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A volcanic eruption in 1815 caused the “year without a summer.”

  • Eruption of Tambora
Eruption of Tambora
Credit: Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine
June 30, 2025

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The recent volcanic eruption in Iceland was certainly disruptive, but it pales in comparison to the blast that caused the “year without a summer.” That eruption took place on Indonesia’s Mount Tambora in April 1815. The explosion ejected mass amounts of sulfur dioxide, ash, and dust into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight and plunging the global temperature several degrees lower, resulting in 1816 being the coldest year in some 250 years. In part because of the volcano, Europe and North America were subjected to unusually cold, wet conditions that summer, including a “killing frost” that destroyed crops in New England. The year was sometimes referred to as “Eighteen Hundred and Nearly Frozen to Death.” 

Initially, the chilly summer was misunderstood. Some speculated that the position of the planets caused the horrible weather, and legend has it that The Old Farmer’s Almanac predicted snow that summer. That the volcanic eruption had occurred more than a year before explains why the link wasn’t readily apparent. The volcanic ash was ejected into the upper atmosphere and carried around the planet by the jet stream. That dust blanketed the Earth, resulting in the strange weather that followed.

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The eruption helped inspire "Frankenstein."

Difficult times can lead to great art. Then 18 years old and still going by her maiden name of Godwin, Mary Shelley and her lover and future husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, visited Lake Geneva in the spring and summer of 1816, a time of extremely gloomy weather. One fateful night that July, the two were with their friend Lord Byron, the famous poet, when he suggested, “We will each write a ghost story.” Shelley completed hers in just a few days, writing in the introduction to Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus that “a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house.” Who knows: If it had been bright and sunny that week, we might never have gotten the endlessly influential 1818 book, which later spawned an assortment of movies, TV shows, plays, and Halloween costumes.

Einstein’s brain was preserved for scientific study.

  • Section of Einstein brain
Section of Einstein brain
Credit: Friedrich Stark/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Nicole Villeneuve
June 30, 2025

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Albert Einstein was one of the most famous and influential physicists of the 20th century, and although he was widely revered in his life, he had complicated feelings about being the subject of such adulation. When Einstein died from a ruptured abdominal aneurysm at age 76 in 1955, he had already made it clear that he wished to be cremated so “people don’t come to worship at my bones.” Per his wishes, Einstein’s ashes were scattered by his family at a private spot along the Delaware River. But it wasn’t the entirety of the physicist’s body: Before cremation, his brain was removed and taken to be studied.

On the same day Einstein died, Thomas Harvey, a pathologist at New Jersey’s Princeton Hospital, conducted an autopsy, during which Harvey removed the scientist’s brain. Removing organs was common autopsy practice, as they were often kept by medical institutions for research. But Harvey decided to keep this one for himself. He claimed he wished only to conduct medical research on the genius’s brain, and promised Einstein’s family he would not use the organ for his own cultural cache. Over the next four decades, Harvey occasionally sent sections of the brain to other scientists to study, but most of it was stored in pieces in jars of formaldehyde at his home. While studies done on Einstein’s brain over the years did reveal differences from the average person’s, it ultimately remains unclear where his extraordinary intellect really came from. Today, samples of Einstein’s brain are kept at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C., and the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia.

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Humans use much more than just 10% of their brains.

The human brain is the most complex organ in the human body. Given how little we know about the spongy mass, the claim that humans use only 10% of their brains seems not only possible, but likely. But the long-repeated assertion is just a myth — humans actually use all of their brains. It isn’t known for sure where the 10% idea started; it has been misattributed to Albert Einstein, but it most likely germinated with American psychologist and author William James, who theorized that people use only a fraction of their mental capabilities. The myth got a big boost in Dale Carnegie's bestselling 1936 self-help book How to Win Friends and Influence People. In the preface, journalist Lowell Thomas misquoted James, claiming the psychologist said that “the average person develops only 10% of his latent mental ability.” But according to modern brain imaging technologies, areas of the entire brain are, in fact, active most of the time, even if they're not active all at the same time.

