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During WWII, the British used Monopoly games to help POWs escape.

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Monopoly board game
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Author Bennett Kleinman

March 13, 2024

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Monopoly has been beloved for generations, but the history of the classic board game isn’t all fun and games. During World War II, specially manufactured Monopoly boards were used to help prisoners of war escape from captivity. In 1940, the British government struck a deal with Waddingtons, the company that manufactured London-themed editions of Monopoly, in which MI9, a secret department of the War Office, tasked Waddingtons with creating a version of Monopoly that contained various tools and information to aid POWs in their potential escape efforts.

The sneakily altered Monopoly boards were distributed to Nazi-run POW camps as part of larger aid packages. In addition to the standard thimble and dog game pieces, each board contained metal “playing pieces” that were actually escape tools, such as a file and magnetic compass. Each version also contained silk maps provided by the intelligence agency, which could be unfolded discreetly without drawing attention. What’s more, these special editions swapped out fake Monopoly money for real German, Italian, and French currency that could be used to bribe guards. The British government also contracted game company John Jaques & Son to create chess sets and versions of Snakes and Ladders that contained hidden compartments with escape tools.

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Standard Monopoly locations are based on Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Monopoly is based on an earlier board game called the Landlord’s Game, an anti-capitalist game created by a woman named Elizabeth Magie. It became so popular that people made homemade versions featuring locations in their own regions. One of these directly inspired the standard Monopoly board we know today, and can be traced back to a woman named Ruth Hoskins. In the 1920s, Hoskins moved to Atlantic City, New Jersey, and introduced the Landlord’s Game to her friends there. The group decided to create a new version featuring locations and prices that were directly tied to Atlantic City’s actual property values at the time. One of Hoskins’ friends — Charles Todd — later presented the Atlantic City-themed version to his own friend Charles Darrow, who sold the Monopoly concept to Parker Brothers in 1935. While designing the official board, Parker Brothers stuck with the Atlantic City-based locations, which became the standard.

The CIA spent millions training cats to be spies.

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Cat on a podium
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Author Michael Nordine

March 13, 2024

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If you’ve ever had a stealthy feline sneak up on you, you might have had the same idea the CIA once did: that cats would make good spies. Indeed, the intelligence agency spent millions of dollars on a program to that end in the 1960s. But as any cat owner can tell you, it probably shouldn’t have bothered: However sneaky and/or intelligent cats might be, they know no masters but themselves. Operation Acoustic Kitty was essentially a disaster, with only one subject making it into the field before the ill-advised — and, quite frankly, cruel — program was scrapped. The idea was to create a sort of cyborg cat by implanting a microphone in the animal’s ear, a radio transmitter at the base of its skull, and an antenna in its fur — “a monstrosity,” in the words of Victor Marchetti, a former CIA employee who went on to write the tell-some book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence.

On paper, the Acoustic Kitty agent’s first test was simple enough: sit near a park bench and capture a conversation between two people on a park bench. Instead, according to most accounts, the unfortunate feline was hit by a taxi and killed. Writing of the operation’s failure in a heavily redacted memo, the CIA concluded, “Our final examination of trained cats… convinced us that the program would not lend itself in a practical sense to our highly specialized needs.”

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The CIA replaced an earlier organization called the OSS.

Prior to the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, the United States conducted its espionage via a different shadowy organization: the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS. Founded in 1942 to help win World War II, it was partially inspired by the attack on Pearl Harbor — a massive intelligence failure that led the government to rethink its comparatively informal intel-gathering operations. Led by William J. Donovan, who was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to helm the organization, the OSS employed 13,000 individuals at its peak and is credited with making significant wartime contributions during its three years in existence. Donovan is considered a founding father of the CIA, which was established two years after the OSS was phased out. His supporters urged President Harry Truman to put him in charge of the new agency, but the post instead went to Roscoe Hillenkoetter, a retired Navy vice admiral.

Stealing pineapples used to be a serious crime.

