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Homo sapiens has been on Earth for only 0.0067% of its existence.

  • Human skull in museum
Human skull in museum
Credit: Vladislav Gajic/ Shutterstock
Author Michael Nordine
April 30, 2024

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Though humans have been the planet’s dominant species for some 50,000 years, our reign is a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. Homo sapiens (Latin for “wise man”) has been on Earth for only 0.0067% of its existence, an infinitesimally small amount of time that emphasizes both how insignificant and how impressive a species we are. Homo sapiens first emerged in Africa approximately 300,000 years ago, at which point several other types of humans were still extant, including Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo floresiensis, Homo naledi, Homo luzonensis, and Homo erectus. Though our ancestors are known to have coexisted with Neanderthals and Denisovans, it’s possible they never encountered the other early humans.

There are a number of theories seeking to explain why we survived and our predecessors didn’t, including superior brainpower and dumb luck, plus a newer theory suggesting that our interpersonal skills and dependence on one another helped us succeed where others failed. (Perhaps the secret really was the friends we made along the way.) We haven’t been here the longest — that would be Homo erectus, whose 1.5 million years on the planet is a record among humans that we sapiens won’t surpass for some 1.2 million years — but we have left the most sizable footprint. Whether that ends up being a good thing may be for the next species to decide.

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A day on Earth used to be much, much shorter.

When our humble planet first formed 4.6 billion years ago, a day was just six hours long. The amount of time it took the Earth to rotate on its axis increased to 21.9 hours by 620 million years ago, and today it’s 24 hours. It hasn’t stopped getting longer, either: A century from now, a day will be 1.7 milliseconds longer due to the moon’s gravitational pull slowing Earth’s rotation ever so slightly. As our only natural satellite drifts 1.5 inches away from us each year, a process known as lunar recession, the tides it creates in our oceans slow Earth’s spin.

Jack-o’-lanterns come from an Irish legend.

  • Boy painting Jack o Lantern, c 1910s
Boy painting Jack o Lantern, c 1910s
Credit: Prestor Pictures LLC/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Kevin McCaffrey
October 25, 2023

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The jack-o’-lantern has its roots in Irish lore — specifically, the legend of a man called “Stingy Jack,” who tried to trick the devil and suffered the consequences. There are many versions of the tale, but the gist is that Jack invited the devil for a drink but balked when it came time to pay, and asked the devil to transform into a coin he could use for payment. The devil went along with this, but Stingy Jack kept the coin for himself, putting it next to a silver cross in his pocket to keep the devil from reverting to his original form. Jack’s next move was to free the devil if he agreed not to bother Jack for a year and not to take his soul when he died. A year later, Jack once again tricked the devil, this time getting him to agree to leave Jack alone for 10 years.

After Jack died, God wouldn’t allow the trickster into heaven, and the devil, honoring his deal, wouldn’t take Jack into hell, either. The devil sent Jack away with only a burning coal from the fiery underworld to light his way. A ghostly Jack placed the coal in a carved-out turnip lantern, sentenced to roam the Earth for eternity. The Irish referred to the specter as “Jack of the Lantern,” and eventually, “Jack o’ lantern.” People even began carving out lanterns to mimic the story. The first jack-o’-lanterns were made by carving out turnips, beets, and potatoes and illuminating them with a candle. These date back at least to 1640, when author Sam Howell referenced “a turnip cut like Death’s head with a candle in’t.” Pumpkins aren’t native to Ireland, so the tradition as we know it didn’t come about until Irish immigrants brought the legend to the United States, where pumpkins had been introduced to Europeans by Indigenous people in the Americas.

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Halloween comes from an ancient pagan holiday.

Halloween has its roots in an ancient Celtic holiday called Samhain, traditionally celebrated in Ireland and Scotland on the night of October 31 each year. It was believed that on that night, the separation between the living world and the world of the dead broke down, allowing for interaction with the Celtic “Otherworld,” the realm of the spirits. Traditional Samhain celebrations centered around fire: The hearth was lit while the harvest was gathered, and it was left to burn out on its own. If the hearth was put out by hand, it was thought to anger the gods. Afterward, a bonfire was held to honor the dead, and people would take flame from the fire to relight the hearth at home. Celebrants would also dress up in costumes and disguises during Samhain so that evil spirits returning to Earth would not be able to recognize them. Hollowed-out root vegetables with candles inside, a precursor to jack-o’-lanterns, were used in part to scare off evil spirits, as well as to guide the way home after the Samhain celebration. 

