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The term “brunch” first appeared in 1895.

  • Family enjoying brunch, circa 1800s
Family enjoying brunch, circa 1800s
Credit: Universal History Archive/ Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Author Anne T. Donahue
January 24, 2024

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When British author Guy Beringer coined the word “brunch” in 1895, weekend dining was changed forever. In an essay for Hunter’s Weekly titled “Brunch: A Plea,” Beringer introduced the concept of a breakfast-lunch hybrid, suggesting that readers forfeit their heavy Sunday meals in favor of something lighter, served earlier in the day. The United States soon followed suit; in 1896, The New Oxford, a Pennsylvania newspaper, described the latest dining “fad” in which guests ate after 11 a.m. Initially considered an upper-class experience, brunch was largely reserved for households that had the time and resources to host guests for a leisurely midday meal.

Hollywood helped bring brunch to the mainstream in the 1930s. Movie stars taking transcontinental train trips frequently stopped in Chicago for a late-Sunday-morning bite, and hotels were happy to accommodate. Restaurants soon followed, and by 1939, The New York Times declared Sunday a “two-meal day.” The American public gladly obliged, and not only for their chance to socialize outside a church setting. While Beringer had originally advised diners to substitute tea and coffee for whiskey and beer with the meal, by the middle of the 20th century the brunch crowd was sipping on signature cocktails such as bloody marys and mimosas.

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A New York alcohol ban helped create the boozy brunch trend.

Brunch often goes hand-in-hand with drinking, but ironically, the meal’s abundance of booze can be traced back to a New York law meant to curb the consumption of alcohol. The Raines Law, passed in 1896, prohibited the sale of liquor on Sundays, but hotels were exempt if the drinks they were serving accompanied a meal. Enter: Sunday brunch. Since the Raines Law explicitly stated that lodging houses with 10 rooms or more could serve booze with meals, weekend brunch offered hotels a loophole to get around the ban. Fruity cocktails such as bloody marys, mimosas, and Bellinis became the popular drinks of choice for the late-morning meal, as the juice mixers made daytime drinking more socially acceptable. 

Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman both served as postmasters.

  • Abraham Lincoln as postmaster
Abraham Lincoln as postmaster
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Author Timothy Ott
May 15, 2025

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Abraham Lincoln and Harry S. Truman are presidents of different eras and renown, but they nevertheless share the distinction of being the only two commanders in chief to have served as a town postmaster.

For the 24-year-old Lincoln, the 1833 appointment to postmaster for New Salem, Illinois, supplied a steady pay amid uncertain times, as well as perks that included a free daily newspaper. Lincoln had already failed in a bid for a seat in the state Legislature, and the postmaster job provided an opportunity for him to develop his connections around town by way of personal delivery service, the mail usually carried in his hat. 

The job also led to an event that burnished his reputation as a man of unflagging integrity. After the New Salem post office closed in 1836, Lincoln found himself in the care of some $16 to $18 in leftover funds. When a post office agent dropped by a few months later to collect the balance, Honest Abe produced the exact coin pieces from a sock, having refused to touch the money since it fell under his watch.

Unlike Lincoln, Truman never actually undertook the responsibilities of postmaster, although his connection to the role also reflected favorably on his character. Appointed to the position for Grandview, Missouri, in December 1914, Truman immediately passed along the day-to-day tasks — and the paycheck — to a widow who needed the money to support her family. Although he owned a farm and held another job with the town, the not-yet-wealthy future president certainly missed the postmaster salary of approximately $50 per month, noting in his autobiography that it “would have paid two farmhands.”

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Abraham Lincoln also worked as a bartender (of sorts).

Immediately prior to his three-year gig as postmaster, Lincoln joined forces with his former Illinois militia companion William F. Berry to open a general store in New Salem. Such establishments could sell liquor to consume on the premises with a proper license, and Lincoln served food and booze for a few weeks before reportedly tiring of his partner's heavy-drinking ways. Although some sources gleefully name Lincoln as the only licensed bartender to become president, this claim isn't entirely accurate; the store wasn't a "bar" in the modern sense of the term, and the tavern license was only in Berry's name. That said, Lincoln certainly did dole out drinks for paying customers like a frontier version of Sam Malone from Cheers, marking a distinct chapter in his unique rise to the nation's highest office.

The world’s oldest computer is more than 2,000 years old. 

