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Old West cowboys and outlaws preferred bowler hats.

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Old west bowler hat
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Author Anne T. Donahue
November 8, 2023

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Conjuring the traditional image of Wild West cowboys and outlaws is easy. Typically, they’re shown in leather chaps, a vest, and denim pants, accompanied by boots, spurs, and holsters. Most importantly? There’s a cowboy hat: a tall, wide-brimmed head-covering that’s become synonymous with gun-slinging legends such as Billy the Kid, Buffalo Bill, or Hollywood’s John Wayne. Yet surprisingly, many cowboys and outlaws in the Old West (around 1865 to 1900) actually preferred bowler hats. The casual counterpart to the more formal derby hat, the bowler was designed by London hatmakers and commissioned by English nobility. Domed and hardened by shellac, the felt cap was reliable and sturdy; according to some accounts, it was designed for gamekeepers who kept losing their top hats to low-hanging branches. 

A world away from lush English estates, the bowler became a natural choice for life in the American West: The hats didn’t fly off in the wind, their durability withstood the elements, and they could be worn for almost any occasion. Favored by the likes of gambler and gunslinger Bat Masterson and the outlaws known as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the bowler hat maintained its hold on the Western frontier until the famous Stetson took over as the hat of choice. With a wider brim to help block the sun — and the boost Buffalo Bill Cody gave the hat after wearing it in his Wild West shows — the “Boss of the Plains” solidly replaced its British predecessor by the end of the 19th century, and became the hat commonly associated with the Old West today.

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The Stetson myth was called “one of the greatest hoaxes of all time.”

The myth that Old West cowboys primarily wore Stetson hats was first debunked in 1957 by journalist Lucius Beebe, who examined thousands of photographs and discovered the prevalence of bowler hats on the Western frontier in the 19th century. He was then inspired to write “The Hat That Won the West,” an op-ed for Salt Lake City’s Deseret News that exposed the myth that the Stetson was always the most popular cowboy hat. He wrote that “a mass delusion” took hold of the American consciousness as a result of “faith and folk-legend,” and even went so far as to call the Stetson myth “one of the greatest hoaxes of all time.”

Thomas Jefferson kept grizzly bears at the White House.

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Two grizzly bear cubs
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Author Michael Nordine
December 23, 2025

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The most common presidential pets have historically been cats and dogs, but the White House has also been home to considerably more exotic creatures. Calvin Coolidge alone had raccoons, a donkey, and a bobcat; Martin Van Buren was gifted a pair of tiger cubs (though they were confiscated by Congress and sent to the zoo); and Theodore Roosevelt had a badger named Josiah and a hyena named Bill, among many other animals. Most fearsome of all the presidential pets, perhaps, were the two grizzly bears Thomas Jefferson received from an American explorer named Zebulon Pike in 1807.

The two cubs didn’t call the White House home for long, alas. Jefferson realized that housing them on the grounds would be impractical, writing in a letter to his daughter, “These are too dangerous & troublesome for me to keep.” He knew just who to send them to: Charles Willson Peale, an artist who had a museum in Philadelphia. In a letter to his friend, Jefferson assured him that the cubs were “perfectly gentle” and “appear quite good humored” in addition to not eating much. Before sending them on their way, the nation’s third president briefly kept the bears on the White House lawn.

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An annual competition crowns the fattest bear of the year.

2025 was an eventful year for a lot of reasons, few more uplifting than the underdog story of Chunk, the year’s fattest bear. After two consecutive years as runner-up, the 1,200-pound brown bear finally won Fat Bear Week, an annual competition devoted to ursines who “best exemplify fatness and success.” 

Brown bears pack on the pounds before hibernating in the winter, and the public gets to vote in a single-elimination contest to crown a winner. Bear 32, known as Chunk, had lost twice in a row to bear 128, Grazer, the first female back-to-back winner since the competition began in 2014. It has since turned into an autumnal highlight, with this year’s final-round matchup between Chunk and bear 856 (who has no official name) garnering more than 160,000 votes.

Australia used to be called New Holland.

