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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
Credit: Gemma Podmore/ Alamy Stock Photo
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.

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.

Abraham Lincoln grew his famous beard because of an 11-year-old girl.

  • Portrait of Abraham Lincoln
Portrait of Abraham Lincoln
Credit: PictureLux / The Hollywood Archive/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Nicole Villeneuve
April 8, 2024

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Abraham Lincoln is lauded for his steadfast leadership in a time of tumult, but the 16th president evidently also had an impressionable side: One of his defining physical traits, his iconic beard, was grown at the suggestion of an 11-year-old girl. In the fall of 1860, as Lincoln campaigned for the presidency, he received a letter from one Grace Bedell of Westfield, New York. In her letter, Bedell expressed her excitement for Lincoln’s political aspirations but suggested that he might gain even more support if he grew some facial hair. 

“I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are,” she wrote. “I have got 4 brothers and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be president.”

In a letter dated October 19, Lincoln wrote back to Bedell. “Having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affection if I were to begin it now?” he asked. Yet by the following January, the recent president-elect indeed had a beard growing in. The next month, in February 1861, a bearded President Lincoln made a stop in Westfield and met Bedell in person. As he continued to make his way via train to Washington, D.C., his facial hair filled in, and by the time of his March 1861 inauguration, he was the first U.S. president with a full beard.  

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Disneyland employees were banned from growing beards until 2012.

Perceptions of and even rules about facial hair have changed throughout history. It wasn’t until as recently as 2012 that Disneyland and Disney World employees were allowed to grow beards — and only as recently as 2000 that they were given permission to grow mustaches, despite Walt Disney himself famously sporting one. The ban on facial hair was put into place when Disneyland first opened in 1955. When the rule changed in 2012, Disney stated that beards and goatees must remain shorter than a quarter of an inch long. The most recent update, in 2021, removed all mention of facial hair length to the Disney Look employee appearance guidelines, stating only that it should be groomed and well maintained. Other long-running rules were relaxed, too: Visible tattoos are now permitted except on the face, head, or neck, and two earrings can be worn per ear.

Twinkies were originally banana-flavored.

  • Twinkies and packaging
Twinkies and packaging
Credit: Bill Greenblatt/ Hulton Archive via Getty Images
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
September 4, 2025

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For as long as most people can remember, Twinkies have gone virtually unchanged: The treat is a space-age yellow sponge cake filled with a sweet-tasting artificial vanilla creme. But this wasn’t always the case. At the very beginning, Twinkies were banana-flavored. Even more surprising, they were made with real bananas.

Back in 1930, the Continental Baking Company’s Hostess brand produced a strawberry shortcake-themed, tube-shaped snack cake. It was available only during strawberry season, so the equipment went unused for the rest of the year. Bananas, which in the U.S. were all imported, weren’t season-specific, so Continental employee James A. Dewar had the idea to make cakes with real banana filling when strawberries weren’t available.Twinkies — named for an advertisement Dewar saw for “Twinkle Toe Shoes” — were a big hit. But Hostess ran into a supply problem during World War II, when bananas were rationed. The company tested a few fruit-flavored alternatives but eventually settled on vanilla, despite concerns within the company that the flavor was too boring and artificial. The snack cakes became more popular than ever, and the flavor stuck. Hostess did eventually bring back banana Twinkies, but real bananas never returned.

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Banana flavor predated bananas in the United States.

Banana-flavored confections became available in the United States in the 1860s, but the vast majority of Americans didn’t know what bananas actually tasted like until at least the 1870s. This is because artificial banana flavor, which is mostly a chemical called isoamyl acetate, was never actually intended to taste like bananas. In fact, in the U.K., it was marketed as pear flavor, but pear cultivars in the United States didn’t smell the same.

Many Americans had seen photographs of banana trees, but very few had a frame of reference for what bananas actually tasted like. So chemical companies started marketing it to Americans as banana flavor. Bananas do have some naturally occurring isoamyl acetate, but the bananas sold in U.S. stores today have far less of it than bananas in the past.

Vermont was once an independent republic.

  • Old Constitution House in Vermont
Old Constitution House in Vermont
Credit: Felix Lipov/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine
April 8, 2024

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Not everyone wanted to be part of the United States when the Revolutionary War broke out. Vermont, for instance, declared itself an independent republic from 1777 to 1791, due in part to ongoing disputes with neighboring New York, which claimed the land as its own. The future Green Mountain State adopted its own constitution and operated as a de facto independent country. After briefly being called New Connecticut, the region eventually settled on the name State of Vermont, but was also known as the Vermont Republic. In addition to having its own currency and postal service, Vermont abolished slavery on July 2, 1777 — the first American territory to do so. (Vermont at one point toyed with the idea of joining the Province of Quebec in the early 1780s before ultimately deciding against it.)

Though the Vermont Republic wasn’t officially recognized by the U.S., it was largely left to its own devices. No less an authority than George Washington advised against military action in 1783, in part because the country was “very mountainous” and its citizens were “a hardy race, composed of that kind of people who are best calculated for soldiers.” Vermont eventually settled its differences with New York and voted to ratify the U.S. Constitution in 1791, officially joining the new nation.

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Vermont has a folkloric lake monster.

Cryptid enthusiasts who’ve gone searching for the Loch Ness Monster, only to leave Scotland without proof of Nessie’s existence, would do well to extend their search to Vermont. Deep in the waters of Lake Champlain, a similar sea beast is said to lurk: Champ, who’s been sighted in the lake since at least the early 18th century. That was when the Indigenous Abenaki and Iroquois began seeing what was described as either a massive sea snake or horned serpent, named Gitaskog by the Abenaki. The legend persists to this day — both Vermont and New York even went so far as to pass resolutions protecting Champ in the early 1980s.

Britain once skipped 11 days in September.

  • Calendar reform under Pope Gregory XIII
Calendar reform under Pope Gregory XIII
Credit: Science History Images/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
September 3, 2025

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Designing a yearly calendar is tricky, since solar days, lunar months, and solar years don’t completely line up. The Gregorian calendar, established by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 and used today throughout the Western world, aligns calendar dates with the seasons by splitting a solar year into 12 parts — not tied to the cycles of the moon — and adding an extra day every four years (with some exceptions). But making the switch to this calendar from its predecessor, the ancient Julian calendar, led to some clunky timekeeping — such as Britain skipping a whole 11 days in September 1752.

Because the Julian calendar under-calculated a solar year by roughly 11 minutes, it gradually got out of sync with the actual seasons. The discrepancy wasn’t noticeable at first, but by Gregory XIII’s papacy in the 16th century, Easter had drifted 10 days from the date the Catholic Church intended it to be celebrated. To remedy this, the pope adjusted the leap day formula and anchored the calendar by tying March 21 to the spring equinox.

Catholic-dominant areas of Europe, such as Italy, adopted the adjusted calendar within a year, and the rest of Europe eventually followed suit, albeit some countries more slowly than others. Britain, for instance, waited nearly 200 years to make the switch, and by that time, the two calendars were 11 days out of sync. In order to align with the Gregorian calendar, Britain skipped 11 days in the year 1752, following September 2 with September 14.

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The year 1751 was just 282 days long in Britain.

Before Britain implemented the Gregorian calendar, the new year started on March 25. The first New Year’s Day on January 1 was in 1752, but because the previous year still started on March 25, 1751 ended up being only 282 days long — the shortest year in English history. Interestingly, the tradition of beginning the year in March hasn’t completely disappeared: Even today, tax years in the U.K. start in the spring.

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