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Apple pie isn’t from America.

  • Homemade apple pie
Homemade apple pie
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Author Nicole Villeneuve
November 8, 2023

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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.

People once used animal fat to do laundry. 

  • Woman with tub of laundry
Woman with tub of laundry
Credit: Penta Springs Limited/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine
December 20, 2024

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Most laundry detergent has ingredients you probably haven’t heard of — carboxymethyl cellulose is a common one, ditto linear alkylbenzene sulfonate — but one thing it doesn’t contain is animal fat. That hasn’t always been the case, however, as people have used fat to do laundry since ancient times. Rendered animal fat has long been present in cleaning products, a practice we only moved past fairly recently. The Mesopotamians were the first known group to produce soap, and did so with plant ashes and animal fat. 

Other ingredients in proto-detergent solutions included lye and even urine. A set of 14th-century instructions in A Medieval Home Companion explains, “If there is any spot of oil or other grease, this is the remedy: Take urine and heat it until it is warm, and soak the spot in it for two days. Then, without twisting it, squeeze out the part of the dress with the spot. If the spot is not gone … put it in other urine, beat in ox gall, and do as before.” Indeed, laundry was an intensely arduous process in medieval Europe, one that involved literally beating the dirt out of one’s clothes, and it was carried out almost exclusively by women. So next time you find yourself dreading laundry day, take solace in the fact that it’s infinitely easier than it used to be.

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The first commercial electric washing machine was called Thor.

The Norse god of thunder isn’t the only notable Thor. That was also the name of the first commercially produced electric washing machine, which the Hurley Machine Company of Chicago introduced in 1908. The brainchild of inventor Alva J. Fisher, the drum-type washer had a galvanized tub and, per the patent, the “perforated cylinder is rotatably mounted within a tub containing the wash water.” The Thor proved successful enough for the company to continue innovating for the next several decades; it even made a hybrid dishwasher-washing machine called the Automagic in the 1940s.

Yo-Yo Ma played for JFK at just 7 years old.

  • Yo-Yo Ma with cello
Yo-Yo Ma with cello
Credit: Lebrecht Music & Arts/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bennett Kleinman
December 20, 2024

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On November 29, 1962, 7-year-old cello prodigy Yo-Yo Ma performed at the D.C. National Guard Armory in front of President John F. Kennedy and other esteemed dignitaries. His appearance was part of a televised event called “An American Pageant of the Arts,” which was held to raise money for the National Cultural Center — later renamed the Kennedy Center. This arts organization was founded under Kennedy’s predecessor Dwight D. Eisenhower, who also attended the event by remote satellite from Augusta, Georgia.

The event featured acts including singer Harry Belafonte, ballerina Maria Tallchief, and Yo-Yo Ma and his 11-year-old sister, Yeou-Cheng Ma, who accompanied her brother on piano. It marked the U.S. and television debut for the cellist, who had been playing for audiences in his home nation of France since age 5. On this night, the duo was introduced by emcee Leonard Bernstein before playing a rendition of Jean-Baptiste Bréval’s “Concertino No. 3 in A Major.” The talented musical siblings were received quite favorably; both Kennedy and Eisenhower were shown on TV applauding with delight.

While this marked the first time Yo-Yo Ma performed for an American president, it wasn’t the last. The musician has played cello in front of several U.S. presidents, including at the White House for Ronald Reagan in 1987 and at a 2018 Armistice ceremony for Donald Trump. He also performed at Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration — which was attended by Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Joe Biden — and he delivered a virtual cello performance at President Biden’s 2021 inauguration.

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Abraham Lincoln frequently attended the opera.

Despite his own lack of musical skills, Abraham Lincoln was a self-professed lover of music, and attended the opera upwards of 30 times during his presidency. Lincoln attended his first opera on February 20, 1861, two weeks before his first inauguration. That night he enjoyed a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s A Masked Ball, an ominously portentous story about the assassination of a Swedish king. Though he was sometimes accompanied by his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, or friends, Lincoln enjoyed attending operas alone, and was especially fond of Faust by Charles Gounod, which he saw at least four times. Lincoln found these performances therapeutic amid the tribulations of his presidency, though according to the White House Historical Association, he was often criticized for spending so much time at the opera instead of focusing his attention on the ongoing Civil War. The 16th president defended his leisurely activities, saying, “I must have a change or I will die.”

A new ancient city was recently discovered.

  • Ancient Maya city of Calakmul
Ancient Maya city of Calakmul
Credit: Anne Lewis/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Nicole Villeneuve
December 18, 2024

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In the world of archaeology, advancements in technology have enabled discoveries that may never have happened otherwise, including that of an ancient Maya city. Located under dense jungle canopy in the southeastern Mexican state of Campeche, the lost city was rediscovered in October 2024 using lidar, a laser radar technology.

