for New York City’s Hotel Pennsylvania immortalized in the Glenn Miller song. But practicality eventually won out. As telephone networks expanded and automation advanced, the alphanumeric system simply couldn’t keep up with demand. The letters faded, and the digits took over.

The first world map to mention ‘America’ was published in 1507.

  • Waldseemüller map, 1507
Waldseemüller map, 1507
Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bess Lovejoy

October 29, 2025

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In 1507, a group of scholars in the small French town of Saint-Dié published a world map that changed how Europeans saw the globe — and gave “America” its name. Created by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller and scholar Matthias Ringmann, the map was the first to show the New World as a separate continent, surrounded by ocean, rather than as part of Asia.

The two men drew on Portuguese nautical data and letters attributed to Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci to create the map. Though it later emerged they were doctored, the letters appeared to argue that Vespucci had found an entirely new landmass, not the eastern edge of Asia, as Christopher Columbus believed. Waldseemüller and Ringmann agreed with this idea — and in an accompanying book, Cosmographiae Introductio, they proposed naming this “fourth part” of the world “America,” after Vespucci’s Latinized first name, Americus.

Though Waldseemüller later dropped the name from his maps, others embraced it. When cartographer Gerardus Mercator applied the name “America” to the entire Western Hemisphere in 1538, it quickly became standard.

Only one copy of Waldseemüller’s 1507 map survives today — discovered in a German castle in 1901 and now housed at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Sometimes called “America’s birth certificate,” it marks the moment when a new name — and a New World — entered the map of human understanding.

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No one knows for sure where the word “Asia” comes from.

No one knows exactly where the word “Asia” comes from. The name is ancient, and its meaning has been lost to time. The ancient Greeks used it to describe the lands east of their homeland, but they may have borrowed it from older sources. Some scholars link it to the Akkadian word asu, meaning “east” or “land of the rising sun.” Others point to Assuva or Asuwa, a region in western Anatolia first mentioned by the king of the Hittites in 1235 BCE. It could also come from a local name in what is now Turkey that gradually expanded to the territory of Asia Minor — eventually coming to describe an entire continent.

The test to become a Gettysburg battlefield guide has a 90% failure rate.

  • Camp David attendees listen to a tour guide during a trip to the Gettysburg National Military Park, 1978
Camp David attendees listen to a tour guide during a trip to the Gettysburg National Military Park, 1978
Credit: Hum Historical/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine

October 29, 2025

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What’s been called the “hardest test in history” takes years to study for and isn’t administered at a traditional place of higher learning. The reward for those who pass is not a degree but a job: as a tour guide at Gettysburg National Military Park, the site of the bloodiest battle in American history. The test’s failure rate is nearly 90%, which is especially brutal considering how rarely the test is even offered. The most recent exam was given in December 2024, more than seven years after the one before that. Civil War buffs are a different breed, though, and the Battle of Gettysburg, as the turning point of that conflict, has been endlessly studied.

The test entails about 180 different questions and three essays. Some aspirants move to or near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in order to be better prepared, and some lawyers who’ve taken it say it’s more difficult than the bar exam. The written test is followed by interviews, a weekend at the battlefield displaying the would-be guide’s knowledge, and finally a two-hour mock tour. The National Park Service caps the number of guides at about 150 and only offers the test as needed, meaning that prospective guides don’t even know when they’ll be taking it. In 2017, only nine of the 97 applicants passed the test.

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Gettysburg wasn’t the largest Civil War battle.

In terms of casualties, Gettysburg was far and away the deadliest battle of the Civil War: An estimated 51,112 soldiers lost their lives during the three-day period beginning on July 1, 1863. In terms of total soldiers overall, however, another conflict was even larger: the Battle of Fredericksburg, which took place in Virginia in December 1862 and involved more than 185,000 soldiers, compared to Gettysburg’s 160,000. Unlike the Battle of Gettysburg, Fredericksburg resulted in overwhelming defeat for the Union and strengthened the Confederacy’s position.

It once rained golf balls in Florida.

  • Golf ball in a rain puddle
Golf ball in a rain puddle
Credit: NurPhoto SRL/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Timothy Ott

October 29, 2025

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According to the Visit Florida website, the city of Punta Gorda “is a family-friendly getaway offering saltwater and freshwater adventures, waterfront shopping, award-winning cuisine, family-friendly attractions, and plenty of old-Florida charm.” Left unsaid is the possibility that visitors may find themselves running for cover amid a golf ball-infused rainstorm.