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New Holland map
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Author Kerry Hinton
July 2, 2024

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In 1606, toward the end of Europe’s age of exploration, Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed on the western side of Australia’s Cape York Peninsula, believing he was on the shores of New Guinea, which is separated from mainland Australia by the Torres Strait. He mapped 186 miles of coastline before departing later that year. Other Dutch navigators followed suit, charting the northern, western, and southern coasts of the landmass. Despite the fact that the Dutch never never colonized Australia, by the late 17th century the continent was known as New Holland (Nieuw-Holland in Dutch) — but the name didn’t last.

In 1768, British explorer James Cook made the first of his three voyages to Australia. Two years later, he claimed the eastern half for Britain and renamed it New South Wales. A secret goal of Cook’s first voyage was to discover what was listed on ancient maps as Terra Australis Incognita (Latin for Unknown South Land), a hypothetical vast landmass that the Greek philosophers theorized must exist in the Southern Hemisphere to counterbalance Asia. By the end of Captain Cook’s third voyage, he had seen portions of Antarctica and mapped enough of New Zealand (also named by Dutch explorers) to disprove that Australia was part of the fabled Terra Australis; rather, a separate southern continent was located in the icy polar region.

In 1803, British navigator Matthew Flinders became the first person to circumnavigate the coast of Australia, charting unknown parts of the coastline and proving that Australia is a single continent. In his journals and maps of the expedition, he harkened back to Terra Australis when naming the continent, but shortened it to Australia. This time, the name stuck. As Flinders wrote in A Voyage to Terra Australis (1814), the new, abridged moniker was “more agreeable to the ear.”

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Australia was once a penal colony.

In 1787, 11 ships holding nearly 1,400 people left Portsmouth, England, for Botany Bay, Australia. This “First Fleet” carried new settlers, and more than 700 convicts. This is not as unusual as it may seem. The British had been sending convicts to work off their sentences in the colonies since 1615. After the American Revolution, British convicts were sent to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (modern-day Tasmania). Between 1788 and 1868, more than 162,000 convicts were transported to Australia. Some were exiled in lieu of the death penalty, while others were sent more than 9,000 miles from home to serve sentences for more trivial crimes, including petty theft and fraud. Once free, many ex-convicts remained in Australia and joined the ranks of the free settlers. Today, an estimated 20% of Australians are the descendants of convicts. 

Some U.S. states had laws requiring margarine to be dyed pink.

  • Spreading margarine
Spreading margarine
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
November 8, 2023

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Margarine developed an unsavory reputation very quickly after it first arrived in North America from Europe in the 1870s. Both the dairy lobby and popular media maligned the butter substitute (then made from surplus animal fats), claiming that it was unhealthy, prepared under unsatisfactory conditions, and full of harmful chemicals. Twenty states regulated margarine’s labeling, and seven more banned it outright before Congress stepped in and passed the 1886 Oleomargarine Act, which, among other things, heavily taxed the manufacture and sale of margarine. Retailers tried to get around the law by selling margarine as butter, which only intensified the anti-margarine crusade.

To make the difference between margarine and butter more obvious, 32 states passed legislation regulating the color of margarine. Most of those states banned the color yellow, but at least five states (Minnesota, South Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia) went a step further and required that margarine be dyed pink to highlight its artificiality. The Supreme Court struck down pink margarine requirements as unconstitutional in 1898, but bans on yellow margarine remained in effect. In 1902, Congress even amended the Oleomargarine Act to increase taxes on artificially colored yellow margarine. But when the price of butter skyrocketed in the 1940s, public opinion shifted. The Oleomargarine Act was repealed in 1950, and state regulations started to follow suit. The last bans on yellow margarine were in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and both were repealed by 1967.

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Quebec banned yellow margarine until 2008.

The United States’ fraught relationship with margarine paled in comparison to Canada’s reaction. The entire country banned margarine entirely from 1886 to 1948, allowing it only for a brief window during World War I butter shortages. After that, margarine laws were up to the provinces, and Quebec was among the most strict; margarine wasn’t allowed at all until 1967. In 1987 — after most of North America was pretty much over the anti-margarine campaign — the province banned colored margarine. In 1997, the Unilever consumer goods culture decided to import 480 containers of margarine from the U.S. to Quebec to challenge the law. A legal battle dragged on until 2005, and while the yellow ban was upheld at the time, the provincial cabinet finally repealed it in 2008.

Early cars came with a vase for flowers.

