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In WWI, France started to build a fake Paris to confuse German bombers.

Gare de l'Est in Paris
Bill Perry/ Shutterstock
Author Darren Orf
September 10, 2026

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Just after noon on August 30, 1914, about a month into World War I, a biplane marked with the German iron cross under its wings flew 6,000 feet above France’s capital city. Soon, to the surprise of Parisians below, four explosions rocked the city as the German pilot dropped bombs, by hand, in the world’s first aerial raid on a national capital. As an increasing number of attacks came from German planes (as well as the first wartime Zeppelins), Parisians decided to take drastic action. In late 1917, engineers commissioned by the French government began creating a fake Paris just outside the capital in an effort to fool the German air force. 

The project was led by Fernand Jacopozzi, who famously illuminated the Eiffel Tower and Champs-Élysées years later. One of the first re-creations was the Gare de l’Est railway station, which was a victim of Germany’s first bombing raid four years prior. Jacopozzi used creative electrical lighting and wooden boards on a conveyor belt to even simulate moving trains. He also crafted factory rooftops, fabricated from painted canvas, to simulate the manufacturing center of France’s war effort. However, by November 1918, the war was over, and the faux city was never completed, nor did it ever divert any German ordnance. Still, the idea proved to be a good one: Decades later during the Second World War, the U.S. employed Hollywood set designers to create fake West Coast neighborhoods to camouflage military factories from Japanese air raids. 

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Mapmakers sometimes insert fake streets to catch plagiarists.

Cartography is a meticulous and time-consuming process, so it’s only reasonable that mapmakers would want to leave behind a hidden watermark of sorts to protect their work. Many cartographers have included fictitious streets (and sometimes entire towns) in their maps as a way to trick copycats. These are known broadly as “trap streets” — the idea being, if another map copies your fake street, you’ve “trapped” them with copyright infringement. One of the first known instances of trap streets occurred in the 1980s when the publisher of a Los Angeles guidebook admitted to sprinkling in nonexistent streets in its maps. As recently as 2009, Google Maps even displayed an entirely fictitious English town called “Argleton” in West Lancashire, which is actually just an empty field.

The Beatles’ final concert lost money.

Reproduction of tickets from the Beatles' last concert, 1966
Credit: © Zuma Press Inc./Alamy
Author Nicole Villeneuve
September 11, 2026

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In the 1960s, the Beatles went from playing small Liverpool clubs to performing for tens of thousands of screaming fans in the span of just a few years. But by 1966, Beatlemania was starting to show some cracks. That year, on August 29, the Fab Four played their final ticketed concert. The show, while historic, wasn’t exactly a triumph: Thousands of seats at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park stadium were empty, and the promoter ended up losing money on the event.

Years of relentless touring had taken a toll on the band, and unruly crowds and backlash to John Lennon’s “more popular than Jesus” comment were making life on the road increasingly difficult. While the Beatles were still enormously popular, ticket demand had eased compared to their American shows the year prior. That night, the Beatles played to an audience of about 25,000, leaving thousands of seats unsold at the 42,500-capacity venue. Local company Tempo Productions handled the concert, and low ticket sales, the Beatles’ substantial performance fee, and other unexpected expenses — including hiring an orchestra to satisfy the local musicians’ union — left the company with a loss.

Fans may not have known how historic that night would be, but the band certainly had an idea. Paul McCartney asked the group’s publicist to record the performance, and he and Lennon brought a camera onstage to capture snaps of their bandmates and the crowd. After that night, the Beatles stopped touring and devoted their time to studio recording. They would perform together one more time, rather unexpectedly, on the Apple Corps rooftop in London in 1969, but Candlestick Park was the end of their official touring career.

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It took about 10 years for Woodstock’s organizers to break even.

