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Kids used to gather to watch giant blocks of ice being delivered.

Delivery man with a block of ice, c. 1930s
Credit: © H. ARMSTRONG ROBERTS—ClassicStock/Alamy
Author Bess Lovejoy
September 23, 2026

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Before electric refrigerators became standard kitchen equipment in the U.S., the arrival of the iceman was a familiar neighborhood event. Horse-drawn wagons carried huge blocks of ice through American streets, stopping wherever a household needed to replenish its icebox. The delivery was especially popular with children, who waited beside the wagon or followed it down the street in hopes of receiving cold chips broken from the larger blocks.

The ice had often started its journey months earlier. During the winter, crews cleared the snow from frozen lakes and ponds, scored the water’s surface into a grid, and used saws and pikes to separate the ice into blocks. These were packed into heavily insulated icehouses, then transported by railroad, barge, or wagon. Sawdust, once an unwanted byproduct of lumber mills, proved remarkably effective at slowing the ice’s melting.

Customers indicated how much ice they wanted by placing a numbered card in a window. The iceman would chop the requested amount from a larger block, grip it with iron tongs, and hoist it onto a shoulder protected by a thick leather or sheepskin pad. Once inside, he placed it in the household icebox, where the cold air helped preserve meat, dairy products, and produce. Because the ice continually melted, the delivery wagon soon had to return, much to the delight of local children.

Ice delivery was wet, grueling work traditionally performed by men, although women took over some routes during World War I. As electric refrigerators spread through American homes, the neighborhood iceman gradually disappeared. But one trace of the profession remains: People still occasionally call the refrigerator an icebox, even though no one has to carry a dripping block through the kitchen anymore.

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A radio competition inspired a 3-ton ice block’s journey across the Sahara.

In 1959, the Norwegian insulation company Glassvatt accepted a challenge from Radio Luxembourg: to transport a block of ice from the Arctic Circle to the equator without refrigeration. Although the station soon withdrew its promised 100,000-franc cash prize (apparently the contest was not entirely serious), Glassvatt continued with the journey as an audacious publicity stunt. Workers fused ice from Norway’s Svartisen glacier into a 3-ton block and wrapped it in wood and glass-wool insulation. In 1959, a truck carried it approximately 7,456 miles through Europe and across the Sahara, where temperatures approached 122 degrees Fahrenheit. After 27 days, the expedition reached Gabon with nearly 90% of the ice intact.

For centuries, inns made strangers share beds.

Two children sleeping in bed, c. 1940s
Credit: © H. ARMSTRONG ROBERTS—ClassicStock/Alamy
Author Nicole Villeneuve
September 23, 2026

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When you book a hotel room, you expect the bed to be yours alone. Even a hostel, where you’re likely to share a room, gives you your own mattress. But a couple of centuries ago, travelers had very different expectations. Sharing a bed with a stranger was often part of the deal at inns. In Europe and colonial America in the 17th and 18th centuries, when space was tight and bedding scarce, two, three, or even more people who had never met might find themselves sleeping side by side.

Many historical travelers left detailed accounts of getting cozy with strangers. In colonial America, British merchant Robert Hunter Jr. recalled sleeping in a tavern room near Williamsburg, Virginia, with eight other people, including three men arguing over who should get the middle of their bed. 

Even two of America’s Founding Fathers once found themselves in a sharing situation. In 1776, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin were traveling together when they stopped at a crowded New Jersey inn and found that only one bed was available. They shared the sleeping space, and Adams later recounted their amusing argument about whether to keep the window open.

Bed-sharing wasn’t limited to travel; members of large households also often slept several to a bed. That began to change in the late 18th and 19th centuries, as bedroom furniture became more accessible and hotels increasingly offered private rooms. Changing ideas about privacy, personal space, and hygiene also made sleeping alone more desirable, and gradually, what was once an ordinary occurrence became something most people today would not find tenable.

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Queen Elizabeth I reportedly never slept alone.

Queen Elizabeth I was famously unmarried, but she nonetheless rarely slept alone. Throughout her 44-year reign, from 1558 until 1603, the queen is said to have shared her bed with a trusted attendant at night. Bed-sharing was common in Elizabethan households, and for the monarch, a bedfellow could provide company at the end of the day — someone to talk to or to ask for advice. This arrangement was likely especially comforting to Elizabeth, who reportedly suffered from insomnia and was afraid of the dark.

Ohio’s abbreviation used to be just ‘O.’