  • Sterling silver auto vase
Sterling silver auto vase
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
December 23, 2025

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Imagine riding in a car in the 1920s. There was no air conditioning, the smell of auto exhaust was overwhelming, and the modern air freshener hadn’t been invented yet. Fortunately, many early automobiles had a pretty, fragrant feature: flower vases mounted to either the dashboard or the passenger-side window.

Automotive vases date back to at least the late 19th century and emerged in the United States by 1909, when Ward’s Automobile Topics noted that limousines on New York City’s ritzy Fifth Avenue had adopted the “Parisian notion.” In 1913, Popular Mechanics also credited France with the origin of the trend and published a perhaps-apocryphal origin story of a French automobile manufacturer that appeased an impatient American customer by adding a bouquet holder.

These vases came in all kinds of materials and designs, from sterling silver to glowing uranium glass. Some had brackets for mounting, while others included chains for hanging. Initially, they were a luxury item, but by the 1920s they were more accessible to the average consumer. Aftermarket models were widely available in jewelry stores or the Sears catalog. And Henry Ford was so taken with them that he even added them to his assembly line. 

Today, dashboard flowers are more widely associated with Volkswagen vehicles, although the manufacturer didn’t start offering them as an option until the 1950s (a tradition that continued into the 1970s). When the company rebooted the VW Beetle in 1998, one of its many quirky vintage touches was an acrylic vase in the dash.

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Portable vases were all the rage in the Victorian era.

In upper-class society in Victorian England, people often gave small, tightly wrapped bouquets to friends and romantic prospects. But if you received such a gift at the beginning of a social function, you had to hold it or stash it for the rest of the night, and after hours without water, the flowers got a little wilted. In the 1830s, Queen Victoria helped popularize small, ornate bouquet holders that included a vessel for water and a pin to keep the flowers in place. Many came with a clip or a pin to attach to clothing, or a ring to dangle from your finger or affix to a belt. Others came with little tripods for setting the vase on a surface — and some, while they kept flowers fresh and hands clean, still required carrying. Use declined toward the end of the 19th century, when long-stemmed bouquets went into fashion.

Benedict IX served as pope on three different occasions.

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Pope Benedict IX
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Author Bennett Kleinman
November 8, 2023

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Benedict IX was an 11th-century Catholic pope notable for being the only person to hold the papacy on multiple occasions — in his case, three different times. Born Theophylactus to a powerful Roman family, the future pope was the nephew of two prior popes, Benedict VII and John XIX. Upon the latter’s death in 1032, Benedict IX was chosen by the powerful Tusculani family as the successor, despite being just 20 years old (though some sources claim he was as young as 12). Benedict IX’s first pontificate came to an end in 1044, when he was deposed amid accusations of living an unsavory lifestyle, and replaced by Sylvester III.

Sylvester’s time as pope was brief, as supporters of Benedict IX expelled Sylvester from the role, allowing Benedict to return in April 1045. But Benedict’s second pontificate lasted only until the following month, as he notoriously sold the papacy to his grandfather Gregory VI. This act landed Gregory in hot water; he was deposed in December 1046 and replaced by Clement II. Clement met an untimely demise a few months later, allowing Benedict to seize the papacy for a third and final time in October 1047. Benedict IX remained pope until July 1048, when he was driven away by forces under the control of Holy Roman Emperor Henry III. 

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Benedict XII was accidentally elected pope.

On December 20, 1334, the College of Cardinals gathered to elect a new pope after the death of John XXII. The process of selecting the pope required a two-thirds majority, though it was common for many cardinals to throw away their initial vote on an obscure candidate, as it often took several rounds for a majority to come together around one person. Selecting someone unlikely to win was done in an effort to test the tone of the room and gauge how others were voting before finally coalescing around a winner. This time, however, the strategy backfired, as 11 of 16 cardinals voted for Jacques Fournier, a candidate deemed to have obscure origins and to lack wealth and followers. Given the rules of papal conclaves, revotes weren’t permitted once a majority had been reached, and so Fournier was thrust into the papacy. He took the papal name Benedict XII and assumed the role on January 8, 1335.

Warren G. Harding’s dog sat in on Cabinet meetings. 