  • The Antikythera mechanism
The Antikythera mechanism
Credit: Hercules Milas/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bess Lovejoy
May 15, 2025

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When it was unearthed in 1900 among the ruins of an ancient Greco-Roman shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, the instrument now known as the Antikythera mechanism was more or less ignored. The sponge divers who brought the corroded bronze lump to the surface had no idea they had just recovered an ancient marvel now considered the world’s oldest analog computer, dating back to around 100 BCE. Indeed, they were more interested in the bronze and marble sculptures, coins, and other treasures scattered around the shipwreck. The Antikythera mechanism even broke apart (perhaps because of exposure to the air) a few months later at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, but it still took more than half a century before its remnants received sustained scholarly attention. 

In 1976, Derek J. de Solla Price, a Yale professor of history of science, published “Gears From the Greeks,” an academic text on the Antikythera mechanism based on more than 20 years of research. Price argued that the fragments of corroded bronze had once been a “calendar computer,” and explained how their complex system of gears and dials had been used to calculate the positions of the sun, moon, and planets at any day in time, past or future. The mechanism was also able to track the Egyptian and Corinthian calendars and the Olympiad cycle, calculate eclipses, and more, although some of its functions remain mysterious.

Of course, this wasn’t a computer in the digital, electronic sense; the gears were cranked by hand, and the whole thing was housed in a wooden case about the size of a mantel clock. However, the Antikythera mechanism is often referred to as an analog computer, or an extraordinarily sophisticated calculator. It was called the “most complex scientific instrument from the ancient world” by historian Alexander Jones, and nothing like it appears in the historical record for another thousand years. While scholars still debate some of its intricacies, its existence shows that ancient technology can be leaps and bounds beyond what we once imagined. 

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The Antikythera mechanism was recovered during the first major underwater archaeological dig.

In the spring of 1900, a group of Greek sponge divers returning from an expedition off North Africa took shelter from a storm near the island of Antikythera. When the sea calmed, diver Elias Stadiatis descended in search of clams, but instead discovered an ancient shipwreck. He returned to the surface shaken, describing what looked like naked bodies — broken marble statues scattered across the seabed. That autumn, the divers returned under the direction of the Greek government, working with a University of Athens professor and a Greek navy ship. Over the course of 10 months, despite dangerous conditions, they recovered dozens of marble and bronze sculptures, coins, glassware, and most remarkably, the Antikythera mechanism. The dive was the first major underwater archaeological excavation in history, but it was not without cost: One diver died and two were permanently injured due to the extreme depths and lack of modern equipment. Because of the difficult conditions, the site remained largely untouched until oceanographer Jacques Cousteau revisited it in 1953 and again in 1976, recovering hundreds more artifacts and human remains. Since 2014, the Return to Antikythera archaeological project has continued exploring the wreck, uncovering new treasures including weapons, equipment, and a large marble head of a bearded male figure thought to be part of a statue of Hercules.

The Eiffel Tower used to be painted yellow.

  • Repainting the Eiffel Tower, 1932
Repainting the Eiffel Tower, 1932
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Author Michael Nordine
May 15, 2025

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If you’ve ever wondered whether the color of the Eiffel Tower has its own name, the answer is oui: “Eiffel Tower brown,” which consists of three shades and was chosen for the way it blends into the Paris cityscape. But the iconic landmark has undergone several hue changes since the late 19th century, and was even yellow for a time. 

That makeover took place in 1899, when la tour Eiffel, as it’s called in French, received a coat of five colors that spanned from yellow-orange at its base to light yellow at the top. The structure is repainted once every seven years or so, and by 1907 it was entirely yellow-brown. In fact, between 2019 and 2022, in anticipation of the 2024 Paris Olympics, the tower was repainted with the same gold hue it had in 1907.

Other colors the Eiffel Tower has sported over the years include its original hue of Venetian red, which was applied in the workshop before the tower was actually assembled, as well as ochre-brown and brownish-red. Though most of those don’t sound as spectacular as a monument of the tower’s stature deserves, recreations of the colors suggest they were aesthetically pleasing enough for the landmark to somehow appear in the background of every cafe and hotel room in the city. 

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It takes between 18 months and three years to paint the Eiffel Tower.

At 1,083 feet tall, the Eiffel Tower is hardly diminutive. As such, all of its paint jobs have been massive undertakings that lasted anywhere from 18 months to three years. It takes longer depending on weather conditions, as painting is impossible when the tower is too cold and the paint itself doesn’t stick when the structure is wet. The process isn’t just about beatification, as an anti-rust primer in the paint prevents oxidation. About 50 specialists carry out the work using 34 miles of safety line and repaint an area of 250,000 square meters (around 2.7 million square feet).

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
Credit: J Hayward/ Alamy Stock Photo
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
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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.

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