Woodstock is remembered as one of the most successful music festivals in history, but financially, the famous 1969 event was hardly a hit. Organizers had expected roughly 50,000 people and, along with some presold tickets, planned to charge admission at the site. But when hundreds of thousands of people arrived and the festival grounds couldn’t be properly fenced, it became a free concert. The organizers spent nearly $3.1 million (just over $28 million today) on the festival but made only about $1.8 million in revenue. According to John Roberts, one of the festival’s organizers, it took until 1980 to break even, thanks in large part to the popular documentary and soundtrack albums from the festival.

Mary Poppins’ ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’ was inspired by the polio vaccine.

"Mary Poppins" scene, 1964
Allstar Picture Library Ltd/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine
September 10, 2026

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When inspiration strikes, you have to just go with it — no matter how unexpected the circumstances. Few knew that better than Robert B. Sherman, who, along with his brother Richard, made up one of the best-known songwriting duos in Hollywood history. In addition to The Jungle Book, The Sword in the Stone, and other Disney classics, they collaborated on 1964’s Mary Poppins — including the song “A Spoonful of Sugar,” which was inspired by the polio vaccine. This was recounted by Robert’s son Jeffrey, who in late 2020 shared his story of receiving the vaccine as a child. When asked whether it hurt, Jeffrey told his father, “They put it on a sugar cube and you just ate it. He stared at me, then went to the phone and called my uncle Dick.”

Robert recalled the incident similarly: “I realized at the moment that I had the spark of a winning song,” he wrote in his autobiography Moose: Chapters From My Life. “I couldn’t sleep all night. The lyric mulled around in my mind. The next day, at work, I showed up half an hour earlier than usual so that I could pop the idea on my brother.” Created by virologist Jonas Salk, the polio vaccine (originally administered as a shot) was released in 1955, after which Salk was hailed as a miracle worker and refused to patent it. An oral vaccine, the type Jeffrey Sherman received, was developed later by biomedical scientist Albert Sabin. Within 25 years, the polio vaccine eliminated transmission of the disease in the United States.

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Julie Andrews wasn’t the first choice to play Mary Poppins.

Despite giving one of the best-known performances in film history, Julie Andrews wasn’t who the studio had in mind as the iconic musical’s title character. Both Walt Disney and Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers had Bette Davis as their top choice — understandable, given that the two-time Oscar winner (and the first actor to receive a total of 10 nominations) was essentially Hollywood royalty. Angela Lansbury was considered as well. That changed when Robert B. Sherman, who co-wrote the movie’s songs, saw Andrews on TV one night in 1962. “Before she finished her first song, I knew that Julie was the one,” he recalled later. “My brother, Dick, agreed. The next day, we learned that Walt and half the studio had the same idea we did.” Andrews went on to win an Academy Award of her own for the role.

One of the first TV remotes changed the channel with sound.

Zenith Space Command remote
Credit: © Darkened Studio/Alamy
Author Michael Nordine
September 11, 2026

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Changing the channel is easier than ever these days: You can use any number of newfangled remotes, some of which are on your phone and others that are controlled by voice. Back when your parents or grandparents had to walk uphill both ways to school, however, the clicker worked differently: with sound. 

Following a series of inconvenient, highly expensive predecessors, Zenith introduced its Space Command remote control in 1956. With an appropriately futuristic look and just four buttons — “channel lower,” “volume,” “off-on,” and “channel higher” — it operated via tiny hammers hitting aluminum rods that rang at different frequencies corresponding with the command. Pressing those heavy buttons produced a clicking sound, hence the nickname, and triggered a response from small, specialized microphones inside the television.

Space Command didn’t require batteries or any kind of charging, as it was entirely mechanical rather than electronic. Zenith marketed the device with slogans such as “Nothing between you and the set but space!” and “Is it magic? It’s like nothing you have ever seen before — anywhere!” 

The sounds produced by the Space Command hammers were too high a frequency for human ears to sense, though cats and dogs could hear them. The remote’s main design flaw was that high-pitched sounds from other sources (even jingling keys) could inadvertently change the channel or lower the volume. Even so, ultrasound remotes remained popular until the 1980s, when they were replaced by infrared remotes.

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Nikola Tesla demonstrated the first remote control in 1898.

