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A baboon worked for a railroad company.

  • Rail signal man and baboon
Rail signal man and baboon
Royal Geographical Society/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bennett Kleinman

January 22, 2024

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In 1881, a South African railroad employee named James Wide purchased a baboon named Jack whom he trained to become his assistant. Four years earlier, Wide had suffered a terrible accident in which he lost both his legs, and he was struggling to perform at work. He discovered Jack at a local market, where the baboon was leading an oxcart. Wide was so impressed with the animal’s abilities that he purchased the creature and deputized Jack as an employee at the Port Elizabeth Railway Station.

At first, Wide enlisted Jack’s help by training him to push a trolley during the morning commute. But Jack really thrived as a signalman, and he was later taught how to operate the station switchboard. After watching Wide, Jack learned how to throw switches and change tracks, and his work was so impeccable that he never experienced a single incident over the course of nine years. Eventually, Jack could perform the duties without Wide’s supervision, and passing conductors had no idea that a baboon was operating the system until they saw it with their own eyes.

Before long, word of Jack’s “employment” reached authorities, who decided to give the creature a competency test. To their amazement, Jack passed with flying colors, saving both his and his owner’s jobs. Jack was given an official employment number and paid 20 cents a day plus half a bottle of beer each week. Jack continued working for the railroad company until his death in 1890.

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A rhinoceros won more than 100,000 votes for city council in São Paulo.

In October 1959, the residents of São Paulo, Brazil, expressed their dissatisfaction with the local government by voting en masse for a rhinoceros for city council. The townsfolk were furious about São Paulo’s deteriorating infrastructure, and rather than vote for any of the 540 official candidates, they decided to stage a protest vote. A group of students printed out 200,000 ballots featuring the name of a 5-year-old rhino, Cacareco (meaning “rubbish”), who lived at the local zoo. The ballots were cast, and Cacareco received more than 100,000 votes, earning a spot on city council. Officials refused to acknowledge Cacareco’s election, however, and nullified the results before calling for a new election. Though the animal never held office, the phrase “Voto Cacareco” (“Vote Cacareco”) remains a popular protest slogan in São Paulo today.

FDR was related to 11 other presidents.

  • Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, 1905
Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, 1905
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Author Michael Nordine

May 8, 2025

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At least two of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s family ties are well known: The nation’s 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt, was his fifth cousin, and he married his fifth cousin once removed, Eleanor Roosevelt. But FDR was related to 10 other presidents, five by blood and six by marriage: John Adams, James Madison, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin Harrison, and William Howard Taft. 

Other presidents who were distant relations of one another include Abraham Lincoln and George W. Bush (seventh cousins four times removed) and George Washington and Jimmy Carter (ninth cousins six times removed).

Despite his famous family, FDR himself was an only child. He and Eleanor did have six children, however, two of whom entered politics. James Roosevelt represented California’s 26th district in the House of Representatives from 1955 to 1965, while Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. represented New York’s 20th district from 1949 to 1955 and was the under secretary of commerce under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, from 1963 to 1965.

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FDR unsuccessfully ran for vice president.

A dozen years before winning the highest office in the land, FDR was on the losing end of a presidential election. Ohio Governor James M. Cox chose Roosevelt, who at the time was serving as assistant secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson, as his running mate in 1920. It wasn’t meant to be, however, as Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge won in a landslide: 404 electoral votes to Cox’s 127, carrying 37 of 48 states and winning 60% of the popular vote. Coolidge became president when Harding died in office three years later, and FDR went on to win four consecutive elections at the top of the ticket, beginning with the 1932 presidential election.

A giant wave of beer once flooded London.

  • Horseshoe Brewery, London
Horseshoe Brewery, London
Credit: Alan King engraving/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Nicole Villeneuve

January 18, 2024

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London was once a prominent beer-brewing city; in the 1850s, the U.K. capital was home to the largest brewery in the world. London’s beer business was robust in the 19th century — and it was also the source of an industrial accident that sent thousands of gallons of beer flooding the streets. It happened at the Horse Shoe Brewery, located at the corner of Great Russell Street and Tottenham Court. On the afternoon of Monday, October 17, 1814, one of the large iron rings used to hold together the brewery’s wooden fermentation tanks broke. The vat was massive: It stood about 22 feet high, and held roughly the equivalent of more than 3,500 standard barrels of the company’s porter beer. Within an hour, the damaged tank burst, sending a gush of beer that broke through a wall and caused several more of the tanks on the premises to split open. 

