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Pocahontas’ real name was Matoax.

  • Engraving depicting Pocahontas
Engraving depicting Pocahontas
Credit: © traveler1116—DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images
Author Bennett Kleinman
June 11, 2026

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Though best known by the moniker Pocahontas, the woman who became one of the most famous Indigenous figures in American history was originally given two different names. 

She was born around 1596 to the Powhatan people of modern-day Virginia, who believed children should be given both a public-facing name and a private family name. Her public birth name was Amonute (the meaning of which is unknown), as recorded in the writings of English colonist William Strachey. Her private name was Matoax, sometimes written as Matoaka or Matoa. The meaning of this name also remains a mystery.

But she was also known to her people by the nickname “Pocahontas,” which roughly translates to “mischievous one” or “little wanton,” perhaps inspired by her playful demeanor. When English settlers arrived in 1607, the girl’s family kept both her formal names secret, based on a cultural superstition that anyone who learned your true name could cast a malicious spell on it. She was only known to the English (at least initially) as Pocahontas — a name she lived up to, as she was known to visit the English fort and cartwheel with the young boys.

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Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin were born with different names.

Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin are among the three most recognizable names in Soviet history, yet none of these were their names at birth. The three revolutionaries assumed pseudonyms in the early 20th century to protect themselves against the tsarist police force, and the aliases later became famous.

Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, adopting his pseudonym around 1901 while in political exile. Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein, but changed his surname in 1902, forging a passport with the name of the head jailer from the Odessa prison where he had been held. Stalin was born Ioseb Dzhugashvili, choosing his pseudonym in 1912 from the Russian stal, meaning “steel,” to portray strength.

People hated shopping carts when they were invented in 1937.

  • Woman shopping in grocery store with cart
Woman shopping in grocery store with cart
Credit: Heritage Images/ Hulton Archive via Getty Images
Author Nicole Villeneuve
June 11, 2026

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During the Great Depression in the 1930s, most Americans were just trying to get by, and few had the luxury of coming home from the grocery store with extra items. But that didn’t stop an Oklahoma grocer from coming up with the idea of a shopping cart, an invention that started out almost as disdained as it was practical.

The man behind the idea was Sylvan N. Goldman, owner of the Humpty Dumpty grocery chain. Interested in increasing his sales, he often paid close attention to how people shopped. One thing stood out: Customers would stop shopping once their handheld baskets got too heavy. Goldman started thinking: What if there were a way for shoppers to carry more with less effort? As an experiment, he took a folding chair, added wheels to the legs, and placed a basket on the seat. He then attached a platform between the chair’s supports to hold a second basket, creating a two-tiered cart that shoppers could push.

When he rolled out these new grocery carts in 1937, he expected a runaway hit, but the reaction wasn’t exactly enthusiastic. Women, already used to pushing strollers, weren’t eager to push another one at the store. Men, on the other hand, preferred not to push something stroller-like at all. To get people on board, Goldman got creative. He hired store greeters to hand shoppers a cart, and even paid actors to walk around shopping with them. Slowly, the idea caught on, and once it did, there was no going back.

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The first modern barcode scanned at a checkout was on a pack of Wrigley’s gum.

On June 26, 1974, the first UPC barcode — featuring the Universal Product Code used today — was scanned at a supermarket checkout. This took place at a grocery store in Troy, Ohio, and the item was a package of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum. Barcodes had been in development for decades by this point — early designs included a bullseye — and that first successful scan was a high-tech milestone. However, the barcode had much more analog roots: It was first conceived of in the late 1940s as a drawing in the sand at a Miami beach. Despite these humble origins, barcodes marked the beginning of a retail revolution, making checkouts faster, improving inventory tracking, and paving the way for the modern supply chain.

Seven popes were legally married and at least 15 had children.

