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China’s terra-cotta army was originally painted with vibrant colors.

  • China’s terra-cotta army
China's terra-cotta army
Credit: Mirko Kuzmanovic/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd

September 18, 2025

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The terra-cotta army in China is a collection of more than 7,000 life-size clay soldiers created in the third century BCE, each made with so much unique detail that some archaeologists believe they’re portraits of specific people. But there used to be yet another layer of detail: Originally, these figures were painted in various colors. After the statues were sculpted, fired, and assembled, artisans applied one or two layers of lacquer (derived from a lacquer tree), followed by one or two layers of paint made from cinnabar, malachite, azurite, bone, and other materials mixed with egg.

This massive installation, which was constructed to guard the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, was discovered by accident when farmers trying to drill a well tapped into one of the figures in 1974. Archaeologists eventually uncovered three pits filled with the statues over an area of about 24,000 square yards, which had originally been covered with wooden roofs. The collection turned out to be just one part of a vast, 17-square-mile necropolis surrounding the emperor’s tomb. Fifty years later, the ancient facility is still being explored. After more than two millennia underground, many of the more fragile parts have disintegrated, such as wooden chariots. And while some areas of pigment are still visible, the once-vibrant color has mostly faded away, too.

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Qin Shi Huang’s necropolis also has terra-cotta musicians.

Qin Shi Huang’s burial complex was largely constructed while the emperor was still alive. He wanted it to have everything he’d need in the afterlife, and this included entertainment. One underground re-creation of a royal garden included 15 terra-cotta musicians constructed in a similar way to the warriors — along with 46 bronze figures of swans, geese, and cranes, as tame birds were a regular fixture of musical performances.

Congress has formally declared war 11 times.

  • Spanish American War
Spanish American War
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Author Rachel Gresh

April 11, 2024

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The U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1788, gives Congress the sole power to declare war. Since then, the legislative body has formally declared war on another country a total of 11 times, during five separate conflicts. The first time was on June 17, 1812, against a familiar rival, Great Britain, nearly 30 years after the end of the Revolutionary War. A 19-to-13 Senate vote initiated the War of 1812, based on Britain’s alleged violations of U.S. maritime rights. Following that conflict, several decades passed before the U.S. declared war for a second time, in May 1846, initiating the Mexican-American War, a conflict over land rights that was caused in part by the U.S. annexation of Texas in 1845. Five decades later, on April 25, 1898, the Spanish-American War began with a declaration of war on Spain, just weeks after Spanish forces sank the USS Maine battleship in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. The war ended with the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898, and Spain lost its territories in the Caribbean Sea.

The U.S. then became involved in World War I after taking up arms against Germany in April 1917, and Austria-Hungary the following December. Although the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria, and other nations joined the Central Powers, the U.S. only officially declared war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. A few decades later, the U.S. made six unanimous war declarations in two years, marking its entrance into World War II. Congress declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941, followed by Germany and Italy on December 11, 1941. Six months later, on June 4, 1942, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania were added to the list. Although the U.S. has been involved in numerous military operations around the world since the Second World War, 1942 marked the last time Congress officially declared war against another nation.

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Key West “declared war” on the U.S. in the 1980s.

On April 23, 1982, the city of Key West declared its independence from the U.S. as a political stunt, calling itself the Conch Republic micronation. The move was made based on claims that the federal government was significantly disrupting the community with a new Border Patrol checkpoint (established to eradicate drug smuggling) that made the island’s thruway nearly impassable and hampered tourism. Key West Mayor Dennis Wardlow was named prime minister of the Conch Republic, and the self-proclaimed micronation “declared war” on the U.S., though it was more of a symbolic move than a violent conflict. Accounts written about the day’s events vary, but include protesters breaking a loaf of Cuban bread over a U.S. Navy officer’s head and attacking a U.S. Coast Guard cutter with water balloons and conch fritters. 

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

  • Rene Laennec with a stethoscope
Rene Laennec with a stethoscope
Credit: World History Archive/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Nicole Villeneuve

September 18, 2025

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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. 

The Statue of Liberty was originally brown.

  • Lady Liberty
Lady Liberty
Credit: ApinBen4289/ Shutterstock
Author Rachel Gresh

April 16, 2024

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The Statue of Liberty originated as a sign of friendship between longtime allies France and the United States, and has become one of the most recognizable monuments in the world. Since 1886, Lady Liberty has proudly watched over New York Harbor in all her green glory — but this iconic color isn’t the statue’s original hue. When the monument was unveiled in Paris on July 4, 1884, it looked markedly different. Made with 31 tons of copper, it was roughly the same color as a penny. But the Statue of Liberty didn’t turn from brown to green overnight — the change took a few decades and went through an array of colors, the first of which was pink.