  • Harding’s dog, Laddie Boy
Harding's dog, Laddie Boy
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Author Michael Nordine
July 2, 2024

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It isn’t uncommon to see pets in Zoom meetings these days, as some cats and dogs can’t help being the center of attention while their humans attempt to check in with their co-workers. Even so, the fact that Warren G. Harding’s dog sat in on Cabinet meetings sounds especially distracting (albeit in an adorable way) for such important positions as, say, the secretary of state. Laddie Boy, who’s been called the White House’s first celebrity dog, was an Airedale terrier whom the 29th president of the United States deeply adored. In addition to fetching the newspaper and joining the first lady at fundraisers, he had his own seat at Cabinet meetings and was written about in the press on a near-daily basis.

Sometimes, Laddie Boy even “wrote” back. “So many people express a wish to see me, and I shake hands with so many callers at the Executive Mansion,” read one such letter, “that I fear there are some people who will suspect me of political inclinations. From what I see of politics, I am sure I have no such aspirations.” The presidential pup remained popular even as Harding did not (he’s routinely ranked among the worst heads of state in American history). Following Harding’s untimely death in 1923, a poem by Edna Bell Seward titled “Laddie Boy, He’s Gone” was set to music by composer George M. Seward in order to console the faithful dog.

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Presidents have had bobcats, tigers, and other exotic pets at the White House.

Having your pet in Cabinet meetings is a bold choice, but at least the animal itself was tame. The same can’t be said of all White House pets through history. There was Calvin Coolidge’s bobcat, Andrew Jackson’s foul-mouthed parrot Poll (who had to be removed from Jackson’s own funeral because it kept swearing), the sheep Woodrow Wilson kept on the White House lawn during World War I, and John F. Kennedy’s pony, Macaroni. When it comes to sheer quantity, however, no one tops Theodore Roosevelt. The 26th president had nearly 40 pets, including 11 horses, a badger, flying squirrels, five guinea pigs, six dogs, a hyena, and a bear, among others.

Russia once banned vodka.

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Crystal bottle and cup
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Author Michael Nordine
June 6, 2024

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There’s a Russian proverb that speaks to the country’s love affair with a certain spirit: “Vodka is our enemy, so we’ll utterly consume it.” Russia and vodka are almost synonymous with each other, for better or, sometimes, worse. The problems associated with overconsumption have been known to Russia’s leaders for a long time — so long, in fact, that Tsar Nicholas II announced his intention to ban the liquor on September 28, 1914, in a telegram that read simply, “I have already decided to abolish forever the government sale of vodka in Russia.” He did so at considerable financial risk, as the government’s centuries-old vodka monopoly was responsible for a third of its revenue, but he felt it was important that the treasury was no longer “dependent on the ruination of the spiritual and economic forces of the majority of My faithful subjects.”

The tsar’s motivations weren’t purely altruistic, however. Russia’s 1905 loss in the Russo-Japanese War was attributed in part to soldiers’ drunkenness, and Nicholas II didn’t want to see a repeat of that in the looming conflict we now know as World War I. It didn’t work: Vodka prohibition stunted the country’s finances, infrastructure, and morale at a time when all three were of the utmost importance, and Russia was defeated in WWI as well. The prohibition law was repealed following the ascendance of Joseph Stalin, who reinstated the government monopoly in 1925.

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World War I was partly responsible for Prohibition in America.

The link between war and banning booze wasn’t exclusive to Russia, as World War I played a key role in America’s own experiment with prohibiting the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” One war-related reason had to do with the scarcity of resources, namely barley, which advocates argued would be put to better use baking bread for soldiers than brewing beer. Another was good old-fashioned wartime xenophobia. John Strange, the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, put it thusly: “We have German enemies in this country, too. And the worst of all our German enemies, the most treacherous, the most menacing, are Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz, and Miller.” The 18th Amendment was finally passed by Congress on December 18, 1917 — less than a year before World War I ended.

WWII soldiers carried emergency chocolate that tasted intentionally bad.