First Lady Mamie Eisenhower popularized the pink bathroom trend.

  • First Lady Mamie Eisenhower, 1954
First Lady Mamie Eisenhower, 1954
Credit: Bettmann Archive via Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine
October 20, 2025

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At least 57 women have held the title of first lady of the United States, but not many have had colors named after them. One was Eleanor Roosevelt, whose inaugural gown was of a hyacinth hue that came to be known as Eleanor Blue, and another was Mamie Eisenhower, who was so tickled by a certain color that her favorite shade was nicknamed Mamie Pink. It wasn’t just her dresses that were pink, however, as she adorned so much of the White House residence in the color that reporters called it “the Pink Palace.” That included the bathroom, beginning a trend that there’s still evidence of in midcentury homes today.

Bathrooms had been styled a sanitary white for decades, and the move toward a brighter, happier color has been identified as a visual marker of the postwar optimism that defined the 1950s. It wasn’t just a few Mamie-heads who got in on the action: It’s been estimated that as many as one in four American homes built between 1946 and 1966 had some form of pink bathroom. The trend fell out of favor as the Cold War and space race resulted in a shift toward a colder, more futuristic aesthetic, but many midcentury houses still sport bathrooms full of Mamie Pink.

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Dwight D. Eisenhower never saw active combat.

Despite spending more than three decades in the armed forces, most notably as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force during World War II, the 34th president never saw active combat. He enlisted in 1915 and requested an overseas appointment once the U.S. entered World War I, but he was never deployed; by the time WWII broke out decades later, he was already one of the country’s foremost generals. As a five-star general who orchestrated the D-Day invasion, Eisenhower was an immensely important part of America’s successful war effort; he was also beloved at home as a result, hence his two landslide victories in 1952 and 1956.

Leonardo da Vinci may have painted two versions of the ‘Mona Lisa.’

  • Leonardo da Vinci painting the “Mona Lisa”
Leonardo da Vinci painting the "Mona Lisa"
Credit: Fine Art/ Corbis Historical via Getty Images
Author Timothy Ott
October 20, 2025

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Smiling at viewers from behind a glass enclosure at Paris’ Louvre Museum, the “Mona Lisa” is perhaps the most famous painting in the world. But is it possible that this one-of-a-kind Renaissance masterpiece from Leonardo da Vinci is actually two of a kind? That’s the stance of the Mona Lisa Foundation, which holds that another version of the 16th-century painting, often known as the “Isleworth Mona Lisa,” portrays a younger depiction of the sitter from approximately a decade earlier.

Deriving its name from an owner of the painting based in Isleworth, England, the “Isleworth Mona Lisa” largely remained out of the public eye until being unveiled in Geneva, Italy, amid a 2012 publicity push from the Mona Lisa Foundation. Beyond the resemblance between the older and younger subject, the foundation points to the results of examinations that indicate both artworks were from the hand of the same artist. Historical evidence also suggests the existence of more than one “Mona Lisa,” as the painting was recorded among the possessions of Leonardo’s servant in 1525 despite having been sold to French King Francis I seven years earlier.

While the double-version theory has its supporters in the art world, others are hesitant to make a definitive connection. For one thing, the “Isleworth Mona Lisa” was rendered on canvas, while Leonardo mainly painted on wood. There are also numerous copies of the “Mona Lisa” to be found, including one that was apparently painted alongside the original by one or more of Leonardo’s apprentices. And then there’s the matter of the objectivity of the Mona Lisa Foundation, which was formed by the international consortium that owns the “Isleworth Mona Lisa” to prove the painting’s authenticity. With the artist silent on the topic of this iconic artwork through his surviving journals, it’s likely that the question of whether he did indeed produce two versions will remain as much of a mystery as the subject’s enigmatic smile.

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No one is sure who the woman in the “Mona Lisa” is.