Lidar works by sending out laser light pulses from an aircraft and measuring how long they take to bounce back — not unlike how some animals use echolocation. The information helps create detailed maps of the Earth’s surface, showing things such as land shapes and structures. The site was discovered by researchers at Tulane University, but they didn’t deploy the radar themselves; they found a 2013 lidar survey of the area several pages deep into a Google search. The survey was initially done to measure carbon in Mexico’s forests, and the results had never been studied by archaeologists before. Once the research team processed the data, it was clear to them what they were looking at. 

The city, which the researchers named Valeriana after a nearby lagoon, had all the markings of a capital city. It’s thought that upwards of 50,000 people may have called Valeriana home at its peak between 750 and 850 CE — a population second only to that of Calakmul, one of the largest ancient Maya sites. The researchers determined that Valeriana was once home to pyramids, ball fields, dense housing, causeways connecting distinct districts, and amphitheaters. The exact reason for its eventual abandonment isn’t clear, but archaeologists suggest that, not unlike other Maya cities, its dense population could not be sustained when faced with challenging conditions such as drought. 

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The Maya ball game wasn’t just a sport — it was also political and spiritual.

The Maya are known for their ball game “pitz,” which was so central to their culture that some settlements, such as Chichén Itzá, had multiple courts dedicated to it. While the sport was indeed played for entertainment, it was also much more than that — it held a great deal of political and spiritual significance. Archaeologists believe the players used the trunks of their bodies to propel a heavy rubber ball to the other side of the court. The game was often played to settle conflicts and territory disputes, and captives of war could be forced to play, with the leader of the losing team sometimes being sacrificed. Pitz was also thought to symbolize the eternal struggle between life and death, light and darkness, and even the movement of celestial bodies, with the court itself serving as a connection to the underworld.

Some ancient languages have never been deciphered.

  • Examining Rosetta Stone
Examining Rosetta Stone
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Author Darren Orf
October 26, 2023

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The discovery of the Rosetta Stone — an artifact featuring an inscription written in three ancient scripts — allowed Egyptologists to translate previously unintelligible hieroglyphics into fascinating facts of history. But when it comes to understanding ancient cultures through language, Egypt is a somewhat rare case. Experts still can’t decipher dozens of ancient languages, including the script of the Rapa Nui on Easter Island, texts belonging to the Olmec and Zapotec cultures in Mesoamerica, and the tongues of some of the oldest civilizations in history. 

One such civilization is the Kingdom of Kush, which flourished in Nubia (modern-day Sudan and southern Egypt) from around 1070 BCE to 350 CE. The kingdom rivaled ancient Egypt in splendor, but scholars can’t crack its language, named Meroitic for the capital city of Meroë. Another incredible example takes us eastward to the Minoan civilization that lived on the island of Crete, a culture that predated and inspired the ancient Greeks. Linguists have yet to fully decipher the texts, written in Linear A, that survive from this once-great Mediterranean power. But perhaps the greatest missing linguistic link is the Indus Valley language, spoken by the people who lived along the Indus River in modern-day Pakistan as far back as 7000 BCE. Although it rivaled other great civilizations such as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, little is known about this early society, as its language has yet to be deciphered. Linguists hope that one day some ancient tablet, likely buried beneath the sands of Iraq or along the coast of Arabia, will contain a Rosetta Stone-like translation that finally brings to light this influential civilization whose voice has been lost to time.

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Europe’s oldest spoken language remains a linguistic mystery.

Euskara is the oldest language still spoken in Europe, and it’s also the continent’s most mysterious. Spoken by the people in Basque Country — an autonomous region in northern Spain and southwestern France — Euskara appears to have no relation to Romance and Germanic languages, which are both branches of the Indo-European language family.  This means the Basque tongue is very different from the languages spoken in the surrounding areas, such as French and Spanish. (The word for “thank you,” for example, is “gracias” in Spanish and “eskerrik asko” in Euskara.) Linguists aren’t sure where this strange tongue originated, but they do have a few guesses. One theory links Euskara with the Kartvelian languages spoken in the Caucasus region, particularly in modern-day Georgia. Other researchers suggest Euskara is a remnant of Iberian, a language spoken on the Iberian Peninsula before the arrival of the Romans in the second century BCE. Today, the Etxepare Euskal Institutua is working to promote and preserve Euskara. According to the group, the language is “vulnerable” within parts of Basque Country, but its survival is guaranteed.  