  • WWII Ration D bar
WWII Ration D bar
Credit: Craig Brown/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Timothy Ott
December 18, 2025

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In 1937, Captain Paul Logan of the U.S. Army Quartermaster General’s office visited the Hershey Chocolate Corporation with the mission of creating a chocolate bar for use as an emergency ration for soldiers. Among the requirements, this bar needed to supply a hearty dose of energy and have a higher melting point than normal chocolate, so as to remain solid in sweltering conditions. The bar was also meant to taste “a little better than a boiled potato,” in Logan’s words, meaning it had to be unappetizing enough to prevent soldiers from scarfing down the ration when no emergency was afoot.

Following those instructions wasn’t as simple as it sounds. Hershey chemist Sam Hinkle came up with a suitable formula of chocolate liquor, skim milk powder, cocoa butter, oat flour, vanillin, and barely enough sugar, but the resulting paste-like mix was too thick to be poured into molds and challenging to extract after setting. However, Hershey was eventually able to churn out 100,000 of what became known as “D ration” bars per day by 1939, and by the end of 1945, production for these and other military-designated chocolates was up to around 24 million units per week.

As for the order to ratchet up the unappetizing quotient, it’s safe to designate this mission accomplished. The dense ration bars were difficult to bite into with their high melting point, and the lower sugar level meant taste buds were overwhelmed by the bitterness of dark chocolate. As a result, these unappealing bricks were typically saved for emergencies as intended, but there turned out to be an unforeseen use for them as well. With communities across war-torn Europe sometimes desperate for any kind of food, U.S. regiments found they could win over suspicious locals by handing out the chocolate rations.

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Tootsie Rolls provided a lifeline for U.S. forces during a Korean War battle.

One of the memorable tales to emerge from the Korean War is that of the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, in which U.S. Marines found themselves surrounded by Chinese and North Korean forces amid frigid conditions in late 1950. As the story goes, the Marines radioed for help by requesting additional 60-millimeter mortars by their code name of “Tootsie Rolls,” only to be surprised by an airdrop of actual Tootsie Roll candies. According to historian Todd DePastino, the botched communication story is likely apocryphal, but what is true is that Americans found boxes of Tootsie Rolls that had been stored in the area, originally meant to supply an Army base store. The candies not only provided a sugar boost for the fighters, but also were heated and used to plug holes in bullet-riddled cars and radiators, helping the “Chosin Few” survive this famously grueling battle.

The ancient Roman calendar started the year in March.

  • Romulus, founder of Rome
Romulus, founder of Rome
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Author Darren Orf
December 19, 2023

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Today’s modern calendar comes with a lot of quirks, not least of which are the names of the last four months. Although September, October, November, and December seemingly begin with numeral prefixes, the numbers don’t match their place in the calendar. October, for example, is not the eighth month of the year, but the 10th. So what’s going on here? Well, blame the Romans. 

Ancient Rome’s original calendar, which according to myth was created by the city’s legendary founder Romulus in the eighth century BCE, contained only 10 months. The year lasted 304 days, beginning in March (named for the Roman god Mars) and ending in December, the 10th month (marking the annual harvest). But because this calendar woefully underestimated the true length of a year, it was replaced with a new calendar by the Roman king Numa Pompilius around 713 BCE. The new calendar put the year at 355 days long, divided into 12 months, based on the cycles of the moon. It added the month of January to the start of the year and tacked on February at the end, though the latter eventually moved to its current position between January and March. This change threw the numerically named months (which at that point also included Quintilis and Sextilis) out of whack. Strangely, no one seemed to mind, and this quirk of the calendar has been with us ever since.

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A German librarian deciphered the Maya calendar.

One of the most complex calendars in history is the timekeeping system created by the Maya thousands of years ago. For centuries, scholars didn’t know what to make of the ancient calendar — in fact, they didn’t even know how to read it. That changed with the arrival of Ernst Förstemann, a librarian at the Royal Library in Dresden, Germany. Although he had no background in Maya history or culture, Förstemann did have an appetite for mathematics and, luckily, access to the Dresden Codex, one of the earliest surviving books written in the Americas, which is filled with Maya hieroglyphics. With help from a 1566 book detailing the inner workings of the Maya writing system, Förstemann decoded the culture’s complex system of three interlocking calendars — the Sacred Round, Solar Round, and Long Count calendar. Building on his work, scholars eventually concluded that August 13, 3114 BCE — known to the Maya as 4 Ahau 8 Cumku — represented the beginning of creation in the Mesoamerican civilization.

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