The U.S. military tried to make a flying saucer.

  • U.S. Air Force photo of the Avrocar
U.S. Air Force photo of the Avrocar
Credit: PJF Military Collection/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
June 30, 2025

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UFO, short for unidentified flying object, is a pretty vague term. But it tends to call to mind a specific image in the popular consciousness: a flying saucer. The disc-shaped craft entered the public imagination in 1947 after aviator Kenneth Arnold described a strange sighting of several objects while flying over Washington state, spawning hundreds of other dubious UFO sightings and many a spooky movie. But for a brief time, flying saucers were more than science fiction, thanks to a failed military prototype.

In 1947, the Canadian aircraft manufacturer Avro hired a British engineer named John Carver Meadows Frost, who saw great potential in flying saucers — and worried, in the early years of the Cold War, that the Soviet Union was harboring secret German saucer tech. In 1952, he began developingthe Avrocar, a disc-shaped fighter craft with turbojet engines around the perimeter and a large, central turbine that sucked in air. Theoretically, by directing the exhaust downward or laterally, the craft could take off powerfully, hover smoothly, and zoom around at Mach 4 speeds.

The project became too expensive for Canadian government funding, but the United States Army and Air Force were extremely interested. The Army wanted an all-terrain hovercraft for transport and reconnaissance, while the Air Force wanted a stealthy supersonic craft that could hover below enemy radar and zoom up vertically. Frost figured his saucer could serve both purposes.

The Avrocar, however, didn’t even come close to expectations. After the U.S. took over the project in 1958, Avro produced two prototypes. One went off to NASA, where it proved too aerodynamically unstable to pass a wind tunnel test. The other underwent flight tests, which were just about as disastrous: The saucer would pitch and roll if it got any more than 3 feet off the ground, and had a top speed of only 35 miles per hour. The project ended in 1961.

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The term “flying saucer” may come from a misquote.

Kenneth Arnold is widely credited with sparking the public’s fascination with flying saucers thanks to a series of media reports about his famous UFO sighting — the first of which described a “saucer-like aircraft.” But Arnold maintained that the objects he saw were more crescent-shaped, and claimed he told journalists that they flew like saucers skipping on the water. However, some early articles quote him using words such as “disk” and “pie-pan” to describe the craft, so it’s unclear whether he was misquoted at the time or revised his story later.

Only two Americans have been generals in three different wars.

  • Winfield Scott (left) and Douglas MacArthur (right)
Winfield Scott (left) and Douglas MacArthur (right)
Credit: (left) GL Archive/ Alamy Stock Photo; (right) Bettmann via Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine
June 18, 2025

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Not for nothing was Winfield Scott known as the Grand Old Man of the Army. He spent more than half a century in the U.S. military, and was so committed to proper decorum that he also earned the nickname “Old Fuss and Feathers.” Along with Douglas MacArthur after him, he holds the distinction of being a U.S. general in three different wars. Scott’s tenure included the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and the Civil War, while MacArthur served in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War.

Scott was in his 70s by the time the Civil War broke out, but still served as the commanding general for the Union Army during the first seven months of the conflict; he also clashed with Abraham Lincoln on several issues, including the overall strategy for the war. Old Fuss and Feathers later sent a copy of his memoirs to Ulysses S. Grant with the inscription, “From the oldest to the greatest general.” Eighty years later, on December 18, 1944, MacArthur achieved the five-star rank of General of the Army — a title only four others, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, have held.

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Douglas MacArthur received 18 different medals.

As one of the most distinguished generals in United States history, MacArthur had quite the list of medals. He received 18 honors, including the highest of them all: the Medal of Honor, for which he was nominated three times and finally received for his World War II service in the Philippines. That distinction ran in the family, as his father, Arthur MacArthur Jr., received it during the Civil War. (The only other father and son to be similarly honored were Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt Jr.) MacArthur’s ribbon rack also included three Distinguished Service Crosses (the Army’s second-highest honor), five Army Distinguished Service Medals, the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, seven Silver Stars, the Distinguished Flying Cross, a Bronze Star, an Air Medal, and two Purple Hearts.