Ohio welcome sign
Credit: fotoguy22/ iStock via Getty Images Plus
Author Timothy Ott
September 28, 2026

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With the 1831 publication of Table of the Post Offices in the United States, the Post Office Department acknowledged the population’s reluctance to completely spell out state names on mailing envelopes (such as the always-vexing “Massachusetts”) and for the first time unveiled a list of approved abbreviations. The list largely followed consistent guidelines: States with one-word names were abbreviated with their first and last letters (e.g., Connecticut became “Ct.”); states with two-word names were marked by their initials (New York became “N. Y.”); and territories were shortened to two letters with a “T” (Arkansas Territory became “Ar. T.”). But there were a few anomalies among the group: Alabama and Illinois were denoted by their first two letters (“Al.” and “Il.”); Michigan Territory retained its first three (“Mic. T.”); Missouri used a middle letter (“Mo.”) to avoid confusion with Mississippi (“Mi.”); and Ohio simply became “O.”

When the U.S. Post Office released updated lists in 1874 and 1943 to account for the country’s expansion, it did away with abbreviations for Ohio and other states with short names. Then, in mid-1963, the department established new two- to four-letter abbreviations for all states — with the exception of Ohio, Iowa, and Utah — to fit the templates of new mail processing equipment. When the four-letter designations were still found to be too long, the Post Office shortened them one more time in October 1963 to a consistent two letters, and Ohio, Iowa, and Utah became “OH,” “IA,” and “UT.” And that’s where things stand today. The only state abbreviation that has changed since 1963 is Nebraska’s; originally given the two-letter abbreviation of “NB,” the Cornhusker State was rebranded as “NE” in 1969 to avoid confusion with the Canadian province of New Brunswick.

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The Post Office introduced a mascot to promote the use of ZIP codes.

When mail services struggled to keep pace with America’s booming population after World War II, the Post Office Department sought to streamline the process by dividing the country into regions marked by five-digit Zone Improvement Plan (ZIP) codes. However, the department had taken note of the recent pushback against the introduction of area codes for the telephone, so it introduced a cartoon mailman named Mr. Zip to help persuade the public to add these five numbers to outgoing mail. Mr. Zip was initially featured on Post Office promotional materials, mail trucks, and buttons worn by carriers; he also appeared in a 1967 PSA alongside a band that performed ZIP code-themed songs and skits. When ZIP code usage continued to lag, he found his way onto kids’ lunch boxes, a board game, and into a Dick Tracy cartoon. It’s unclear just how effective Mr. Zip was as a pitchman, but the relentless promotional push led to nearly 100% of Americans adopting the ZIP code by the late 1970s, and allowed the Postal Service to ease the smiling mailman into retirement in 1983.

The CIA trained ravens to drop bugging devices on windowsills.

A common raven
Credit: © J.C.Salvadores/stock.adobe.com
Author Bess Lovejoy
September 16, 2026

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Most spies don’t work for peanuts, but a few of the CIA’s Cold War recruits worked for morsels of “crow salad.” The agency experimented with some unconventional operatives during the era, including dolphins, cats, pigeons, and, yes, ravens. The raven program grew out of research by Animal Behavior Enterprises, a company whose founders had studied under behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner. When they weren’t teaching chickens to play baseball or pigs to vacuum at their I.Q. Zoo in Arkansas, the company’s trainers developed animal acts for the U.S. government.

Ravens were particularly promising recruits. They were intelligent, strong enough to carry small packages, and capable of working independently. According to the CIA’s declassified Operator’s Manual: Avian Delivery System, a raven could be trained to take a package in its beak, fly to a specified ledge or windowsill, deposit the package, and return to its cage. Handlers guided a raven by projecting a pulsing red laser onto the target; once the bird had deposited its cargo, a special recall lamp beckoned it back.

The CIA envisioned ravens delivering listening devices disguised as ordinary debris, such as a piece of roofing slate. Trainers also taught the birds to press cameras against windows and take snaps of the rooms inside. The birds were trained with “crow salad” — specifically, a mixture of meat, canned corn, whole wheat bread, cottage cheese, and other ingredients.

A raven in the program did succeed (sort of) at its mission at least once, somewhere in Europe. But although the bird left the eavesdropping device on the designated windowsill, the machine failed to pick up the intended target’s conversation. The CIA eventually abandoned its animal experiments around 1975, but not because the birds were bad — the raven had performed its part of the operation perfectly.

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The U.S. Army considered turning mosquitoes into intruder alarms.

Birds and mammals weren’t the only creatures considered for Cold War service. Researchers at the U.S. Army’s Limited Warfare Laboratory explored whether the sensory abilities of arthropods could reveal the presence of clandestine intruders. Bedbugs, ticks, lice, and mosquitoes were among the creepy-crawly candidates tapped for the task. Lice proved unhelpful, since they simply crawled around randomly during an early test. A species of mosquito showed more promise: It usually rested until a potential host approached, then took flight. Researchers thought that this reaction might be detected electronically, allowing mosquitoes to function as miniature alarms warning soldiers that someone was approaching in the dark. The concept apparently never advanced beyond the experimental stage.