The statue’s color changed rapidly after it arrived in the harbor due to chemical reactions caused by exposure to the elements. The copper began to oxidize quickly, and the first stage of weathering caused the statue to form a surface layer of cuprite, a pinkish-red mineral that gave Lady Liberty a rosy hue. The cuprite continued to oxidize, this time turning into a black mineral called tenorite, causing the statue to appear a much darker brown than it had been a few years prior. By the 1920s, the monument arrived at its current bluish-green shade thanks to the minerals brochantite, antlerite, and atacamite. This greenish patina is commonly found on copper — just look at the old, weathered penny in your pocket. But not everyone was a fan of the Statue of Liberty’s new look. In 1906, Congress even approved a $62,000 painting budget (around $2 million today) to fix the monument as the patina became very noticeable. Due to public outrage, the statue was left alone, in the color that nature intended it to be. 

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The orange color of the Golden Gate Bridge was accidental.

San Francisco’s most famous bridge is unmistakable thanks to its brilliant reddish-orange hue, but this color was chosen almost by coincidence. The Golden Gate Bridge was destined to be an ordinary bridge painted in gray, silver, or black until architect Irving Morrow (who worked on the bridge’s lighting and art deco style) championed the unique orange vermillion color. Morrow first suggested the hue after he noticed that some of the bridge was painted with a primer in that color. In 1935, two years into construction, he presented a “Report on Color and Lighting” to the project’s board of directors, suggesting, “What has been thus played up in form should not be let down in color.” He believed the orange complemented the nearby Marin Hills and contrasted with the blues of the sky and sea. In the end, the board agreed, and the bridge was painted from end to end in a shade officially known as “international orange.”

Handkerchiefs were once considered a status symbol.

  • Women waving handkerchiefs, 1882
Women waving handkerchiefs, 1882
Credit: Bettmann via Getty Images
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd

September 9, 2025

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When was the last time you touched a real, cloth handkerchief? Before disposable tissues became ubiquitous, these pieces of cloth dried our tears, wiped our sweat, and kept our noses clean. For a time, they even did something no ordinary Kleenex could ever do: signal elite social status.

Among the European aristocracy in the 16th and 17th centuries, especially in France and England, handkerchiefs were meant for display, whether in a pocket, a hand, or as part of an elaborate social ritual. These were no ordinary hankies; they were made with intricate lacework and fine embroidery. Wealthy Europeans posed for portraits with their hankies, bequeathed them in wills, and included them in dowries. Women in Tudor England gave fancy hankies to men, who would wear them in their hats. Lost and stolen handkerchiefs made the news. A distinctive, precious handkerchief is even central to the plot of Shakespeare’s Othello, written around 1603.The popularity of handkerchiefs spread to the general public throughout the 18th century, especially as snuff became more popular. In noble circles, bolder colors became fashionable to hide the stains, and eventually fans started to overtake hankies as the fashionable handheld accessories. Although still ornately decorated, handkerchiefs were kept in sleeves, pockets, or necklines after that.

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King Louis XVI passed a law enforcing square handkerchiefs.

During the reign of France’s King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, courtiers in France carried handkerchiefs of all shapes and sizes, but the queen supposedly preferred the aesthetics of square ones. On June 2, 1785, King Louis passed a law stating, “The length of handkerchiefs shall equal their width throughout my entire kingdom.”

He wasn’t the first European ruler to pass hanky legislation. In England, Henry VIII was strict about designs and Charles II banned bows and tassels for being too extravagant. And in 17th-century Milan, lace wasn’t allowed on any garments except handkerchiefs.

Elvis Presley was a natural blond.

  • Young Elvis Presley, 1947
Young Elvis Presley, 1947
Credit: Album/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine

September 9, 2025

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The king of rock ’n’ roll’s talent may have come to him naturally, but his signature hairdo didn’t. Elvis Presley was a natural blond who dyed his hair black for a number of reasons, all of which evince an intuitive understanding of show business. In addition to wanting to emulate two of his heroes, actors Tony Curtis and Marlon Brando, he thought darker hair would accentuate his blue eyes. (That’s also why he wore eyeliner, another trick he picked up from Curtis.) However, he couldn’t afford proper dye as an up-and-coming artist, so he initially used shoe polish to darken his locks.

Once Elvis was successful enough for money to be no object, he settled on a few favorite dyes: Miss Clairol 51D and Black Velvet/Mink Brown by Paramount. He was so enamored with the look that he even asked his wife Priscilla to follow his lead: “He did want me to dye my hair black when I was young so we could look alike a little bit,” she said in a 2015 interview. 