  • Pope Pius IX
Pope Pius IX
Credit: © ivan-96—DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine
June 7, 2026

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Celibacy has been mandatory for popes and clergy for nearly 900 years, since the Second Lateran Council took place in 1139. Before that, several heads of the Catholic Church were family men: Seven popes were married before entering the priesthood, and at least 15 had children. 

Those married pontiffs included the very first pope, St. Peter, as well as St. Felix III (who served 483-492), St. Hormisdas (514-523), St. Agatho (678-681), Adrian II (867-872), John XVII (1003), and Clement IV (1265-1268).

Even before the Second Lateran Council, though, there were plenty of rules and regulations regarding the personal lives of Catholic leaders. The Council of Elvira in 306 decreed that a priest who sleeps with his wife the night before will be defrocked, while the 325 Council of Nicaea forbade priests from living with unmarried women. 

In 385, popes were forbidden from sleeping with their wives, and in 1045 Benedict IX (who held the papacy three tumultuous times) resigned — ostensibly in order to get married, though the fact that he sold the office to his godfather complicates the story. Several popes also had children outside of marriage, including Leo XII, Clement VII, and Innocent VIII, who was the first to openly acknowledge doing so.

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Only one U.S. president never married.

Exactly one lifelong bachelor has held the office of president of the United States: James Buchanan, who served from 1857 to 1861 and never tied the knot. He was extremely close with politician William Rufus de Vane King, however, leading to nearly two centuries’ worth of speculation as to the true nature of their relationship. Four presidents were widowers by the time they took office: Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson, and Chester A. Arthur. Grover Cleveland, meanwhile, was the only president to get married in the White House.

George Washington never lived in Washington, D.C.

  • Engraving of the Samuel Osgood House
Engraving of the Samuel Osgood House
Credit: © Gado Images/Alamy
Author Michael Nordine
June 4, 2026

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There are a lot of places named after George Washington, and he never lived in any of them — including Washington, D.C., which was established as the nation’s capital shortly after he became president. (D.C. replaced Philadelphia as the capital thanks to the Residence Act, which was passed on July 16, 1790.) 

Washington, the only U.S. president who never lived in the White House, had three different residences during his two terms in office from 1789 to 1797: the Samuel Osgood House and Alexander Macomb House in New York City and the President’s House in Philadelphia. Washington did pick the location of the White House, which was built between 1791 and 1800, but John Adams was the first to move in.

“I … take the liberty of requesting the favor of you to engage lodgings for me previous to my arrival [in New York City for the inauguration],” Washington wrote in a letter to James Madison in March 1789. “On the subject of lodgings I will frankly declare, I mean to go into none but hired ones — If these cannot be had tolerably convenient … I would take rooms in the most decent Tavern …” 
The Osgood House was the solution, and Congress rented it for him for $845 a year. Washington moved to the Macomb House — which was larger and overlooked the Hudson River — once it became vacant, but lived there for only six months in 1790 before moving to the Presidential Mansion. The latter appears to have been his favorite place to hang his hat while president, as he once described the three-story brick building as “the best single house in the city.”

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George Washington lost his first election.

Before he was president, Washington served Frederick County, Virginia, in the House of Burgesses — the first democratically elected legislative body in what became the United States. He announced his intention to run for office in a 1755 letter to his brother John Augustine Washington. But he received just 40 votes in the ensuing election, losing handily to Hugh West, who received 271 votes; another candidate, Thomas Swearingen, was a close second with 270. Washington kept the poll sheet showing how everybody voted for the rest of his life.

Thanks in part to a beer-heavy campaign, the second time was the charm. Washington received 307 votes in the election taking place on July 24, 1758, enough to defeat Colonel Martin (240), the incumbent West (199), and Captain Swearingen (45).

Ancient Romans used concrete more durable than modern concrete. 