More than 380,000 gallons of beer then rushed through the streets of St. Giles, a densely populated, poverty-stricken London neighborhood. The wave reached up to 15 feet high, and came crashing into nearby homes and businesses. Although everyone at the brewery survived, the London Beer Flood claimed the lives of eight people in the neighborhood. In the aftermath, the media reported a respectful atmosphere as St. Giles residents reckoned with the tragedy; stories about locals scooping up as much beer as they could drink also emerged, although historians now dispute the likelihood of these reports. A hearing ultimately found that the brewery was not responsible, dubbing the incident an act of God.

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London brewers once took water from the Thames to make beer.

The River Thames has long been a significant water source for London industry, supporting everything from electricity to freight, and even beer. In the 18th century, most of London’s breweries were located along the Thames, where they could more easily receive raw materials such as grain and coal used in the brewing process. It was also the most convenient way to get the large quantities of water needed to make beer. By the late 1780s, increased industrialization led to concerns of contamination in the river, so brewers dug wells nearby to filter the river water, fitting them with pipes that ran about 3 feet underground. Pollution, however, continued to plague the Thames: In the summer of 1858, levels of human and industrial waste were so high that odors blanketed the city, a time known as the Great Stink. By this time, London and its beer industry no longer bootstrapped their beer water, relying instead on a clean, centralized water supply. Today, the Thames benefits from modern water treatment and is even considered one of the cleanest city rivers in the world.

“LOL” used to be an acronym for “little old lady.”

  • “LOL” written in scrabble tiles
"LOL" written in scrabble tiles
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Author Michael Nordine

May 8, 2025

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Long before anyone laughed out loud on the internet, “LOL” was in use by virtue of a different phrase: “little old lady.” The acronym was popularized by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen in the 1960s. Caen used the abbreviation “LOL” in many of his works to refer to a “little old lady.” In his 1960 book Only in San Francisco, he described an outfit that included a tricorn hat topped with an “evil-looking bird of prey” as the “regalia of the authentic LOL.”

He also once used “little old lady” as an affectionate nickname for a woman who angrily called the White House and told one of Richard Nixon’s aides of her wish that the commander in chief “go COMPLETELY to hell.” After calming down, she made another call, this one to the FBI, to ask, “Is telling the president to go to hell the same thing as threatening his life?” They assured her it was not. 

In other words, not every LOL was as quiet and demure as that description makes them sound. That was certainly true of the title character in the 1964 hit song “The Little Old Lady From Pasadena,” which describes this situation: “And everybody’s sayin’ that there’s nobody meaner than / The little old lady from Pasadena / She drives real fast and she drives real hard / She’s the terror of Colorado Boulevard.” It seems this particular LOL was nothing to LOL about.

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The first known use of “LOL” in its current form was in the 1980s.

If you were on a pre-internet chat room called Viewline in the 1980s, you might have witnessed a historic moment: the first use of “LOL” to mean “laughing out loud.” One such chat room denizen, Wayne Pearson of Calgary, remembers it like it was yesterday. He told the Calgary Herald, “You used to just type ‘hahaha’ really fast so that you would let them know that was very funny in a timely manner but, whatever he had said, it had me bursting out laughing almost to the embarrassment of doing so in a house by myself sitting at a computer.” And so Pearson did what all of us now do: typed “LOL” instead (eventually explaining what he meant). Viewline is also reportedly where “ROFL” (“rolling on the floor laughing”) was coined, though there’s no digital archive of these conversations.

The first verified instance of “LOL” came in 1989, when it appeared in the newsletter FidoNet (which still exists) alongside “BRB” (“be right back”) and “BTW” (“by the way”). In 2011, “LOL” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Animals could be put on trial in medieval Europe.