Women wore dresses made of flour sacks during the Depression.

  • Feedsack dresses
Feedsack dresses
Credit: PF-(bygone1)/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
February 14, 2024

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The first mass-produced flour sacks were made of rough fabric that rural families repurposed as rags and towels. But once the bags became available in tighter weaves, frugal homemakers altered them into everything from underwear to curtains, and even dresses. As the flour sacks also held commodities such as sugar and animal feed, these homespun outfits became known as feedsack dresses. 

For many families, disposable income was scarce, and the durable fabric from food sacks offered a rare opportunity for new clothing. To hide any sign of poverty, home sewers soaked off labels, dyed the fabric, and added embellishments. Eventually, distributors noticed the second life their bags were getting and saw an opportunity to make their products stand out. By 1925, Gingham Girl Flour offered bags in a variety of colors with labels that were easy to wash off, and the Textile Bag Manufacturers Association published a how-to book on sewing dresses from flour sacks. As even more households made use of feedsack dresses during the extra-frugal years of the Great Depression, other brands followed suit. One flour sack manufacturer even started offering “Tint-Sax” in a variety of pastel colors. Floral flour sacks were all the rage.

Demand for inexpensive textiles remained high throughout World War II, and wartime rations put strict limitations on ready-made women’s clothing. Because cotton was restricted to military and industrial use, cloth from flour bags was among the only material available for homemade clothes. Suddenly, sewing with sacks became a mainstream, patriotic act, and women would buy, sell, and swap bags with neighbors. Department stores such as Macy’s even began stocking fashions made from sacks. In the 1950s, bags came in even more fabrics and styles, including denim and Disney prints, and trade groups held sewing contests to keep up interest — one second-place dress from 1959 is even part of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History collection. By the 1960s, however, interest in feedsack dresses started to wane, and manufacturers increasingly packed flour and sugar in paper bags instead.

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Women drew stockings on their legs during World War II.

Wartime fabric rationing affected all aspects of women’s fashion in the 1940s, including hosiery — or the lack thereof. Durable, stretchy nylon stockings had only recently replaced delicate, uncomfortable silk ones in most American women’s wardrobes when they were pulled from production in favor of nylon parachutes and rope. In response, women started applying foundation to their legs to give a nylon-like effect, and brands sold “liquid stockings” for this exact purpose. Some women even completed the illusion with a false backseam drawn on in eyeliner or eyebrow pencil.

Some ancient Greek statues smelled like roses.

  • Greek sculpture of a nereid
Greek sculpture of a nereid
Credit: Adam Eastland/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
June 18, 2025

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Ancient Greek and Roman statues are still awe-inspiring thousands of years later — arguably even more so because of their age. Still, the pieces that have survived the test of time didn’t do so with all their colors, extremities, accessories, or, it turns out, smells intact. 

Ancient sculptors used a variety of oils, waxes, flowers, and herbs to add olfactory dimension to their work, and roses were an especially popular fragrance. A 2025 study published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology shined a light on the practice, but ancient texts by the likes of Cicero, Pliny the Elder, and others also mention perfuming statues of deities and rulers. The ancient Greek scholar Callimachus once noted, for instance, that a statue of Egyptian Queen Berenice II was “still wet with perfume.”

In a practice they called kosmesis, ancient Greeks would lavishly adorn statues of deities with jewelry, textiles, and oils as a part of religious observances, and perfuming was often included in this ritual. In the Delian temples on the Greek island of Delos, worshippers used a perfume called myron rhodion, made from oil, rushes, and rose petals. Some statues’ smells came from garlands of fresh flowers. Other scents came as a result of normal maintenance, since people would preserve statues by rubbing them in wax and oil, sometimes with pungent additives such as spikenard (aka muskroot). Scent held deep significance in the lives of ancient Greeks and Romans, from the perfume they adorned themselves with to the smells of animal sacrifices sent up to the gods — so it only follows that their works of art would integrate smell as well.

