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Charles Darwin ate owls, iguanas, and armadillos.

  • Charles Darwin portrait
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. 

During Prohibition, grape juice had “warnings” describing how to ferment it into wine.

  • Grape juice brick from Prohibition
Grape juice brick from Prohibition
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Author Michael Nordine
July 23, 2025

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To say that Prohibition didn’t put an end to the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” would be putting it lightly. Before the 18th Amendment was finally repealed by the 21st Amendment, the Volstead Act was the law of the land and bootlegging could land you in serious trouble. Yet many people took creative approaches to skirting that law, including vintners. Some winemakers used concentrated grape juice to make “wine bricks” that they were quick to clarify should definitely not be used for alcoholic consumption. To drive this point home, some such juices even came with “warnings.”

“Do not place the liquid in this jug and put it away in the cupboard for twenty-one days,” read one particularly unsubtle store sign, “because then it would turn into wine.” The packaging of a brand called Vino Sano advised consumers to “avoid the use of any kind of yeast, raisins, etc., otherwise fermentation sets in.” The many upstanding citizens who purchased wine bricks surely heeded that warning and enjoyed their alcohol-free grape beverage. On the other hand, because it wasn’t technically illegal to drink during Prohibition — only to manufacture, sell, or transport liquor — anyone who purchased grape juice and accidentally left it in a jug for three weeks could imbibe the resulting concoction without fear.

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Maryland never enforced Prohibition.

The idea of Prohibition didn’t go down easy in the Free State. After earning that nickname in 1864, Maryland doubled down on it when the 18th Amendment passed. Though it was the sixth state to ratify the amendment, Maryland never passed legislation that actually enforced it. No less a moral authority than Cardinal James Gibbons, the archbishop of Baltimore, referred to Prohibition as “a national catastrophe, little short of a crime against the spiritual and physical well-being of the American people,” and it seemed many of his fellow Marylanders agreed. “National Prohibition went into legal effect upward of six years ago,” Maryland Senator William Cabell Bruce said to Congress in the mid-1920s, “but it can be truly said that, except to a highly qualified extent, it has never gone into practical effect at all.”

The ancient Tangut script had more than 6,000 symbols.

  • Tangut script
Tangut script
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Author Rachel Gresh
February 27, 2024

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While traveling in Asia during the early 20th century, Russian linguist Nikolai Aleksandrovich Nevsky became fascinated by an extinct Sino-Tibetan language called “Tangut.” It was the language of the Tangut Empire, or Xi Xia (meaning “Western Xia”), a kingdom in modern-day northwestern China that declared its independence from China in 1038 and developed its own language. This short-lived dynasty was wiped out by the expanding Mongol Empire in 1227, less than two centuries after its establishment, and its language was nearly lost to history. 

Nevsky is credited with renewing interest in the Tangut script 700 years after the fall of the empire. In the late 1920s, he completed his first two manuals, which deciphered around 500 Tangut characters into Tibetan phonetic glosses (or notations). Thanks to Nevsky and other contributors in the field, some ancient Tangut scripts have been translated over the last 100 years, yet the Tangut language is still considered one of the most difficult in the world to decipher. 

Although it was modeled after the Chinese writing system, there are few similarities in their actual characters, and native Chinese readers cannot decipher Tangut. There are also no known native speakers, and because the Tangut script is a logographic writing system, each of its 6,000 complex characters represents an individual word without relating to pronunciation. By comparison, other scripts with logographic elements have far fewer characters, such as the 700 Egyptian hieroglyphs and 800 characters in the Maya writing system. Both of these scripts also contain some phonetic signs that represent syllables, allowing them to use fewer characters, and making them easier to decipher than the Tangut language. 

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The first Chinese script was written on “oracle bones” made from turtle shells.

More than 3,000 years ago, Chinese fortunetellers carved and painted an ancient script on “oracle bones,” the oldest surviving evidence of systematic Chinese writing. During the Shang dynasty (1600 to 1046 BCE), oracle bones were made from the plastrons of turtles (the flat underside of shells) or ox shoulder blades. As the name suggests, they were used for divination or fortunetelling. Questions were inscribed onto the bones, which were lit on fire until they cracked in the extreme heat. The directions of the cracks were interpreted as guidance from the supernatural realm to predict anything from the price of an ox at market to the start of another war. These inscriptions became some of the earliest historical accounts of Chinese civilization and its languages. 