  • Man selling pineapples, 1917
Man selling pineapples, 1917
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Author Bennett Kleinman

March 13, 2024

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If you stole a pineapple today, you’d likely end up paying a small fine, but the punishment for pineapple theft was far more severe between the 16th and 19th centuries in Britain. Pineapples were first introduced to the European continent in the late 1400s, and rapidly gained popularity as a rare — and expensive — luxury among the elite. Growing pineapples on British soil proved challenging, and few made it back from Britain’s Atlantic colonies without spoiling. This made the fruit all the more desirable, and by the 1770s, the most expensive pineapples were valued around £60 to £80, or roughly $17,000 to $23,000 today. 

The scarcity and value of pineapples meant they were the target of many thieves, and given the high cost of each pineapple, those who were caught were subject to heftier fines and punishments than people who stole more common, inexpensive foods such as bread. By the late 18th century, farmers figured out how to grow pineapples on British soil, and many hired security guards to protect their crops. Still, criminals remained determined to get their hands on the valuable fruit. In 1807, a man named John Godding was charged with stealing seven pineapples, and was sentenced to seven years in an Australian penal colony. Eventually, pineapple rental shops began appearing throughout Britain, allowing middle-class Brits to borrow pineapples to be used as centerpieces at parties. By the latter half of the 19th century, Britain was importing more of the fruit than ever, and advances in refrigeration and canning made pineapples easier to come by.

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While president, Ulysses S. Grant was arrested for speeding.

On September 27, 1908, a story appeared in the Washington Evening Star in which retired police officer William H. West recounted the time that he arrested sitting President Ulysses S. Grant for speeding. The arrest had occurred back in 1872, during Grant’s first term. At the time, West was out on patrol when he saw the president barreling down the street in a horse-drawn carriage. West stopped Grant and let him off with a warning, but caught the commander in chief speeding again the next day. At this point, West placed the president under arrest and brought him to the station for booking, where Grant posted a $20 bond (approximately $505 today) before being released. Grant forfeited the money after skipping his court appearance the following day, but the president suffered no further consequences. As for West, he was commended for keeping the streets safe, and also became friends with Grant after the incident.

A Roman emperor pranked his dinner guests with an ancient whoopee cushion.

  • Bust of Roman Emperor Elagabalus
Bust of Roman Emperor Elagabalus
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd

July 30, 2025

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The Roman emperor known posthumously as Elagabalus (or Heliogabalus) reigned for just under four years, from 218 to 222 CE, but that short time period is packed with tales both salacious and silly. Ascending to the throne at just 14 years old, Elagabalus was known for enjoying juvenile pranks — one of which involved what historians have described as an early form of the whoopee cushion.

The historical record of Elagabalus, who was born Varius Avitus Bassianus and ruled under the name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, is notoriously hard to verify; he was unpopular among the era’s most prominent storytellers, who likely exaggerated the young ruler’s behavior. But according to accounts from the ancient biography collection Historia Augusta, the emperor’s dinner guests were especially prone to practical jokes. 

Sometimes, Elagabalus served food of only a single color such as green or blue. His least-desired guests were even known to find that the food in front of them was not food at all, but wax replicas of what everyone else was eating. Other unfortunate guests would find themselves sitting on what Historia Augusta describes as “air-filled pillows” that “let out air while they were dining.” These were much larger than modern whoopee cushions, and while it’s possible they made a similar noise, they took much longer to deflate. Eventually, the guests seated on the air cushions would find themselves on the floor.

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The whoopee cushion was originally called the “poo-poo cushion” or “boop-boop a doop.”

When Toronto-based rubber company JEM invented the modern whoopee cushion in the early 1930s, it looked a little different than the standard uniform pink bladder we know today. It was green, its mouth was made of wood, and it had a small illustration of a mischievous little boy in a kilt on it. The toy — which came in both economy and deluxe editions — was sold with the wordy tagline, “It gives forth noises that can be better imagined than described.” But it took a little while for JEM to decide on a name for the indelicate product, which was called “poo-poo cushion” and the less sensical “boop-boop a doop” before “whoopee cushion” stuck in 1932. 