  • Trajan’s Market in Rome
Trajan's Market in Rome
Credit: Adam Eastland Art + Architecture/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
August 6, 2025

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The ancient Romans are known for many innovations that were ahead of their time, including running water and a rotating dining room. But some of the civilization’s construction work seems ahead of even our time. Case in point: Concrete used in some ancient Roman construction is much stronger than most modern concrete, surviving for millennia and getting stronger, not weaker, over time. Roman concrete endures even in seismically active regions and without reinforcement. The secret ingredient? The sea.

According to a recipe by Roman engineer Marcus Vitruvius from 30 BCE, builders mixed this ancient mortar with a combination of volcanic ash, lime, and seawater, poured it into wooden molds, then soaked it in additional seawater. This created a strong concrete suitable for dramatic structural designs. The material essentially reinforced itself over time, especially in, but not limited to, marine environments. Some 2,000-year-old sea walls, such as those lining the Italian coast, are near-indestructible, and the basic method has also kept walls in the Trajan’s Market archaeological complex standing since the second century CE.

As the ancient concrete ages, moisture dissolves volcanic ash and triggers a chemical reaction that causes small crystals to form. These crystals resemble materials that engineers add to concrete to toughen it up today, but because they develop naturally after the structure is already in place, they’re able to further bind the concrete together, particularly in porous areas that are usually weak.

Roman concrete is also more environmentally friendly than most modern cement — the key active ingredient in today’s concrete — which requires extremely high temperatures to create. The volcanic ash and similar compounds, collectively called pozzolan, bake at much lower temperatures, and the resulting crystals don’t require heat to form.

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The first reinforced concrete bridge in the U.S. is still standing.

Not all modern cement structures are crumbling. The first reinforced concrete bridge in the U.S., despite opening in 1889 in seismically active San Francisco, is still standing strong. The 29-foot Alvord Lake Bridge in Golden Gate Park was built by engineer and architect Ernest L. Ransome with a system of reinforcing steel bars that Ransome himself invented. Just a decade later, the very same system was being used to build 100-foot bridges. The Alvord Lake Bridge survived the highly destructive 1906 San Francisco earthquake with no damage, and has continued to survive every earthquake since.

Edinburgh Castle is built on an extinct volcano.

  • Edinburgh Castle in Scotland
Edinburgh Castle in Scotland
Credit: ScotStock/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
August 13, 2025

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Edinburgh Castle, where Scottish monarchs lived for hundreds of years, sits atop an imposing rock outcropping called Castle Rock. Along with the Royal Mile, a hilly thoroughfare gently sloping down one side of the castle, it’s one of Scotland’s biggest tourist attractions. But for a long time, it was just an incredibly convenient rock, from a defensive standpoint, with sheer cliffs along three sides. Ancient people started using it in the Bronze Age, and flattened its top around 900 BCE. 

What those ancient people didn’t know is that hundreds of millions of years prior, that rock was the inside of a volcano. During the Carboniferous Period, roughly 340 million years ago, the volcano went dormant (and eventually extinct) and the magma inside solidified. That left what geologists call a volcanic plug, a rock formation that’s exceptionally sturdy and erosion-resistant — the perfect eventual location for a stronghold. As glaciers shaped the Scottish landscape, the sturdy dolomite plug stood steady as most of the sedimentary rock around it eroded away. Some of the sedimentary rock on the eastern side, now the Royal Mile, was protected by the plug.

Scottish tribes built a massive fortress atop Castle Rock in the late Roman era, which traded hands among the tribes a few times and eventually expanded into a more traditional castle in the Middle Ages. Today, the earliest building still standing dates to the 12th century. 

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The Scottish Crown Jewels were forgotten in Edinburgh Castle for a century.

After Scotland and England united in 1707, the Honours of Scotland, commonly known as the Scottish Crown Jewels, were put away in a pretty logical place — locked in a chest in the Edinburgh Castle crown room — and then forgotten. Over the following century, the Honours became the stuff of legend, and one historian even wrote that “no mortal has been known to have seen them.” Finally, in 1817, King George IV gave the famed writer Sir Walter Scott and a small team permission to search the castle for the jewels. The team had to smash a few padlocks to get into the room and open the chest, but they eventually found the relics wrapped in linen, just as they’d been left.