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A 1980s action figure was infused with patchouli oil.

Strawberry Shortcake dolls are probably the best-known scented toy from the 1980s. But while those were meant to smell sweet, a notorious action figure that hit shelves in 1985 was precisely the opposite. Stinkor was a He-Man character whose superpower was emitting a foul odor. Mattel released a Stinkor action figure made from preexisting toy molds, but with a key difference: The company mixed patchouli oil directly into the plastic. The effect was so powerful that at least as of 2013, surviving Stinkor toys were reportedly still malodorous. 

The British trained seagulls to find enemy submarines in WWI.

  • Print of a seagull, 1881
Print of a seagull, 1881
Credit: Bildagentur-online/ Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine
February 6, 2024

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Anyone who’s ever brought food to the beach knows that seagulls are exceptional hunters when they want to be, a skill the British put to the test when they trained the scavenging seabirds to detect German submarines during World War I. This began in 1917, with Britain’s Board of Invention and Research living up to its name by setting up a fake periscope that would feed wild gulls. If all went well, their thinking went, the birds would associate the sight of a periscope peeking above the water with a tasty meal — and any British sailors who spotted a flock of seagulls hovering above what appeared to be empty water would know there was a U-boat in their midst.

It didn’t work, alas, as the birds knew no masters but themselves. A few soldiers had trouble abandoning the plan, however. One admiral tried a different approach by teaching the seagulls to defecate on the submarine’s periscopes and blind the crew within, while the U.S. military considered its own version of the idea involving hand-raised birds from Lake Michigan, though neither effort moved forward. Seagulls are resourceful creatures, but it seems they’re more motivated to dive-bomb loose fries than enemy watercraft.

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Seagulls can drink fresh water and salt water.

Not unlike certain other seabirds — including pelicans, penguins, and albatrosses — seagulls can drink both fresh water and salt water. They’re able to do so thanks to a desalination filter that begins in their bills and ends in a salt gland above their eyes, which allows the crafty birds to excrete the salt through their nostrils — often by shaking their head. Though highly efficient, this filtration system can atrophy if it goes unused. Seabirds at wildlife rehab centers and zoos are often kept in salt water with this in mind, as it ensures their glands will stay in good condition and prevent saltwater poisoning if and when they’re returned to the wild.

The shortest reign of any monarch lasted just 20 minutes. 

  • Louis XIX of France
Louis XIX of France
Credit: Marshall Ikonography/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine
March 7, 2024

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King Louis XIX of France holds an unfortunate record: the shortest reign of any monarch in history. Born Louis Antoine in 1775, he was technically king of France for a mere 20 minutes in 1830 following the abdication of his father, Charles X, during the July Revolution. The dauphin abdicated his right to the throne in the same document, which he signed 20 minutes after his father. (Legitimists — supporters of the Bourbon dynasty — didn’t accept this, and considered him the rightful king for the rest of his life.) On the other end of the world-record spectrum is Sobhuza II, whose 82 years and 253 days as both paramount chief and king of Swaziland make up the longest verified reign of any monarch in recorded history.

Some consider Louis XIX’s record to be a shared one, however. Luís Filipe, prince royal of Portugal, was fatally wounded in the same attack that killed his father, King Carlos I, on February 1, 1908, but survived 20 minutes longer. The 20-year-old was technically king for those few minutes, though he was never formally declared ruler. His younger brother Manuel II became the last king of Portugal on that fateful day instead. His reign wasn’t especially long, either: Portugal became a republic as a result of the October 5, 1910, revolution, and Manuel spent the remainder of his life exiled in England.

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Richard Nixon was descended from royalty.