Jefferson City is the only state capital named for a vice president.

  • Missouri state capitol
Missouri state capitol
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Author Bennett Kleinman

March 13, 2024

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Of the 50 U.S. capital cities, only one is named after a person who held the role of vice president of the United States: Jefferson City, Missouri. The eponym of this Midwest metropolis is Thomas Jefferson, who served under John Adams from 1797 to 1801 as the country’s second-ever vice president. Jefferson later became president himself, and in 1803, he acquired the land that is now Missouri as part of the Louisiana Purchase. In 1821 — the year Missouri achieved statehood — the legislature selected a site to serve as the state capital, and settled on the name Jefferson City to honor the man who had purchased the land to begin with. (The legislature briefly considered naming the capital “Missouriopolis,” though that idea ultimately did not win out.)

Jefferson City is also one of just four state capitals named after a former U.S. president. The others are Jackson, Mississippi, which was also founded in 1821 and named for then-Major General Andrew Jackson; Madison, Wisconsin, which was founded in 1836 and named after founding father James Madison, who died that year; and Lincoln, Nebraska, which was renamed after Abraham Lincoln in 1869, four years after his assassination.

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Nine cities have served as the capital of the United States.

When the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia in 1776, the City of Brotherly Love became the first of nine cities to serve as the U.S. capital. Philadelphia acted as the capital on various occasions from 1776 to 1800, as Congress was forced to relocate several times due to threats during the Revolutionary War, but it wasn’t the only colonial capital. The second city to serve as the nation’s capital was Baltimore, Maryland, in late 1776, before the seat of government returned to Philly in early 1777. The capital then bounced around to Lancaster, Pennsylvania; York, Pennsylvania; Princeton, New Jersey; Annapolis, Maryland; Trenton, New Jersey; and New York City (with additional stops in Philly mixed in) until 1789. On July 16, 1790, the Residence Act formally established Washington, D.C., as the future capital of the United States, but it also reestablished Philadelphia as the capital for an additional decade. On November 17, 1800, Congress convened for the first time in Washington, where the capital has remained ever since.

Buzz Aldrin took Holy Communion on the moon.

  • Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11 mission
Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11 mission
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Author Michael Nordine

July 23, 2025

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Buzz Aldrin was the second person to set foot on the moon, but he was the first to do something else on Earth’s only natural satellite: take Holy Communion. Before departing on the Apollo 11 mission, Aldrin, who was an elder at Webster Presbyterian Church in Webster, Texas, received permission to bring wine and bread to space. While he and Neil Armstrong prepared for their moonwalk, he told the world, “I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.”

Aldrin wanted his Communion to be broadcast live, but NASA, which had recently been sued for a religious display, chose to keep it quiet. “I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me,” Aldrin later wrote. “In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup.” Webster Presbyterian and other churches still celebrate Lunar Communion Sunday, but Aldrin came to wonder if partaking in a Christian ritual was appropriate for an event of global significance. “We had come to the moon in the name of all mankind — be they Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, agnostics, or atheists,” he wrote in his book Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home From the Moon. “But at the time I could think of no better way to acknowledge the enormity of the Apollo 11 experience than by giving thanks to God.”

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The first meal eaten on the moon was bacon.

Taking one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind builds an appetite. And so Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did what anyone would do after completing history’s first moonwalk: They ate a well-earned meal. The first meal on the moon included bacon squares, peaches, sugar cookie cubes, pineapple grapefruit juice, and coffee. Given that the entire menu was either freeze-dried or dehydrated and then reconstituted with water, it's likely that none of these menu items, each of which was scheduled in advance, was especially gourmet. Bacon had proved popular throughout the entire Apollo program, however, with astronauts particularly enjoying the bacon squares for breakfast. They would be saddened to learn that bacon is no longer on the menu for astronauts, alas, as it was phased out in 2002.