Madison Square Garden has hosted countless historic events throughout its storied history — Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to John F. Kennedy, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier’s “Fight of the Century” — but few had as much impact on our daily lives as one staged by Nikola Tesla at the tail end of the 19th century. The event took place during the Electrical Exhibition of 1898 and saw the inventor show off his patent with a bit of trickery. Before revealing that he was operating a torpedo boat via the world’s first remote control, Tesla had the audience shout commands at the boat and allowed them to think mind control was involved. Tesla later wrote that the scene caused “a sensation such as no other invention of mine has ever produced.”

The Greek philosopher Pythagoras was terrified of beans.

Ripened fava bean
Nazar Nazaruk/ iStock
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
September 10, 2026

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Pythagoras, the namesake of the Pythagorean theorem, was a highly influential early Greek philosopher, and a major inspiration for the likes of Aristotle and Plato. He was also a notorious hater of beans — specifically fava beans, also known as broad beans — and he strictly forbade his followers, the Pythagoreans, from coming into contact with them. Legend has it that a group of Pythagoreans (or in some versions, Pythagoras himself) was running from an enemy when they came upon a blooming fava field. Rather than step foot into the stalks, they turned to face their attackers. Most of them were killed.

Pythagoras didn’t leave any known, verifiable writing behind, and his followers were famously tight-lipped, so it can be difficult to know exactly why he hated these legumes. But according to works published after his death by Aristotle and others, there were several possible reasons. One was the bean’s supposed similarity to genitalia; according to his biographers, the philosopher associated beans closely with reproduction and the human soul. The fourth-century BCE philosopher Heraclides Ponticus quoted Pythagoras as saying, “Eating beans and eating the head of one’s parents are the same thing.” And Aristotle quoted him as saying that fava plants “are like the gates of Hades,” possibly related to the belief that souls literally emerged from the underworld through bean blossoms. The philosopher reportedly found the flatulence they caused distracting, too.

To be fair to Pythagoras, there may have been a very good reason to eschew beans. Eating raw fava beans or coming close to a blooming fava plant can cause severe illness and even death in a small number of people with a specific genetic disorder called favism. Scientists traced a type of this condition to the Mediterranean, which would include ancient Greece and other societies that approached the fava bean with caution, including Rome and Egypt.

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Fava beans are one of the oldest cultivated crops in the world.

Despite their sketchy reputation in the ancient Mediterranean, fava beans have been a staple crop for thousands of years. In what’s now northern Israel, researchers found some well-preserved (but slightly charred) domesticated fava beans and carbon-dated them to more than 10,000 years ago. That means that Neolithic people in the area may have farmed beans even before grains such as wheat and barley. 

Stone Age people ate fish roe.

Caviar on a spoon
Credit: © Burke/Triolo Productions—The Image Bank/Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine
September 11, 2026

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There is truly nothing new under the sun, including one of the culinary world’s foremost delicacies: fish eggs. People have been eating a food similar to caviar — the cured, unfertilized eggs of sturgeon — since the Stone Age, with research suggesting that our ancient ancestors first began enjoying it 6,000 years ago. (True caviar is salt-cured and comes exclusively from sturgeon, with eggs from other fish being known more generally as roe.) 

The evidence comes from Friesack 4, an archaeological site in Brandenburg, Germany, where protein analysis found traces of carp roe on a clay cooking vessel. It’s believed that our ancestors prepared their roe by gathering fresh eggs and dropping them into a pot of either boiling water or fish broth before covering the pot with leaves — either to trap heat, add another flavor to their concoction, or both. The result might not catch as high a price as caviar does today but still demonstrates that humans have always had a taste for the finer things in life.

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Female sturgeon may live for more than 400 years.

For decades, we mere humans thought that sturgeon could live for around 150 years. That’s already an impressive lifespan, but it turns out we might have been underestimating them by several centuries. Research published in spring 2026 by the Michigan and Wisconsin Departments of Natural Resources, Michigan State University, and Michigan Technological University found that sturgeon native to the Great Lakes region may live longer than 400 years, though females are especially long-lived.