America was founded in part to oppose the system of monarchy, but some of its leaders were still descended from royalty. Richard Nixon, for example, is believed to have counted King Edward III of England among his ancestors on his maternal grandfather’s side; what’s more, he was named for King Richard “the Lionheart.” The legacy of the 37th U.S. president is largely defined by its disgraceful end — Nixon ultimately chose to resign in August 1974 rather than face impeachment for his involvement in the Watergate scandal — but before that, he was a political force who seemed poised to live up to his lineage. Nixon was hardly the only president with royal roots, however; it’s believed that Edward I (1239-1307) was the forefather of 14 different commanders in chief, including George Washington.

Ancient Greeks invented an alarm clock that used flowing water.

  • Clepsydra water clock
Clepsydra water clock
Credit: Chronicle/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
February 6, 2024

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Thousands of years before mechanical timepieces existed, as far back as the 16th century BCE, water clocks were among the most accurate ways to tell time. These early clocks controlled the flow of water from one container to another in order to measure the passage of time with remarkable precision — and unlike sundials, they could be used at night. Civilizations all over the world used water clocks, but the ancient Greeks in particular were known for improving the mechanism with a timepiece they called “klepsydra,” or “water thief.” 

The philosopher Plato is credited with one particularly ahead-of-its-time innovation: In the fourth century BCE, he built a set of klepsydra alarm clocks meant to rouse the students at his academy. The clocks had two basins, one emptying into the other, and would run throughout the night. When the second basin filled with water in the morning, it would trigger a sound. One of the clocks had a container that made a whistling sound when air was forced out of it. Another had pebbles rigged over the second tank that would fall and rattle when it was full. Aristotle was a student at Plato’s academy, so it’s possible he was roused by these very clocks. In the third century BCE, Greek inventor Ctesibius of Alexandria took the design a step further. He added a top tank with an overflow valve that allowed a lower tank to rise to keep time, making little noises on the way up like a cuckoo clock.

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Galileo used a water clock for scientific measurements.

Italian scientist Galileo Galilei lived a couple hundred years after mechanical clocks were invented, but when he was conducting experiments on rates of acceleration, he relied on the accuracy of his water clock. He would time balls rolling down an inclined plane by allowing water to flow into a container, then weigh the water to compare different time measurements. At the time, mechanical clocks were far less accurate than they are today, and the water clock helped Galileo ensure he was comparing the time each ball took to roll down the incline as precisely as possible.

The founder of Fender didn’t know how to play guitar.

  • Fender Stratocaster
Fender Stratocaster
Credit: Jesse Wild/Guitarist Magazine/ Future via Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine
June 18, 2025

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Just because Leo Fender founded one of the most famous guitar companies in the world doesn’t mean he could play the instrument himself. His own musical ability didn’t extend beyond a few piano lessons and a little bit of saxophone; according to some, he couldn’t even tune a guitar. His prowess for creating instruments was rooted in a passion for electronics, and he opened a radio repair store in 1938 when he was 29 years old. Eight years later, Fender Manufacturing (later the Fender Electric Instrument Co.) was born, though it seems that building guitars never inspired the founder to pick one up and play the first few notes of “Stairway to Heaven.”

Described as “a strange man in a way” by business partner Dan Randall, Fender had “a fetish for machinery,” as Randall put it. It was clearly successful: The Stratocaster, introduced in 1954, has sold millions of units and been played by such legendary guitarists as Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Holly, Eddie Van Halen, George Harrison, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Kurt Cobain, just to name a few. It remains practically synonymous with the electric guitar — even though its namesake couldn’t play.

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The guitar solo in “Stairway to Heaven” was improvised.

Jimmy Page’s 50-second display of pure virtuosity during Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” has been voted the best guitar solo of all time, a bravura composition courtesy of his 1959 Fender Telecaster — only it was hardly composed at all. “The solo sounds constructed — and it is, sort of, but purely of the moment,” Page told Rolling Stone in 2008. “For me, a solo is something where you just fly, but within the context of the song.” He recorded three takes of the solo, all three of which were different from one another, and chose the one he liked the most for the album.

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