Ben Franklin thought the bald eagle had “bad moral character.”

  • Bald eagle with American flag
Bald eagle with American flag
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Author Darren Orf
February 22, 2024

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The majestic bald eagle has been a symbol of the U.S. for as long as the country has existed; the imposing raptor first appeared on Massachusetts currency back in 1776. Yet not all Americans were fans of the bird of prey. In fact, arguably the most famous celebrity of the colonial era, Benjamin Franklin, was quite the opposite. In a letter addressed to his daughter and dated January 26, 1784, Franklin referred to the bald eagle as a “Bird of bad moral Character,” who “does not get his living honestly.” Philadelphia’s favorite son much preferred North America’s other avian native — the wild turkey — whom he called a “Bird of Courage.”

So why the anti-eagle sentiment? While it’s true that eagles do steal food from other birds, it’s likely a myth that Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird. Rather, the founding father’s words were actually maligning a particular institution that used the eagle on its seal. The Society of the Cincinnati, which formed in 1783 (and eventually supplied the name for the U.S. city), was a hereditary patriotic organization, meaning only sons of officers in the American Revolution could enter its ranks. According to Franklin, an organization based on family or heritage was uncomfortably similar to Britain’s status-driven culture, to which he believed American ideals were diametrically opposed. 

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Turkey (the bird and the country) is named for the Turkish people.

The wild turkey comes from North America, but the bird is actually named after the Turkish people of Eurasia. In the 15th century, Turkish merchants from Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) imported an East African bird called the Guinea fowl — which resembles North America’s wild turkey — into England, where it was dubbed a “turkey-coq” or “turkey” after the Ottoman Turks. When English settlers arrived in the New World in the 17th century and crossed paths with the similar-looking North American fowl, they simply gave the bird the same name. In 1922, when the Ottoman Empire dissolved, the new nation of Turkey was established, and found itself sharing a name with a bird that is not even native to Turkey.

Comic books were once considered a national threat.

  • Official with approved comic books
Official with approved comic books
Credit: Smith Archive/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Nicole Villeneuve
July 15, 2025

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In the mid-20th century, comic books came under fire in the United States. Though the medium started out as reprinted collections of popular newspaper strips in the 1930s, it quickly grew into a diverse and wildly popular original art form. By the 1940s, original comics filled newsstands across the country; in 1948, 80 million to 100 million comic books were being sold in the U.S. each month. This was far from a niche hobby; comic books were mass entertainment for a range of ages (though primarily children), covering everything from superhero adventures and Westerns to genres such as horror, romance, sci-fi, and war stories.

Across the country, some church groups and parent organizations began expressing concerns that comics glorified violence and led to delinquency. Public comic book burnings began in the late 1940s as a protest. The concern reached fever pitch in 1954 with the publication of psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, which argued that comic books were a major cause of juvenile crime. Though widely publicized at the time, Wertham’s reporting was later found to be deeply flawed, often misrepresenting research to support his claims.

The outcry that followed led to Senate hearings and, eventually, the creation of the Comics Code Authority (CCA), a self-governed body that publishers used as a censorship guide to stay in the good books of distributors and newsstands. Under the code, scenes of violence, horror, and anything deemed morally questionable were heavily edited or banned altogether. The backlash reshaped the comic book industry for decades: Superheroes such as Batman, originally dark and gritty, were toned down to seem more wholesome, and entire publishers went out of business. The CCA had a decent hold on the industry until the 1970s, when specialty comic book stores started popping up. Direct relationships were established with publishers, bypassing most distributors, and eventually, the code was dropped, allowing the comic book industry to resume its expansive storytelling.

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Before "Garfield," Jim Davis made a comic strip about bugs.

Before he created the world’s most famous cartoon cat, Jim Davis made a go of it with insects. In the early 1970s, Davis worked on a comic strip called Gnorm Gnat, starring a deadpan, wisecracking gnat. The comic ran in a small Indiana newspaper for two years, but never got syndicated; one editor told the creator, “Your art is good, your gags are great, but bugs — nobody can relate to bugs.” Taking the advice to heart, Davis set out to create a more relatable character, one inspired by the many cats he grew up with on his family’s farm. The result, of course, was Garfield, which debuted in 1978 and quickly became a sensation. 

John Hancock’s house just went up for sale.