Ed Baker, the study’s lead author, said that males can live for up to 279 years and females for as long as 427 years. A sturgeon’s age is estimated by counting growth rings in its ear bones, which is apparently the source of the original miscalculation: The new study found that their growth slows as they age, making those rings blend together.

Apple pie isn’t from America.

Homemade apple pie
Wut_Moppie/ Shutterstock
Author Nicole Villeneuve
September 10, 2026

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Apple pie has long been emblematic of wholesome Americana. There’s even a saying tying the dessert to U.S. culture: “as American as apple pie.” But the classic treat actually originated across the ocean, in 14th-century England. The first known record of an apple pie recipe was in The Forme of Cury, an English cookbook compiled around 1390 by King Richard II’s cooks. The recipe calls for apples, figs, raisins, pears, and spices, but unlike the dessert we know today, it didn’t call for any additional sugar. All of the ingredients were to be baked inside a hard, lard-based shell called a “coffin,” meant to be a container, not a golden, flaky crust. 

Eventually, apple pie made its way to America with European settlers; the first recorded mention of the dessert in the U.S. was in a 1697 diary. By the late 1700s, multiple updated recipes were included in America’s first known cookbook, American Cookery. By the early 1800s, American farmers were growing thousands of apple varieties. Apple pie continued to gain popularity through the 19th century, but it didn’t become a cultural icon until the 20th century. As early as 1902, a New York Times editorial called it a symbol of American prosperity, and by the 1920s, “as American as apple pie” started to appear in print. The dessert’s position as a meaningful part of American culture was all but cemented during World War II, when soldiers proudly declared that they enlisted for “mom and apple pie.” 

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Johnny Appleseed was a successful entrepreneur.

John Chapman, the real-life figure behind the legend of Johnny Appleseed, was not just a wandering folk hero, but by all accounts an astute businessman and successful entrepreneur. As a young man in the late 1700s and early 1800s, he ventured west to strategically plant apple trees across America’s frontier, from western Pennsylvania through central Ohio and into Indiana. Chapman often stayed just ahead of settlers, cultivating nurseries and orchards, then selling them off when settlers arrived. It’s believed he resourcefully acquired his seeds from cider presses — at the time, apples were primarily grown for producing alcoholic cider, a major part of frontier life. Most accounts of Chapman describe him as traveling barefoot, in a burlap sack, and with a tin pot for a hat. Despite his modest life, it’s believed that when he died in 1845, Chapman still owned many properties himself, and was a wealthy man.

Handkerchiefs were once considered a status symbol.

Women waving handkerchiefs, 1882
Credit: Bettmann via Getty Images
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
September 3, 2026

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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.

There were once riots over wearing straw hats past summer.

Crowd in New York City with men wearing straw hats
Credit: © Hum Images/Alamy
Author Michael Nordine
September 2, 2026

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In the early 20th century, weather was celebrated with, and heralded by, hats. In the U.S., May 15 (or thereabouts) was Straw Hat Day, when people cheered the arrival of warm weather with light, airy headwear. Felt Hat Day, meanwhile, came on or around September 15, in anticipation of looming cold weather. 

Not everyone played by these rules, however, and in 1921 the Pittsburgh Stock Exchange went so far as to declare that “straw hats may be worn with all the propriety and dignity attached thereto until and including Oct. 1.” 

Alas, this flouting of the natural order was not without consequence. Unwritten rules are still rules, and any number of self-styled enforcers took to the streets to ensure that no one was committing this most grievous of fashion faux pas. This resulted, most (in)famously, in a September 1922 riot in New York City. 

“Gangs of young hoodlums ran riot in various parts of the city last night, smashing unseasonable straw hats and trampling them in the street,” a New York Times article dated September 16 reported. “In some cases, mobs of hundreds of boys and young men terrorized whole blocks.” A mob of as many as 1,000 made their way throughout the city, some armed with nail-tipped sticks, eventually running into a group of dock workers who fought back; the ensuing melee shut down the Manhattan Bridge.