Letters are called ‘uppercase’ and ‘lowercase’ because of how printers stored them.

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Metal printing press letters
Credit: © zlikovec—iStock/Getty Images
Author Bess Lovejoy
June 4, 2026

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When you first learned to write, it may have seemed like the terms “uppercase” and “lowercase” referred simply to the fact that the letters existed in a big or small form in different contexts. But it turns out that the “case” here doesn’t mean something akin to “circumstance” or “condition.” Instead, the word refers to a literal case — the kind typesetters used for storage.

When the printing press came along in Europe in the 15th century, the pieces of movable type — the actual letters and other characters used for printing — were kept in shallow wooden trays, also known as cases. Capital letters were stored in the top case (the upper case), while small letters were stored lower down (the lower case) for more frequent use. Each tray was divided into compartments to hold the type; the lower case also generally held the punctuation marks and other pieces of type that weren’t letters, such as spaces. 

Today, of course, nobody keeps punctuation in a wooden tray beside a hand-operated printing press, but the terms stuck around long after the cases themselves disappeared. Every time you hit the caps lock key or toggle between uppercase and lowercase on your phone, you’re using a bit of printing shop vocabulary that dates back more than 500 years.

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Typesetters used to hold races.

Before typing speed tests existed, typesetters held high-stakes races. In the late 19th century, crowds packed into theaters and dime museums to watch elite compositors — known as Swifts — compete to set tiny metal letters by hand at astonishing speeds. Their performance was measured in ems, a unit based on the width of the type’s capital letter “M.” A typical compositor might set 700 ems an hour, while champions topped 2,000. Some competitions offered cash prizes as high as $1,000 (about $30,000 today) — roughly half a year’s wages for many workers at the time. Among the era’s celebrity racers were William C. Barnes, Alex Duguid, and George “The Velocipede” Arensberg.

People used to vote by voice in colonial America.

  • Painting depicting a county election, 1854
Painting depicting a county election, 1854
Credit: The Picture Art Collection/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine
September 9, 2025

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Just because colonial Americans were subject to taxation without representation doesn’t mean they never voted. Indeed, elections were often held to select local officials and members of colonial legislatures. Rather than paper ballots, however, colonists voted by voice in a practice known as “viva voce.” This being the past and all, voting machines were centuries away from being invented, and paper ballots, despite having been around since ancient times, had yet to be widely adopted in the American colonies. So voters would gather in a public venue and announce their choice out loud for all to hear. 

Like most of the country’s early political traditions, viva voce came to America’s shores from the other side of the pond. It was the norm not only in Britain but also in the Netherlands, German provinces, and Scandinavia, eventually becoming law in six American colonies before also being adopted in Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Oregon, and Texas.

The public nature of viva voce was considered a feature rather than a bug because, as English philosopher and politician John Stuart Mill put it, “The voter is under an absolute moral obligation to consider the interest of the public, not his private advantage.” Old habits die hard, and viva voce persisted until the end of the 19th century. Fears that it was conducive to voter intimidation led to the current private ballot system, though not quickly. Five of the 33 U.S. states at the time still used viva voce in the 1850s, and nearly 10% of the votes in the 1860 presidential election won by Abraham Lincoln were cast by voice. The last holdout was Kentucky, which phased out the practice in 1891.

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Three of the original 13 colonies didn’t participate in the first presidential election.

While there was little doubt that George Washington would be America’s first president (despite he himself not being thrilled at the prospect), an election still needed to be held. That contest took place between December 15, 1788, and January 10, 1789, by which point 11 of the 13 colonies had ratified the Constitution and become states. Because North Carolina and Rhode Island had yet to do so, they weren’t involved in the election; the two states were admitted to the U.S. on November 21, 1789, and May 29, 1790, respectively. New York, meanwhile, was involved in a legislative conflict that prevented it from participating as well. Washington won easily, as he had been expected to, and did likewise in the next election — with all of the original 13 colonies plus Kentucky and Vermont taking part.