  • Ebenezer Hancock House in Boston
Ebenezer Hancock House in Boston
Credit: Eric Nathan/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bennett Kleinman
July 25, 2025

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Though 10 Marshall Street may not be as famous an address as 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, this three-story Boston home still holds an important place in American history. The residence was built and owned by founding father John Hancock, and it recently went up for sale for the first time in decades. The real estate listing describes the home as the “last extant property associated with [Hancock] in Boston” and the “only vernacular structure dating to the mid-1700s to survive in central Boston.” According to Boston city archaeologist Joseph Bagley, it’s also the 27th oldest house in the city. And it’s one of a few surviving homes in Massachusetts associated with a U.S. founding father, along with John Adams’ birthplace (built in 1681) and residence (built in 1731), which are part of a national historical park in Quincy, Massachusetts.

John Hancock — famous for being the first person to sign the Declaration of Independence — inherited the lot at 10 Marshall Street in the 1760s, and built the house in 1767. However, the 5,748-square-foot home is referred to as the Ebenezer Hancock House, named after John Hancock’s brother who lived there. Ebenezer later assumed the role of deputy paymaster general for the Continental Army and set up an office in the home where regimental commanders came to pick up soldiers’ wages during the American Revolutionary War. In 1778, France’s Louis XVI gifted 2 million silver crowns to the United States in support of the war effort, which were stored in this very building.

In 1785, John Hancock sold the property to a glass merchant, who later sold it to a shoe dealer in 1798. For the next 165 years, the building operated as a shoe store before it was left vacant and then acquired by the law firm Swartz & Swartz in 1976. While the current asking price isn’t publicly known, the property was assessed at $1.65 million in June 2025.

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Benjamin Franklin’s only surviving home is located in London.

While Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston in 1706 and spent most of his life in Philadelphia, he also lived and worked in London for several years. In August 1757, Franklin moved into an apartment located at 36 Craven Street, which is now the founding father’s last-surviving residence. In a 1758 letter to his wife, who was living back in the U.S., Franklin wrote, “I lodge in Craven Street near Charing Cross, Westminster; We have four Rooms furnished, and every thing about it is pretty genteel.” During his time in the apartment, Franklin invented a glass instrument called the “armonica,” and was said to take nude “air baths” sitting in front of the open windows. He departed London in 1775 to return stateside and serve in the Second Continental Congress. While the property fell into disuse, it was restored and reopened as a museum in 2006 honoring Franklin’s legacy.

A 15-year-old invented Braille.

  • Portrait of Louis Braille
Portrait of Louis Braille
Credit: Old Books Images/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
July 15, 2025

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Braille is a set of tactile symbols designed for reading that’s used all over the world by blind and visually impaired people; letters and symbols are represented by different configurations of a grid of six raised dots. One could easily assume that such a widely accepted system was drafted by someone with a wealth of experience, but inventor and namesake Louis Braille was just 15 years old at the time, a student at the Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles (Roayl Institute for Blind Youth) in Paris.

Young Braille, who lost his sight in an early childhood accident, didn’t build the system from scratch. French inventor Charles Barbier had a keen interest in shorthand, and spent a lot of time developing alternate notation methods that didn’t require traditional writing. In 1815, he published a collection of methods for tactile reading, including a series of raised bumps in a 12-dot grid. Barbier had visually impaired people in mind when he designed this method, but as a sighted person, he couldn’t fully test it on his own.

When Braille first enrolled at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in 1819, students learned to read raised cursive letters, which were not only difficult to read but very rarely taught kids to write. But in 1821, the school started using Barbier’s system, which was much easier to both read and write. Braille, who had firsthand experience with the system and knew how to improve it for visually impaired people, started developing his own version. His six-dot system, invented in 1824, was easier to read under a single fingertip, and could be adapted for math and music. He published his method in 1829, when he was 20 years old.

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The first audiobooks were recorded in 1932.

In the early 1930s, after the American Foundation for the Blind couldn’t convince commercial record producers to release books on records, the organization decided to launch its own recording studio. Newly invented LP records had room for 15 minutes of audio per side — a whopping amount of time compared to previous technologies — and the foundation’s first test pressing, an excerpt from Helen Keller’s book Midstream, came out in 1932. Production began in earnest a few years later, with options including Shakespeare plays, historic documents such as the Declaration of Independence, and then-new works including Eleanor Roosevelt’s memoir This Is My Story, read by the first lady herself.

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