  • Pig on trial for murder
Pig on trial for murder
Christine_Kohler/ iStock
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd

January 18, 2024

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In Europe during the Middle Ages, crime and punishment were often theatrical, with crowds gathering to witness executions and public humiliations. But what they witnessed wasn’t always a human trial — often, medieval courts meted out justice on animals. France kept the most extensive records of these trials, but they were also held in Switzerland, Germany, and occasionally Italy and Spain. There were two main types of medieval animal trials: secular trials, usually against one animal or a small group of animals, and religious proceedings on a group of pests, such as mice or locusts. The idea of animals on trial may seem whimsical now, but these were deadly serious affairs, with the same judges, executioners, and expenses of a human trial.

A surprisingly large number of the single-animal trials were pigs that had committed violence against human children. In one 1457 case in Savigny, France, a sow was accused of killing a 5-year-old child with her own six piglets tagging along. Her owner was accused only of negligence, but the pig was sentenced to death. Because the court could not prove their involvement, the piglets were spared. As for the mass trials in ecclesiastical courts, the local bishop (or someone from his staff) would typically appoint a human proxy for the accused pests. This person would have the impossible task of telling the accused to show up for their court date. In one case, a group of flies failed to appear and the court took pity on them for their small size and young age and assigned them different counsel. As part of the proceedings, a judge would hold one member of the species and tell it to leave. If it left, the community would give thankful prayers. If it stayed, the judge would excommunicate the pests from the church, and start organizing people to help rid them from the area.

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A Norman church had a pig execution mural.

One of the better-known cases of porcine capital punishment was in the Norman town of Falaise, located in modern-day northwestern France. In the 14th century, a local tribunal found a sow guilty of killing a 3-month-old child and condemned it to be mutilated and hung to death. The sentence was carried out in the public square with the pig dressed in human garments, a scene that was immortalized in a fresco on the west wall of Falaise’s Church of the Holy Trinity. The tableau may have inspired a fictional mural mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale. The real-life art was whitewashed over in about 1820, and only written accounts of the painting survive — although there’s a sketch of the scene in the 1872 French text L'homme et la Bête (The Man and the Beast).

John Adams was the first president to go to college.

  • Harvard College and Memorial Hall
Harvard College and Memorial Hall
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Author Michael Nordine

May 8, 2025

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While George Washington was famously eulogized as “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” his trendsetting record did not extend to the halls of academia. The founding father was finished with formal schooling by age 14, and although he later earned a surveying license from the College of William & Mary, it was not an accreditation that counted him among the student body.

As such, it’s Washington’s successor, John Adams, who holds the distinction of being the first U.S. president to go to college, although there were various points in his early life where that outcome was in doubt. According to Richard B. Bernstein’s The Education of John Adams, the statesman struggled to remain focused in the classroom as a child despite his sharp mind; he even tried to convince his father that he wanted to leave school and become a farmer, to no avail. Adams soon realized that the root of the problem lay with his teacher, whom he later described as “the most indolent man I ever knew,” and his learning flourished after he switched schools.

Despite earning an invitation to take the admissions test for nearby Harvard College, Adams almost backed out of the opportunity due to the petrifying idea of meeting the institution’s distinguished faculty members by himself. Then he nearly had a panic attack upon glancing at the raft of words he had to translate into Latin on the entrance exam, until realizing he’d have a dictionary to help. Adams ultimately gained entry and excelled amid a curriculum centered on math, philosophy, and natural sciences. He even delivered a formal disputation in Latin at the graduation ceremonies of 1755, his impressive presentation leading to a job offer as a schoolmaster and the first steps toward becoming a seminal figure in the nation’s history.

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Harry S. Truman was the last president who didn’t have a college degree.

While several 19th-century presidents either dropped out of college or bypassed higher learning altogether, Harry S. Truman became the last of the breed when he took over the nation's highest office in 1945. Ironically, the Missourian was a person who relished intellectual stimulation: Smart enough to skip third grade, he was known to read four or five newspapers every morning as commander in chief. However, Truman's hopes of earning a degree after high school quickly ran into the course-correcting forces of reality, and he dropped out of Spalding's Commercial College in Kansas City to financially assist his poor farming family. Truman later took night classes at the Kansas City School of Law after becoming a Jackson County judge in the 1920s, but again abandoned his studies due to a lack of time, noting, "I had so many people interested in the welfare of the county who wanted to see me that I couldn't study law." Regardless, after multiple terms as a district judge and his successful election to the U.S. Senate in 1934, it was clear that the lack of a college degree was no hindrance to Truman's aspirations.