Elvis’ hairstyle continued to draw attention when he was drafted into the military, with Time reporting that he “jumped the clippers by getting a ‘normal’ haircut that shortened his sideburns a good inch” and “left him still looking much too dreamy for the Army.” His hair also turned brownish-blond during his military service since he wasn’t allowed to dye it; anyone who wants to see Elvis’ natural hair color can do so at Graceland, where there’s a portrait from his Army days showing off his lighter locks.

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Elvis never performed outside the U.S. and Canada.

Despite being beloved around the world, Elvis Presley never performed outside North America. The prevailing (though never officially confirmed) belief is that the king of rock ’n’ roll had to turn down every offer he received to play abroad because his controversial manager, Colonel Tom Parker, was an undocumented immigrant from the Netherlands who didn’t have a passport and feared he would be denied reentry to the U.S. if he left. (If Elvis ever had a fear of flying, as is often suggested, he evidently got over it. He purchased and customized several planes over the years, including the especially tricked-out Lisa Marie, a Convair 800 jet.) Other than three 1957 shows in Canada (in Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver), Elvis only ever performed in his home country.

Humans may have nearly gone extinct.

  • Homo erectus skull
Homo erectus skull
Credit: gurb101088/ Shutterstock
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd

April 9, 2024

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When we think of endangered animals, we generally think about elephants, tigers, and whales — but certainly not humans. Yet between 800,000 and 900,000 years ago, ancestors of Homo sapiens lost 98.7% of their population, according to a 2023 study published in the journal Science. Before the population crash, as many as 135,000 early humans roamed the Earth, but according to the team of geneticists behind the study, that number plummeted to about 1,280 breeding individuals, and the population stayed that low for more than 100,000 years. (These weren’t modern humans, but earlier hominins on the genetic timeline; one species that was alive at the time was Homo erectus, and we’re still discovering new prehistoric human species.) 

The population decline could have been related to the wild environmental changes happening around that time: Extreme cooling of the Earth coincided with a drought in Africa, leading to fewer sources of food. Whatever the cause, it created a genetic “bottleneck” that researchers say nearly wiped out our prehistoric ancestors. This conclusion lines up to a period of time that left few fossils behind, but the research has yet to be replicated by other studies, and many genetic scientists remain skeptical of the claim.

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Several human species lived on Earth at the same time.

More than 20 human species — that is, species in the genus Homo — have existed in the last few million years. But evolution isn’t a straight line, and multiple early humans walked the Earth at the same time. When Homo sapiens (that’s us) first emerged around 200,000 to 300,000 years ago, we joined at least eight other living species, including Neanderthals, Denisovans, and even Homo erectus. Other, lesser-known species stayed in a pretty limited geographic area, such as Homo longi in China, Homo naledi in South Africa, and the 3-foot-tall Homo floresiensis in Indonesia. Eventually, only Homo sapiens remained, and there are a few theories about how that happened. It could have been that we had better infant survival rates, or we could have actively hunted other species. Different human species also mated with one another, so it’s possible that Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans interbred the latter two out of existence.

Truman Capote and Harper Lee were next-door neighbors as kids.

  • “To Kill a Mockingbird” book
"To Kill a Mockingbird" book
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Author Michael Nordine

April 9, 2024

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Harper Lee’s perennial classic To Kill a Mockingbird and Truman Capote’s nonfiction novel In Cold Blood were defining literary works of the 1960s and beyond, so it makes a certain kind of sense that their origins are closely entwined. In addition to being longtime friends, the two authors were also next-door neighbors as kids. Born in New Orleans, Capote moved to Monroeville, Alabama, at age 4. There, he met Lee — a girl two years his junior who became his protector from neighborhood bullies. It wasn’t long before Capote moved to New York City, but the two friends stayed close enough that each based fictional characters on the other: To Kill a Mockingbird’s Dill was inspired by Capote, while Idabel Thompkins, a tomboy in Capote’s debut novel Other Voices, Other Rooms, was based on Lee.

They were so close, in fact, that some believed Capote was To Kill a Mockingbird’s true author — a pernicious rumor that academics and historians have long dismissed. In fact, the runaway success of Mockingbird, which was a National Book Award finalist and won the Pulitzer Prize, led to severe jealousy on Capote’s part. Lee later wrote, “I was his oldest friend, and I did something Truman could not forgive: I wrote a novel that sold.” She helped Capote research In Cold Blood nevertheless, but was not thanked in the acknowledgments section, a slight that hurt her deeply.

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Lee and Capote’s friendship has been dramatized several times.