Although the woman displayed in the “Mona Lisa” is most often said to be Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Florentine merchant Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo, there’s (again) a lack of definitive evidence supporting this claim. As such, several alternative identities of the sitter have been floated over the years, from a number of Italian noblewomen to Leonardo da Vinci’s mother to Leonardo himself as a woman. Of these, the most plausible alternative is Isabella Aragon Sforza, Duchess of Milan and Bari. 

While there’s little to suggest that Leonardo knew Gherardini well enough to deliver such an intimate portrait, the artist certainly possessed a close personal relationship with the duchess. What’s more, careful examinations of the woman’s clothing reveal patterns and colors associated with the House of Sforza. And along with the physical similarities between the face in the “Mona Lisa” and those in other works believed to be of Isabella, a surviving sketch of the duchess, attributed to Leonardo, shows an uncanny resemblance to the woman who draws an endless army of visitors to the Louvre.

When rugs were too expensive, colonial Americans made sand art on their floors.

  • Maid sweeping the floor
Maid sweeping the floor
Credit: Lakeview Images/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
October 20, 2025

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If you were a well-to-do family in colonial-era America, you may have draped your floor in richly painted oilcloth, a tightly woven fabric with a waterproof coating, to reduce draftiness and make walking around more comfortable. If you were very affluent and had a taste for the finer things, you might have imported carpets across the Atlantic. Most people, however, settled for simpler floor coverings, such as straw matting or sand — if they opted for any at all. 

Sand, ideally fine white sand, came with a bonus feature: You could turn it into decor if you were feeling creative. Some households created fun designs in the sand, including scrolls, feathers, herringbones, and wreaths, as a temporary decoration. And while tracking sand inside a house is usually frowned upon today, sand was actually an extremely practical floor covering in the 18th century. Before paved roads and regular bathing, a lot of mud and grime would build up on floors very quickly. Much like sawdust on a tavern floor, the sand would absorb dirt, oil, and moisture, allowing the mess to be swept away more easily — and it was a more pleasant walking surface than the hard, cold floor. Sanded floors weren’t exclusive to poor families, either. Some households scattered their sand daily with a special sieve, and writer John F. Watson observed chambermaids with “a genius for drawing” making sand designs with a broom. Still, sanded floors eventually waned in popularity during the 19th century, in favor of woven rugs and painted hardwood floors.

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George Washington had fake stone siding installed at Mount Vernon.

Faux stone may seem like a recent invention, but it actually dates back centuries. When George Washington expanded his family mansion at Mount Vernon in 1758, the new addition included siding made from pine boards beveled to look like stone blocks, then painted with a sand finish. Washington called them “rusticated boards,” and said the technique was “designed to answer two purposes — durability, and representation of Stone.”

‘Moby-Dick’ was inspired by a real whale named Mocha Dick.

  • Moby-Dick the white whale
Moby-Dick the white whale
Credit: Kadumago/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine
May 21, 2024

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“Call me Ishmael” is the legendary first line of Moby-Dick, but the protagonist’s name is hardly the most famous in Herman Melville’s 1851 novel. Indeed, he’s probably a distant third to both Captain Ahab and the eponymous whale himself, who was based on a real albino sperm whale named Mocha Dick. Named for the Chilean island near which his decades-long reign of terror took place, Mocha is said to have destroyed more than 20 whaling ships in addition to escaping 80 or so before finally being felled in 1838. His story was told by explorer and newspaper editor J.N. Reynolds, whose article “Mocha Dick: Or the White Whale of the Pacific” was published by The Knickerbocker the following year.

Described by Reynolds as “an old bull whale, of prodigious size and strength,” whose albinism made him “white as wool,” Mocha was made even more fearsome by the fact that his head was covered in barnacles. He was actually quite docile until he was attacked, and measured 70 feet long at the time of his unjust and untimely passing. As for why Melville changed the name from Mocha to Moby when he wrote his novel, no one knows. The author never revealed his reasoning, and no one has been able to figure it out.

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"Moby-Dick" inspired the name of Starbucks.