Charles Darwin ate owls, iguanas, and armadillos.

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Charles Darwin portrait
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Author Anne T. Donahue

March 13, 2024

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While studying at Cambridge University, Charles Darwin was head of the Glutton Club, a student group that met weekly to dine on rare and overlooked foods. The culinary crew prided themselves on eating what one member described as “birds and beasts, which were before unknown to human palate.” According to member John Herbert, the club’s name was adopted in response to another Cambridge group that claimed to be adventurous eaters, but tended to dine on more common foods of the era, such as mutton chops, beans, and bacon.

In contrast, the Glutton Club feasted on hawk, heron-like wading bird, and even a “stringy brown” owl, which actually led to the end of the group because it was so unappetizing. Yet even after leaving Cambridge in 1831, Darwin continued his culinary adventures. The naturalist’s voyage around the world on the HMS Beagle led him to eat puma, iguana, giant tortoise, armadillo, and a 20-pound rodent he described as “the best meat I ever tasted.” However, Darwin erred in 1834 while exploring in Argentina. He realized mid-meal that he and his friends were dining on rhea, a South American ostrich that Darwin planned to study. In response, he grabbed the bones off his associates’ plates and combed through the garbage bin for any viable remains before sending them to a taxidermist in London.

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Charles Darwin once intended to become a priest.

After dropping out of Edinburgh Medical School, Darwin enrolled at Cambridge University in 1828 with plans to enter the priesthood. As he had been born into the Church of England and educated at a church boarding school, the trajectory made sense — at least until his evolutionary theories began to conflict with the church’s creationist teachings. Myths abound about Darwin’s aversion to God and religion, but despite his scientific allegiance, he was not an atheist. After the HMS Beagle returned to England in 1836, Darwin began exploring the dichotomy between religion and science and wrestled with the idea of how God and evolution could coexist.

In 1967, Sweden switched from driving on the left to the right — in 10 minutes.

  • Cars changing lanes on Dagen H
Cars changing lanes on Dagen H
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Author Timothy Ott

July 23, 2025

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At 4:50 a.m. on September 3, 1967, every active motorist in Sweden, driving on the traditional left side of the road, suddenly pulled to a stop. Ten minutes later, at 5 o’clock sharp, the train of cars began carefully navigating across the center lines to resume driving on the right side. “Högertrafikomläggningen” (“the right-hand traffic diversion”), also known simply as “Dagen H” (“H-Day”), had officially begun.

There were several factors that prompted the Swedes to undertake this monumental adjustment, including the fact that most of the rest of Europe was driving on the right side of the road, and most cars within Sweden were already built for right-side driving with their steering wheels on the left. And so, Parliament voted to move ahead with the switch in 1963. 

Officials took four years to carefully prepare for H-Day: Traffic lights and bus stops were reinstalled, intersections and bicycle lanes were redesigned, and a massive information campaign warned citizens of the big shift to come. The only suddenness of the situation came with the alteration of the nation’s 360,000 road signs, which largely took place in the 24 hours leading up to the event.

While it’s logical to assume that the switcheroo resulted in a series of unfortunate traffic events, the opposite was true, as thousands of police and military personnel proliferated the streets during the transition to guide wayward motorists and ensure strict speed limits were kept. The number of minor traffic accidents reported on the first Monday after the event was down slightly from the national average, while the number of traffic-related injuries from 1967 was also lower than in previous years, all of which promised that H-Day would be remembered as a success.

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Many right-side or left-side traffic customs predate the existence of cars.