The Italian cities of Modena and Bologna fought a “War of the Bucket.”

  • Torre della Ghirlandina bucket
Torre della Ghirlandina bucket
Credit: Realy Easy Star / Toni Spagone/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Rachel Gresh

January 18, 2024

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Locked away in the Torre della Ghirlandina — a bell tower in Modena, Italy — sits a wooden bucket that is the namesake of a war. The conflict began in 1325, fought between Modena and Bologna, neighboring city-states with a history of political differences. (The Bolognese supported the pope, while the Modenese supported the Holy Roman Emperor.) It should have been a forgotten political skirmish, but the War of the Bucket went down in history — thanks to the humble oaken pail for which it was named. 

According to popular legend, the war began when the wooden bucket kept in the Bologna town well was allegedly stolen by Modenese soldiers who snuck into town, leading the Bolognese to retaliate in an all-out war. More likely, it started after an invasion of Bologna by the Modenese, and the bucket was a trophy gathered at the end of the war by the victorious Modenese, who were elated at their triumph despite being woefully outnumbered. The role of the bucket was exaggerated as the story was passed down through generations, and the myth was cemented by the poet Alessandro Tassoni’s 1622 satirical poem “La secchia rapita,” in which he joked that the Bolognese offered hostages, towns, and more in exchange for their stolen bucket. One aspect of Tassoni’s poem still rings true, however: He wrote, “the Bucket was soon to be locked away, in the tallest tower it remains to this day, up on high the trophy hangs bound, by a great chain nailed far off the ground.” 

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France and Brazil were engaged in a “Lobster War” in the 1960s.

In 1956, Brazil and France signed an agreement limiting France’s involvement in the South American country — including the fishing industry. But tensions broke out in 1961, when Brazilian locals spotted a fleet of French fishing vessels searching for lobsters nearing the coast, much closer than the 12-mile limit. Brazil launched naval vessels to deter the ships, but the French refused to cooperate, claiming that lobsters “swim,” and therefore Brazil had no territorial claim to the crustaceans because anyone could catch them in the ocean. Brazil disagreed, arguing that lobsters “crawl” along the continental shelf of South America, so they must belong to Brazil. On February 21, 1961, a French destroyer was deployed to safeguard the fishing vessels, but the Brazilian navy intercepted it. Both sides refused to back down, and Brazil doubled down on its fishing regulations. “The attitude of France is inadmissible, and our government will not retreat. The lobster will not be caught,” the Brazilian minister of foreign affairs declared at the time. The skirmish finally ended — without any shots fired — on December 10, 1964, with an agreement that expanded Brazil’s territorial waters to 200 miles, and allowed French fishing vessels to catch lobsters there for a five-year period. The heated debate over whether lobsters swim or crawl was never settled — according to unbiased sources, they do both.

Navy bean soup has been on the Senate menu every day since 1903.

  • Spoonful of Navy bean soup
Spoonful of Navy bean soup
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Author Michael Nordine

May 8, 2025

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Though no one’s sure who to thank for the tradition — some say Senator Fred Dubois of Idaho, while others credit Minnesota’s Knute Nelson — one item has been on the menu on the Capitol Building’s Senate Dining Room every day since 1903: navy bean soup. Also known as Senate bean soup, the hearty stew can trace its mandate back to either Dubois, who chaired the committee that oversaw the Senate Dining Room and passed a resolution in favor of the meal, or Nelson, who simply enjoyed his soup so much that he requested it be served every day. 

The recipe, available on the U.S. Senate website, calls for 2 pounds of dried navy beans, 4 quarts of hot water, 1 ½ pounds of smoked ham hocks, a chopped onion, 2 tablespoons of butter, and salt and pepper to taste; Dubois’ version added mashed potatoes, garlic, and parsley. Navy beans are also known as Boston beans, pea beans, haricot beans, Jigna beans, earl haricot beans, and white pea beans. Their moniker is owed to the fact that the U.S. Navy has served them to its sailors since the mid-19th century, making them as American as apple pie.