Before it was the world’s largest chain of coffee shops, Starbucks was a humble startup in Seattle — and it needed a name. Pequod, the name of the ship where most of Moby-Dick takes place, was suggested by co-founder Gordon Bowker during a fateful meeting in 1971, but was quickly dismissed because it didn’t sound appetizing. An advertising executive had advised the group to look for names that started with “St,” supposedly a powerful letter combination. Terry Heckler, an artist hired to help the company define its branding, came up with Starbo, the name of a mining camp on Mount Rainier. This led them back to Moby-Dick and its first mate, Starbuck, who became the company’s namesake in order to evoke “the romance of the high seas and the seafaring tradition of the early coffee traders.”

Refrigerators used to be toxic.

  • Woman using refrigerator, 1930s
Woman using refrigerator, 1930s
Credit: ClassicStock/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
October 17, 2025

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Iceless refrigerators have come a long way since the 1920s, when they first became affordable for home kitchens. Since then, there have been many technological advances in refrigeration — including making sure your kitchen fridge doesn’t kill you in your sleep.

The basic cooling mechanism of GE’s 1927 Monitor Top model, widely considered the first affordable home refrigerator, was the same as that of most refrigerators today: Liquid gas refrigerant absorbs heat from the interior, turning it into a gas. The gas then travels through a compressor, which pressurizes the gas so it can turn into a liquid and run through the system again. 

Unfortunately for consumers, the Monitor Top fridge used either sulfur dioxide or methyl formate for this process — both of which are toxic. The refrigerants were theoretically contained safely within the system, but if the compressor malfunctioned or the pipes eroded, it could cause a leak that released toxic gases into a home. Both sulfur dioxide and methyl formate have distinct odors, but that doesn’t help you much if you’re fast asleep. 

Even before the Monitor Top, refrigerators in industrial settings and wealthy households frequently turned deadly; ammonia, which is both toxic and flammable, was a very popular refrigerant, too. Manufacturers eventually addressed the problem with the development of chlorofluorocarbons, better known as CFCs or Freons, in the 1930s. CFCs didn’t pose the same immediate risks as previous refrigerants, and they were the standard coolant in home refrigerators until scientists realized they depleted the Earth’s ozone layer and replaced them with more environmentally friendly chemicals.

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Albert Einstein patented a type of refrigerator.

In 1926, roughly 20 years after publishing his theory of special relativity, Albert Einstein read about a family in Berlin who had died after their refrigerator leaked. He decided he needed to do something about it, so he teamed up with his colleague Leo Szilard to create a hermetically sealed, electromagnetic refrigerator pump with no moving parts, making it much less likely to leak than a mechanical compressor. Their invention received a patent in 1930, but by then, Germany had become dangerous due to the Nazi Party’s growing influence, and Freon had started to work its way into refrigerators, so the technology never went to market.

William Shakespeare invented the name Jessica.

  • Engraving of Jessica in “The Merchant of Venice”
Engraving of Jessica in "The Merchant of Venice"
Credit: Kirn Vintage Stock/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine
October 16, 2025

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William Shakespeare wrote dozens of plays — at least 36, by most counts — and coined nearly as many phrases that are still in use. We wouldn’t call things we don’t understand “Greek to me” were it not for Julius Caesar, wouldn’t refer to jealousy as a “green-eyed monster” without Othello, and wouldn’t find ourselves in a “brave new world” without The Tempest, among other examples. Nor would we have the name Jessica, which the Bard invented around 1597 while writing The Merchant of Venice. 

Thought by some to have been derived from Iscah, the name of Abraham’s niece in the Bible, the name Jessica first appeared as the daughter of Shakespeare’s villainous moneylender Shylock. She’s no fan of him, however, and she absconds with a chest of her father’s gold while eloping with Lorenzo against Shylock’s wishes. This betrayal motivates Shylock’s vengeful insistence on exacting a pound of flesh from a Venetian merchant in lieu of the money he owes him. 

Jessica was among the most popular names for baby girls throughout the 1970s and ’80s in the U.S., though its popularity in America has waned in the decades since. In England and Wales, however, Jessica was the most popular name for baby girls as recently as 2005.

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Shakespeare may have died on his birthday.