That apparently was the situation that unfurled in the area in the late hours of Labor Day in 1969. It had indeed rained that night, according to a local newspaper report, but instead of simply finding the usual poststorm moisture on lawns and trees, residents encountered “dozens and dozens” of golf balls “in the gutters, on the street, along the sidewalks, and at Punta Gorda Isles.” Local police did their civic duty of cleaning up the clutter, to the point where one even expressed exhaustion over the effort. Sadly, authorities failed in the ultimate task of determining just what caused this unusual accumulation of pockmarked white spheres.

Popular Mechanics offered one plausible explanation: The city regularly experiences waterspouts (essentially tornadoes over water), which could have sucked up a torrent of balls from a pond at a local golf course, before unloading them back to Earth in a rainstorm. It certainly makes sense from a scientific standpoint and provides another perspective to the “freshwater adventures” promised to tourists in this Gulf Coast locale.

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A shark once fell on a California golf course.

About the only thing more unlikely than a golf ball-infused rainstorm is the possibility of a live shark dropping from the sky. And yet, the proof was there for the viewing when a 2-foot-long leopard shark was discovered near the 12th tee at California's San Juan Hills Golf Club in October 2012. In this case, the probable cause was attributed to a large bird of prey plucking the shark from the nearby ocean before losing its grip, a theory supported by the puncture wounds found on the aquatic creature. But while no witnesses were able to confirm the circumstances of the shark's arrival, the story at least had a happy ending. Club employees were able to keep the fish alive by temporarily storing it in a salt water-filled bucket before returning it to the ocean, ensuring it could live out its life free of worries over errant chip shots and careless golf cart drivers.

Richard Nixon is the only U.S. president born on the West Coast.

  • Richard Nixon as a child
Richard Nixon as a child
Credit: Bettmann Archive via Getty Images
Author Timothy Ott

October 29, 2025

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On January 9, 1913, Richard Milhous Nixon was born on his parents’ citrus farm in Yorba Linda, California, a location that became notable when, in 1968, he became the first — and to date, only — U.S. president born on the West Coast of the United States.

Considering that a total of 45 people have served in the nation’s highest office, it may seem odd that just one has come from the contiguous West Coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington. Then again, the United States is a country that began on the Eastern Seaboard and expanded westward, with California, Oregon, and Washington among the later entries to the nation, in 1850, 1859, and 1889, respectively. 

In fact, it took until 1860 for Americans to elect the first president from somewhere besides the original 13 states: Kentucky-born Abraham Lincoln. The tide has tilted toward the Pacific in more recent decades, with eight of the past 16 presidents coming from states west of the Mississippi River. Still, a disproportionate overall share hail from traditional eastern strongholds, with 28 presidents born in the original 13 states and another seven in Ohio.

Despite Nixon’s rare geographic origins for a president, he isn’t the only one with ties to the western reaches of the country. Barack Obama was born and spent much of his childhood in Hawaii, before becoming a state and U.S. senator from Illinois. Herbert Hoover was born in Iowa but was sent to live with an uncle in Oregon at age 11, before attending Stanford University in California. And Ronald Reagan grew up in Illinois prior to establishing a Hollywood career and eventually becoming governor of the Golden State.

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One U.S. vice president won a Nobel Peace Prize and co-wrote a No. 1 pop song.

If the vice presidency is sometimes derided as a position of surprisingly minimal importance, then Charles G. Dawes, vice president to Calvin Coolidge, at least managed his most noteworthy accomplishments in other arenas. A prominent businessman, Dawes was tasked with devising a system to stabilize German reparations in the aftermath of World War I, for which he earned a Nobel Peace Prize during his tenure as VP. The financial guru was also a talented self-taught musician who had composed the instrumental "Melody in A Major" in 1911. Forty years later, songwriter Carl Sigman added lyrics to Dawes' wistful melody and retitled the song "It's All in the Game." Although multiple artists recorded the tune that year, a revamped version by Tommy Edwards shot to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in 1958, making Dawes the rare individual to be recognized for both solving an international crisis and implanting an earworm in the heads of the masses.

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