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Three senators were former Olympians.

Wendell Anderson, Bill Bradley, and Ben Nighthorse Campbell have something in common beyond the fact that they were Democratic senators: All three competed in the Olympics. Anderson, who represented Minnesota from 1976 to 1978, won a silver medal in hockey at the 1956 Winter Games held in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. Bradley won a gold medal in basketball at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, prior to spending 10 years in the NBA and 18 years representing New Jersey in the Senate. And before his 12 years serving Colorado in the upper chamber, Campbell competed in judo at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics as the first Native American on the U.S. team.

Pope John Paul II was the first non-Italian pope in 455 years.

  • Pope John Paul II, 1989
Pope John Paul II, 1989
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Author Michael Nordine

May 1, 2025

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There have been 267 popes in history, the vast majority of whom have hailed from Italy. Indeed, when Karol Józef Wojtyła became Pope John Paul II in 1978, he was the first non-Italian pope since Adrian VI died in 1523 — a span of 455 years. As the Vatican is a microstate surrounded by Rome, Italy’s capital city, it’s unsurprising that the vast majority of popes have been Italian. That includes John Paul II’s predecessor John Paul I, who served for just 33 days before his death on September 28, 1978, making that year the first since 1605 to have three popes in one year.

Born in Wadowice, Poland, on May 18, 1920, John Paul II was among the youngest popes in history. Elected at the age of 58, he was also one of the longest-reigning popes. His 27-year tenure was bested only by Pius IX (31 years) and St. Peter (who is believed to have reigned for 34 years though there are no verifiable records of the dates of his papacy). John Paul II was also something of a trendsetter, as both of his successors, Benedict XVI and Francis, weren’t from Italy either. Benedict XVI, born Joseph Alois Ratzinger, was German and took the rare step of resigning in 2013, while Pope Francis (born Jorge Mario Bergoglio) was from Argentina. Pope Francis was also the first pope from the Americas and the first from outside Europe since the eighth century, when Syria’s Gregory III held the papacy.

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A Polish director made an acclaimed film series based on the Ten Commandments.

Krzysztof Kieślowski made a number of acclaimed movies throughout his legendary career, from the Three Colors trilogy to The Double Life of Veronique, but Dekalog might be his greatest accomplishment. A series of hour-long films originally made for television in 1989 and 1990, each installment (simply named Dekalog: One, Dekalog: Two, and so on) is based on one of the Ten Commandments. None of them is as didactic as that might sound, with most taking place in modern-day Warsaw and some only relating loosely to their corresponding commandments. Dekalog was screened in its entirety at the 46th Venice Film Festival and hailed as a major work, with Stanley Kubrick once citing it as the only “film masterpiece” he could think of and Roger Ebert naming it one of the 10 greatest movies of all time.

In 1941, the U.S. Postal Service moved $9 billion in gold to Fort Knox.

  • Gold Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, 1989
Gold Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, 1989
Credit: NB/ROD/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine

May 1, 2025

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No visitors are allowed at the Fort Knox Bullion Depository, and for good reason: About half of the U.S. Treasury’s gold reserves are stored there, making it one of the most important locations in the country. Also invaluable in its own way is the United States Postal Service, which delivered much of that gold in the first place. One of the most notable shipments occurred when the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, and a portion of the $9 billion was transferred from the New York City Assay Office to Fort Knox via the Railway Mail Service.

The Postal Inspection Service supervised the shipment, which required cooperation between the Army, Treasury, local law enforcement, and the Postal Service. The Bullion Depository was built on land transferred to the Treasury by the military in Fort Knox, Kentucky, in 1936, and various precious items were stored there during the war. This included the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and a draft of the Gettysburg Address. The U.S. Mint Police protects the depository, which has been called the most heavily guarded place on the planet. 

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The United States has the largest gold reserve in the world.

With 8,133.46 metric tons in its reserves, America holds more gold than any country in the world — and it isn't especially close. Germany is second on the list with an estimated 3,351 metric tons, followed by Italy (2,451 metric tons), France (2,436 metric tons), and Russia (2,295 metric tons). Aside from Fort Knox, the country’s gold reserves are stored at the Denver Mint and the West Point Mint in New York.

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