The Eiffel Tower used to be painted yellow.

Repainting the Eiffel Tower, 1932
Credit: Smith Archive/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine
September 17, 2026

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If you’ve ever wondered whether the color of the Eiffel Tower has its own name, the answer is oui: “Eiffel Tower brown,” which consists of three shades and was chosen for the way it blends into the Paris cityscape. But the iconic landmark has undergone several hue changes since the late 19th century, and was even yellow for a time. 

That makeover took place in 1899, when la tour Eiffel, as it’s called in French, received a coat of five colors that spanned from yellow-orange at its base to light yellow at the top. The structure is repainted once every seven years or so, and by 1907 it was entirely yellow-brown. In fact, between 2019 and 2022, in anticipation of the 2024 Paris Olympics, the tower was repainted with the same gold hue it had in 1907.

Other colors the Eiffel Tower has sported over the years include its original hue of Venetian red, which was applied in the workshop before the tower was actually assembled, as well as ochre-brown and brownish-red. Though most of those don’t sound as spectacular as a monument of the tower’s stature deserves, recreations of the colors suggest they were aesthetically pleasing enough for the landmark to somehow appear in the background of every cafe and hotel room in the city. 

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It takes between 18 months and three years to paint the Eiffel Tower.

At 1,083 feet tall, the Eiffel Tower is hardly diminutive. As such, all of its paint jobs have been massive undertakings that lasted anywhere from 18 months to three years. It takes longer depending on weather conditions, as painting is impossible when the tower is too cold and the paint itself doesn’t stick when the structure is wet. The process isn’t just about beatification, as an anti-rust primer in the paint prevents oxidation. About 50 specialists carry out the work using 34 miles of safety line and repaint an area of 250,000 square meters (around 2.7 million square feet).

Only one president had a child born in the White House.

Esther Cleveland portrait, undated
Credit: © Vintage collection 216/Alamy
Author Bess Lovejoy
September 17, 2026

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The White House has been home to the children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews of plenty of U.S. presidents, but to date, only one child of a sitting president entered the world at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. On September 9, 1893, First Lady Frances Cleveland gave birth to Esther Cleveland in the family’s bedroom on the northwest side of the second floor of the residence.

Esther was the second daughter of President Grover Cleveland and Frances, whose relationship had already produced another White House first. Cleveland entered office as a bachelor, then married Frances in a small wedding in the Blue Room in 1886. He remains the only sitting president to marry inside the executive mansion. 

The couple’s first daughter, Ruth, was born in New York City after Cleveland lost his bid for reelection. In 1892, however, voters returned Cleveland to office, making him the first U.S. president to win two nonconsecutive terms. Frances returned to Washington with Ruth and soon became pregnant with Esther. Esther’s unusual birthplace earned her the nickname of “White House baby,” but she was far from the only child born there: At least 18 other kids, born to presidential relatives or members of staff, could list “White House, Washington, D.C.” as their place of birth.

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Several babies were born in the White House before Esther.

Esther Cleveland was the only president’s child born in the White House, but childbirth was hardly unprecedented within its walls. The first known baby born there was Asnet Hughes, whose mother, Ursula Granger Hughes, was an enslaved teenager brought from Monticello to train in the presidential kitchen during Thomas Jefferson’s administration. Asnet was born in 1802 and was followed by several children born to two other enslaved White House workers, Edith Fossett and Frances Hern. Presidential relatives were born in the White House as well: Jefferson’s grandson James Madison Randolph was born in the mansion, as were several later presidential descendants.

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

Spreading margarine
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
September 17, 2026

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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.

Washington’s men drank more than 150 bottles of alcohol days before the Constitution was signed.

City Tavern in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Credit: © aimintang—iStock Unreleased/Getty Images
Author Nicole Villeneuve
September 15, 2026

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The Constitution may be one of the most weighty documents in United States history, but the festivities held just days before it was signed were hardly solemn. 

On September 14, 1787, George Washington and 54 other guests gathered at Philadelphia’s City Tavern for a farewell dinner. The Constitutional Convention, during which the Founding Fathers had spent nearly four months hammering out the new nation’s governing document, was nearing its end. By the end of the night, the bar tab showed that Washington and his companions had enjoyed more than a few drinks.

The surviving bill lists 54 bottles of Madeira wine, 60 bottles of claret wine, eight bottles of whiskey, eight bottles of cider, 22 bottles of porter, and 12 bottles of beer. That’s 164 bottles of alcohol for 55 guests — and that doesn’t even take into account the seven large bowls of punch, which also could have contained alcohol.