The Wright brothers’ first flight was shorter than the wingspan of a 747.

  • Wright Flyer on its first flight
Wright Flyer on its first flight
Credit: © D and S Photography Archives/Alamy
Author Michael Nordine
June 3, 2026

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Orville and Wilbur Wright changed the course of human history when they took flight on December 17, 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. But they didn’t make it very far. Orville’s maiden flight in the single-seat Wright Flyer lasted 12 seconds and covered a distance of 120 feet — shorter than the wingspan of a Boeing 747, which is between 195 and 224 feet depending on the exact model. 

The brothers took turns for their next three attempts in the aircraft (which was also known as the Kitty Hawk, Flyer I, and 1903 Flyer), reaching distances of 175 feet, 200 feet, and 852 feet, respectively, with the last of these flights lasting 59 seconds.

The Wright Flyer was simple in construction by modern standards, with a 12-horsepower engine, 40-foot wingspan, and weight of 605 pounds. The fateful day it took to the sky was the result of four years of planning, research, and development that saw many setbacks along the way — not to mention decades of inspiration. The Wright brothers first became interested in aviation in 1878, when their father gave them a rubber-band-powered toy helicopter that broke after little use but influenced them for the rest of their lives.

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The Wright brothers flipped a coin to see who would fly first.

In one of the more consequential games of chance in history, Wilbur and Orville Wright flipped a coin to see who would test their aircraft first. Wilbur actually won, but his attempt on December 14 led to a crash that required three days of repairs; Orville’s 120-foot journey was his first attempt. It was Wilbur who flew for 852 feet, however, meaning both brothers achieved something special that day in Kitty Hawk. 

‘Teenagers’ didn’t exist until the 20th century.

  • Teenage couple at soda counter, 1950s
Teenage couple at soda counter, 1950s
Credit: ClassicStock/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine
May 31, 2026

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For most of human history, you were either a child or an adult. The word “teenager” first entered the lexicon in 1913, appropriately enough, but it wasn’t until decades later that it took on its current significance. The ages spanning 13 to 19 are formative no matter what you call them, but three developments in the mid-20th century had a major influence on the creation of the modern teenager. 

The first was the move toward compulsory education, which got adolescents out of farms and factories and into high school, where they spent more time among their peers. The second was the economic boom that followed World War II, which created a new, highly sought-after demographic for companies and advertisers. And the third was the widespread adoption of cars among American families, which afforded 16-year-olds unprecedented independence.

Because one generation criticizing — and, to a certain extent, fearing — the next is a tale as old as time, not everyone was thrilled about this. In 1953, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI published a report warning that “the nation can expect an appalling increase in the number of crimes that will be committed by teenagers in the years ahead.” Two years later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower called on Congress to pass legislation that would “assist the states in dealing with this nationwide problem” during his State of the Union address. But as anyone who’s ever been told “OK, boomer,” knows, the generation gap has yet to be bridged more than half a century later.

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The New York Times once published a Teenage Bill of Rights.

As early as 1945, the issue of how to not only deal with but also understand teenagers was confounding parents. In response to this apparent crisis, the Jewish Board of Guardians met to plan a series of studies that resulted in a “Teen-Age Bill of Rights” that The New York Times saw fit to print. The 10 proposed rights were “the right to let childhood be forgotten,” “the right to a ‘say’ about his own life,” “the right to make mistakes, to find out for himself,” “the right to have rules explained, not imposed,” “the right to have fun and companions,” “the right to be at the romantic age,” “the right to a fair chance and opportunity,” “the right to question ideas,” “the right to struggle toward his own philosophy of life,” and “the right to professional help whenever necessary.” All in all, it seems a reasonable list that even the teens of today would likely welcome.

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