Why is it that some countries funnel vehicle traffic down the right side of a road while others take it to the left? According to historian M.G. Lay, author of Ways of the World, these rules often stem from old traditions that predate the existence of cars. Japan’s preference for the left side of the road, for example, is said to originate in the practice of avoiding the accidental clashing of swords among foot travelers, while in England, solo horse riders and small carriage drivers bore left so as to keep their right hand available for greeting or attacking, if needed. On the other hand, the popularity of Conestoga wagons in the British colonies in America, which often saw drivers walking on the left side of horse teams to control the animals with their dominant right hands, led to the development of road rules that coded right-side traveling into American legislation. Meanwhile, regulations enacted during France’s revolutionary period dictated traffic flow on the right, a habit reinforced throughout much of Europe thanks to the conquests of Napoleon.

Post offices used to double as banks.

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Post Office Savings Bank
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd

July 23, 2025

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Amid the labor upheavals of the late 19th century, many workers had a distrust of for-profit banks. Labor groups such as the Knights of Labor and the National Grange lobbied for an alternative place for everyday Americans to place their savings. The request only became more urgent after the financial crisis known as the Panic of 1907. As a result, American post offices doubled as savings banks for more than 50 years.

In 1910, despite heavy opposition from bankers, Congress passed the Postal Savings Bank Act, allowing the United States Postal Service to manage small savings accounts. This wasn’t without precedent: Great Britain established its own extremely popular postal savings system back in 1861, and many other countries followed suit.

The United States’ program was modest, and when it went into effect in 1911, individual accounts couldn’t be larger than $500 (roughly $16,000 today), although the cap was raised in 1918 to $2,500 (around $57,000 today). Postal savings were popular among recent immigrants and miners at first, and they became more broadly used during the Great Depression. More than 9,000 banks failed in the economic crisis, and postal savings account deposits more than quintupled, from $164 million to $902 million. The service remained widely utilized even after New Deal bank bailouts; a collective $3.4 billion was held in postal savings accounts by 1947.

In 1966, despite a million active postal savings accounts, Congress voted to dissolve the program after successful lobbying by the banking industry. At the time, preserving postal savings accounts was no longer a priority for labor groups, so the Postal Service went back to only handling mail.

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U.S. banks used to issue their own paper currency.

Today, the U.S. Mint manufactures all of America’s legal tender, but in the early 19th century, currency was more of a free-for-all. Banks would take in gold and issue banknotes that worked mostly like cash, with a couple of major pitfalls. First, if you traveled too far with your banknotes, you risked merchants and other banks not accepting them. Second, if your bank went under, your banknotes suddenly became worthless. These local bills were replaced by government-issued currency after the Civil War.

The Nixon administration removed all bills over $100 from circulation.

  • Pile of U.S. paper currency
Pile of U.S. paper currency
Credit: Nawrocki/ClassicStock/ Archive Photos via Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine

July 23, 2025

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Back in the day, the lofty Benjamin was far from the highest denomination of U.S. currency. The Federal Reserve used to print $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 bills, not to mention a $100,000 gold certificate, featuring a portrait of Woodrow Wilson. But the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve announced that all denominations above $100 would be discontinued on July 14, 1969, due to lack of use, though President Richard Nixon was also concerned that they were being used in organized crime.

These large notes are still legal currency, though most are more likely to be found in private collections than in circulation. The 1918 version of the $500 bill featured a portrait of Chief Justice John Marshall, whereas the 1928 version had a portrait of President William McKinley. Grover Cleveland was on the $1,000 note, James Madison adorned the $5,000 bill, and Salmon P. Chase, who served as both secretary of the treasury and chief justice, had pride of place on the $10,000 bill. As for the $100,000 gold certificate, only 42,000 of them were printed in 1934, all of which are now considered government property, meaning they’re illegal to own even for collectors.

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About half of all U.S. currency in circulation is abroad.

There’s a reason they call it the “almighty dollar.” USD has been the most widely used international currency since 1945, is the most traded currency on international financial markets, and is so widely used that anywhere from one-half to two-thirds of all U.S. currency in circulation is abroad. Given that about $2.7 trillion was estimated to be in circulation just in the United States as of 2023, that means there are a lot of portraits of George Washington across the world. 

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