No one’s sure exactly when Shakespeare was born, though his birthday is usually celebrated on April 23, 1564. The year isn’t in debate, but the exact day is. His baptism was recorded as having taken place on Wednesday, April 26, at Holy Trinity Church in his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon; since baptisms usually took place within three days of a child’s birth, the 23rd is the agreed-upon date. If that’s true, it means the Bard died on his birthday 52 years later, in 1616.

Chinese checkers was invented in Germany.

  • Kids playing Chinese checkers
Kids playing Chinese checkers
Credit: Bettmann Archive via Getty Images
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
May 21, 2024

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Chinese checkers is a classic board game, featuring several marbles that move along a series of holes grouped into a six-pointed star shape. As in traditional checkers, the marbles can move to empty spaces or jump over adjacent pieces, with the goal of getting all the pieces to one side of the board. Contrary to its name, however, Chinese checkers has nothing to do with China — it’s a variation of a game called Halma (meaning “jump” in Greek). Halma features a square board, and a star-shaped version was invented in Germany around 1880. Originally called Stern-Halma, the star-shaped game was published by the German game and puzzle company Ravensburger in 1892. 

The game arrived in America in the late 1920s under the name Hop Ching checkers, and, later, Chinese star checkers. It was advertised as “a game from the Orient for all ages,” but this backstory was invented entirely for marketing, to give the product an air of mysticism. While six-pointed stars such as the one on the Chinese checkers game board have a long history in many cultures, including some Asian spiritual traditions, the board’s star shape actually originated in Germany, decades before the game’s fictional association with China. Nevertheless, Chinese checkers is the name that stuck in the American lexicon. 

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Chess evolved from an Indian game.

Many cultures have their own variation of chess, all of which are generally considered to have one common ancestor: an Indian game called Chaturanga, meaning “four-limbed,” after a battle formation described in the Mahābhārata, an ancient Indian epic. The chess pieces we know in Western chess today were likely derived from the four branches of the Indian army described in the game: chariots, elephants, horses, and infantry. What we know as the bishop, for example, was likely originally an elephant.

Birthdays weren’t always celebrated because few people even knew their birth date.

  • Family celebrating child’s birthday, 1950s
Family celebrating child's birthday, 1950s
Credit: H. Armstrong Roberts/ Retrofile RF via Getty Images
Author Nicole Villeneuve
October 16, 2025

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Birthdays are often a big deal in the modern world, marking milestones such as being old enough to drive or vote, or acknowledging the start of a new decade of life. But for most of human history, a birthday was just another day, and many people didn’t even know when theirs was.

Ancient societies sometimes recorded births within noble or wealthy families for lineage or inheritance purposes, but systematic recordkeeping was rare.  It wasn’t until the 1530s in England that churches were mandated under King Henry VIII to document baptisms. Similar practices appeared in colonial America, though coverage varied widely by region and denomination. In Massachusetts, for example, Puritans kept birth and baptismal records as early as the 1600s, while in many Southern states, records remained patchy into the 20th century.

For centuries, tracking your age was inconsistent, as was celebrating it. Ancient feasts marked special occasions for elite members of society (sometimes even with cake), but it wasn’t until the mid-19th century that birthdays were commonly commemorated with parties, especially for children. With the rise of industrialization, strict work schedules, pay periods, and age-based job requirements meant tracking calendars closely, making people more aware of their age and birthday. In the early 1900s, state-level birth registration became more widespread in America: By 1933, all U.S. states were participating in official birth recordkeeping, and by the mid-1940s, most Americans had birth certificates.

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Some countries have celebrated everyone’s birthday on the same day.

A birthday is typically a time to celebrate an individual, but in some East Asian countries, that wasn’t always the case. In Japan, people instead followed a custom called kazoedoshi or “counted years.” People were considered 1 year old at birth, and then everyone aged up together on New Year’s Day on January 1. In South Korea, there were several systems. “Year age” counted a newborn as zero at birth, while “Korean age” counted a baby as 1 year old at birth; both systems had everyone age up together on New Year’s Day, meaning that children born in late December could turn 1 or even 2 years old just a week later. Japan officially ended kazoedoshi in 1950, while South Korea has used the international age-counting method for most legal and governmental purposes since the 1960s, even though it wasn’t formally adopted nationwide until 2023.

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