Another Times article insisted that “the inalienable right of a man to wear a straw hat in a snowstorm, if he desires, is to be upheld in this city by both police and the Magistrates, and a warning was sent broadcast to all straw hat smashers last night that jail terms on assault charges awaited them if they started any such carnival today.” Perhaps fortunately for all involved, straw hats fell out of fashion in the following years.

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People once rioted over which Shakespeare actor was better for Macbeth.

Edwin Forrest and William Charles Macready were among the most notable actors of their day, celebrated for their Shakespearean performances in the 1840s. Sharing which of two fine thespians you prefer would normally be a friendly debate, but on May 10, 1849, it turned violent — and deadly. The Astor Place riot was, like a lot of conflicts, based on more than just those surface tensions: Forrest, an American, was a hero of the working class; Macready, an Englishman, was hailed by the wealthy, literary elite.

Macready was scheduled to play Macbeth in the Scottish Play at New York City’s Astor Place Opera House when thousands of Forrest’s most ardent admirers descended upon the venue to voice their displeasure. They’d been encouraged to do so by an inflammatory handbill asking “working men” whether “Americans or English rule in this city.” The situation quickly got out of hand, leading to more than 120 injuries and at least 22 deaths. Macready struggled through his performance, fled the theater as soon as it was over, and never performed in America again.

There was a WWII factory hidden beneath a fake American neighborhood.

Boeing B-17A Flying Fortress, circa 1945
Credit: © De Luan/Alamy
Author Bess Lovejoy
September 2, 2026

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During World War II, pilots flying over Seattle might have spotted a quiet neighborhood near the Duwamish River with tree-lined streets winding past modest houses, tidy lawns, parked cars, and backyard fences. But no one lived there. The entire community was a stage set concealing one of the most important aircraft factories in the United States.

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, fears of another aerial assault spread along the West Coast. Boeing’s Plant 2 was considered a particularly valuable target. Thousands of workers there were building B-17 Flying Fortresses — which became essential to the Allied bombing campaign in Europe — as well as the first B-29 Superfortresses, designed for the long-range Pacific campaigns.

To disguise the plant, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers covered its roof with an elaborate camouflage village sometimes called “Boeing Wonderland.” The ground was fashioned from burlap, canvas, and chicken wire, while lawns and trees were made from chicken feathers and spun glass. The neighborhood even had at least two whimsically appropriate road names: Synthetic Street and Burlap Boulevard.

Hollywood art director John Stewart Detlie (known for classic 1930s musicals) helped apply movie set techniques to the project, which was finished in 1944. From high overhead, the factory appeared to blend into Seattle’s residential landscape, although the pastoral neighborhood may have looked slightly out of place amid the surrounding industrial buildings. Below the scenery, tens of thousands of men and women worked around the clock, turning out hundreds of bombers each month. During breaks, they could stroll the fake streets on the plant’s roof.

Enemy planes never reached Seattle, so the camouflage was never put to the test. It was removed after the war, but Plant 2 continued operating for decades, contributing to the development of the B-47, the B-52, and the early 737. The factory was eventually demolished beginning in 2010, and part of its former site was restored as wetland along the Duwamish River.

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A Lockheed factory was also hidden under a fake neighborhood designed by Hollywood.

Boeing wasn’t the only aircraft manufacturer to conceal a factory beneath suburban-style scenery. After the Pearl Harbor attacks in December 1941, the U.S. Army disguised Lockheed’s strategically important plant in Burbank, California, using canopies of chicken wire, netting, and painted canvas. Fake houses, fields, and trees made from spray-painted chicken feathers helped transform the industrial complex into an ordinary-looking neighborhood, with the help of artists, set designers, and painters from nearby movie studios including Disney, Paramount, and 20th Century Fox. Lockheed employees even helped maintain the illusion by hanging laundry outside burlap bungalows during their breaks.

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