The long and turbulent relationship between Truman Capote and Harper Lee has been depicted in a number of films. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener played the two writers in 2005’s Capote, for which Hoffman won the Academy Award for Best Actor and Keener received a Best Supporting Actress nomination. Toby Jones and Sandra Bullock portrayed them in the following year’s Infamous (an adaptation of George Plimpton’s Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career). Both films are about the writing of In Cold Blood, a six-year process to which Lee contributed greatly by helping with research and accompanying Capote when he initially interviewed residents of Holcomb, Kansas, to get their perspective on the murders that inspired the book.

People used to vote by voice in colonial America.

  • Painting depicting a county election, 1854
Painting depicting a county election, 1854
Credit: The Picture Art Collection/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine

September 9, 2025

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Just because colonial Americans were subject to taxation without representation doesn’t mean they never voted. Indeed, elections were often held to select local officials and members of colonial legislatures. Rather than paper ballots, however, colonists voted by voice in a practice known as “viva voce.” This being the past and all, voting machines were centuries away from being invented, and paper ballots, despite having been around since ancient times, had yet to be widely adopted in the American colonies. So voters would gather in a public venue and announce their choice out loud for all to hear. 

Like most of the country’s early political traditions, viva voce came to America’s shores from the other side of the pond. It was the norm not only in Britain but also in the Netherlands, German provinces, and Scandinavia, eventually becoming law in six American colonies before also being adopted in Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Oregon, and Texas.

The public nature of viva voce was considered a feature rather than a bug because, as English philosopher and politician John Stuart Mill put it, “The voter is under an absolute moral obligation to consider the interest of the public, not his private advantage.” Old habits die hard, and viva voce persisted until the end of the 19th century. Fears that it was conducive to voter intimidation led to the current private ballot system, though not quickly. Five of the 33 U.S. states at the time still used viva voce in the 1850s, and nearly 10% of the votes in the 1860 presidential election won by Abraham Lincoln were cast by voice. The last holdout was Kentucky, which phased out the practice in 1891.

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Three of the original 13 colonies didn’t participate in the first presidential election.

While there was little doubt that George Washington would be America’s first president (despite he himself not being thrilled at the prospect), an election still needed to be held. That contest took place between December 15, 1788, and January 10, 1789, by which point 11 of the 13 colonies had ratified the Constitution and become states. Because North Carolina and Rhode Island had yet to do so, they weren’t involved in the election; the two states were admitted to the U.S. on November 21, 1789, and May 29, 1790, respectively. New York, meanwhile, was involved in a legislative conflict that prevented it from participating as well. Washington won easily, as he had been expected to, and did likewise in the next election — with all of the original 13 colonies plus Kentucky and Vermont taking part.

Coke cost a nickel for 70 years.

  • Boys drinking Coca-Cola, 1930s
Boys drinking Coca-Cola, 1930s
Credit: George Rinhart/ Corbis Historical via Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine

September 5, 2025

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A lot changed between the 1880s and 1950s — empires fell, airplanes took to the sky, and two world wars were fought. But one thing stayed the same: the price of Coca-Cola. A bottle of Coke cost a nickel in 1886, and so did a bottle of Coke in 1959. That’s largely because the Coca-Cola company itself wasn’t the one selling its flagship product. The soft drink was originally served exclusively at soda fountains until two lawyers named Benjamin F. Thomas and Joseph B. Whitehead secured the right to bottle coke on a large scale. 

Since the deal between Coca-Cola and the bottlers fixed the price of syrup at a low cost, Coca-Cola was only able to make money through a large volume of sales. The company blanketed the country in ads reading, “Drink Coca-Cola, 5¢,” which forced bottlers to maintain the low price and kept sales high. 

Between that marketing campaign and the fact that vending machines selling Coke were only equipped to accept nickels, the price stayed the same until inflation increased it by a penny in the 1940s, with the last nickel Coke being sold in 1959. Though cans and plastic bottles are now far more common, you can still find 24 bottles of Coke for about $35. 

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Coca-Cola was initially marketed as a ‘brain tonic.’

There’s a good chance that the first customers to buy Coca-Cola in 1886 were looking for more than just a refreshing drink. The now-ubiquitous soft drink created by John Stith Pemberton was initially marketed as an “intellectual beverage” that contained “the valuable TONIC and NERVE STIMULANT properties of the Coca plant and Cola (or Kola) nuts.” The drink was initially advertised as “the ideal brain tonic for discriminating people.” This early marketing promised that Coke was a “cure for all nervous conditions” that “relieves fatigue.” This was part of an ongoing trend at the time: patent medicines, which were dubious concoctions brewed and sold by people claiming to have medical knowledge. Most of these products had no such benefits, while others were actively harmful. And while Coke didn’t live up to its own medicinal claims — especially since it did indeed include small amounts of cocaine until 1904 — its continued popularity shows that it is at least refreshing.

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