The tab included a line item for broken tumblers and wine glasses, too. While all of this certainly paints a picture of a memorable night out — or, more likely, a night that not many remembered at all — the gathering wasn’t necessarily debaucherous for everyone. Historians have said that Washington, who by then was already one of the most revered figures in the fledgling nation, was probably more likely to have watched the scene unfold around him. 

A few days later, another dinner was held for the framers of the Constitution, at the same City Tavern, and it’s likely they would have had a similar bar bill. Shortly thereafter, on September 17, the delegates gathered at Independence Hall and signed the Constitution.

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Thomas Jefferson spent years trying to make his own vineyard at Monticello.

Thomas Jefferson is known to have helped popularize ice cream and macaroni and cheese in America, but he was also a passionate wine drinker — and even attempted for years to grow his own grapes. Jefferson tried establishing vineyards at Monticello as early as 1774, continuing throughout his presidency and beyond. His experiments were ultimately unsuccessful, however, due to Virginia’s late frosts, native pests such as phylloxera, and fungal diseases such as black rot. Though it appears he never successfully produced wine from grapes grown at Monticello, Jefferson did amass a substantial wine collection, spending an estimated $16,500 on bottles during his presidency — upwards of $430,000 today.

The Library of Congress is America’s oldest cultural institution.

The Library of Congress
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Author Michael Nordine
September 17, 2026

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Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress predates every other federal cultural institution in the United States — it’s so old, in fact, that it was brought into existence by the same bill that relocated the U.S. capital from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. The nation’s second president, John Adams, approved said bill, which provided $5,000 (roughly $122,000 today) for books to be used by Congress. Two years later, Thomas Jefferson made the increasingly important librarian of Congress post a presidential appointment. From those humble origins, the repository of knowledge eventually became the world’s largest library: It is home to more than 175 million items, with thousands more added every day.

Given the massive size of its collection, the Library of Congress is naturally home to a number of strange and fascinating objects. Its smallest book, Old King Cole, is a nursery rhyme measuring 1/25th of an inch, roughly the size of a period; its largest is a 5-by-7-foot photo book featuring images of Bhutan. In addition to books, the library houses audio materials, maps, sheet music, photographs, newspapers, presidential papers, manuscripts, and other media.

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The original library was burned down in the War of 1812.

The Library of Congress was comparatively tiny for the first 14 years of its existence, but that didn’t make it any less tragic when its collection of 3,000 books was destroyed in a fire along with the Capitol building on August 24, 1814. After the conflagration, Thomas Jefferson offered his own collection of 6,487 books (then the largest personal library in the nation) as a replacement for the lost volumes. Though he didn’t do so for free — Congress paid him $23,950 — Jefferson did provide the foundation for what the library eventually became. Sadly, a second fire destroyed most of his contribution, as well as nearly two-thirds of the entire collection on Christmas Eve 1851, but the institution rose from the ashes once again.

There has been only one fully bald U.S. president.

President Dwight Eisenhower with Willy Brandt, mayor of West Berlin in Washington, D.C., c. 1959
Credit: © Zuma Press Inc./Alamy
Author Michael Nordine
September 14, 2026

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As Richard Nixon learned the hard way in his televised debate with JFK, appearance matters when running for office. That may help explain why, of the 45 men who’ve served as president of the United States, only one was fully bald. That would be Dwight D. Eisenhower, whom the American public liked quite a bit despite his being follically challenged. Other commanders in chief haven’t had much going on hair-wise, including James Garfield and Gerald Ford, but only Ike sported a chrome dome.

It isn’t just hair that gets noticed when seeking the highest office in the land; height can affect popularity as well — studies have shown that it’s an key factor in presidential elections. Though the average American male stands 5 feet, 9 inches tall, the average height among presidents is 5 feet, 11 inches; considering that we’ve gotten taller over time, the disparity is even larger — early presidents such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, who were all over 6 feet tall, towered over their contemporaries. Nineteen presidents have been 6 feet or taller, with Abraham Lincoln standing tallest at 6 feet, 4 inches. 

Eisenhower, who was in the middle of the pack at 5 feet, 10 inches, never seemed to have fully gotten over losing his “sandy gray” hair, with The Washington Post noting that the frequent doodler “often drew himself younger and with hair.” Ah, the way we were.

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You don’t inherit your hair loss solely from your mother’s side.

You’ve probably heard this popular misconception before, which has sent many a young man looking for pictures of his maternal grandfather for a glimpse of his follicular future. “Hair loss is polygenetic, meaning multiple genes contribute to it,” dermatologist Chey Ranasinghe, of the Cleveland Clinic, explained. “You can’t blame one side of the family.” Other factors that don’t contribute to baldness, despite what you may have heard, include wearing hats and washing your hair too often. Genetics, hormones (including one called dihydrotestosterone, or DHT), aging, stress, and underlying medical conditions are far more likely to contribute to hair loss.

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