Alexander Graham Bell proposed using “ahoy” to answer the phone.

  • Old dial up telephone
Old dial up telephone
Janne Hamalainen/ Shutterstock
Author Bennett Kleinman
October 25, 2023

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“Ahoy” is an 18th-century term most commonly used as a nautical greeting, though it was nearly reappropriated as the standard greeting for answering the phone. This suggestion came from Alexander Graham Bell — the inventor of the telephone — who received a patent for the device on March 7, 1876. Bell made the first phone call to his assistant Thomas Watson three days later, speaking the historic words: “Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.” While that inaugural call lacked any special greeting, Bell proposed using “ahoy” as a suitable introduction for phone calls going forward. 

Bell’s contemporary Thomas Edison proposed an entirely different word for answering phone calls: “hello.” This relatively new term was first published in 1827, and despite its recency, Edison believed that “hello” was the perfect way to begin a phone call because it was easily distinguishable from other words. He first recommended using “hello” in an 1877 letter to the president of the Central District and Printing Telegraph Company of Pittsburgh, and the connection between “hello” and telephones only grew from there.

With both “ahoy” and “hello” as potential candidates, many early phone books accepted Edison’s suggestion, or derivations thereof. The very first phone book published — released by the Connecticut District Telephone Company in New Haven — recommended that readers begin phone calls with “a firm and cheery ‘hulloa.’” Other phone books of the time printed the term “hello” in their “how to” sections. By 1880, Bell’s “ahoy” suggestion fell by the wayside, while Edison’s “hello” was adopted as the standard.

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Alexander Graham Bell's middle name was a birthday present.

The inventor we know today as Alexander Graham Bell lacked a middle name when he was born on March 3, 1847. Christened Alexander Bell and known to his family simply as “Aleck,” the young boy spent the first 10 years of his life without a middle name, unlike his brothers Melville James Bell and Edward Charles Bell. After expressing his desire for a middle name — possibly to help differentiate himself from his father and grandfather, both of whom were named Alexander — the future inventor got his wish. On Bell’s 11th birthday, he was given permission to assume a middle name. He adopted the moniker “Graham,” taking inspiration from a temporary houseguest and former student of Bell’s father named Alexander Graham. The family admired the guest dearly, and rechristened their own son as Alexander Graham Bell in his honor.

The global population in the year 1 CE was around only 200 million.

  • Vintage books with globe
Vintage books with globe
Credit: Ruli Photography/ Shutterstock
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
December 17, 2024

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There are currently around 8 billion people living on Earth — more than quadruple the global population in 1920. But before the planet hit its first billion people at the beginning of the 19th century, population growth tended to be slower. At the beginning of the Common Era (CE) — the year 1 — Earth was home to as few as 170 million people, according to a widely cited 1978 source, Atlas of World Population History by Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones. That’s about the population of Bangladesh today. Of course, estimating a worldwide head count from 2,000 years ago isn’t an exact science; researchers suggest it could be as high as 400 million, and the United Nations typically puts the estimate at 300 million.

Around 1 CE, the world was at the tail end of a population growth cycle that started around 5000 BCE, when only about 5 million human beings roamed the Earth. Population growth then accelerated with the expansion of agriculture. According to McEvedy and Jones, the rate of growth peaked around 1000 BCE with the beginning of the Iron Age. The world population doubled between 1000 and 500 BCE, and nearly doubled between 500 BCE and 1 CE. Growth then slowed to a rate of 12% between 1 CE and 500 CE.

Population growth continued to be slow during the Middle Ages. The bubonic plague killed around 25 million people in Europe alone, and Mongol invasions in China killed around 35 million people and wiped out agricultural infrastructure. Growth rates picked back up around 1700, and continued to increase until the 1960s. While it may seem like the population is expanding at a breakneck speed, annual growth rates have actually been on the decline since then. The United Nations expects the population to stabilize around 10.4 billion and even start declining again around 2086.

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About 117 billion people have lived on Earth.

To put in perspective how much the world’s population has grown in the last few centuries: The 8 billion people alive today represent around 6.8% of all human beings who have ever existed. Around 117 billion total people have lived since Homo sapiens first appeared around 190,000 BCE. Put into the full context of the roughly 300,000 years of human history, 6.8% is a pretty huge chunk.

Dynamite was invented by the namesake of the Nobel Prize.

  • Dynamite sticks
Dynamite sticks
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Author Adam Levine
October 24, 2023

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Since its inception in 1901, the Nobel Prize has been synonymous with scientific and artistic genius. However, many people don’t realize it was named after the Swedish chemist who invented dynamite in 1867, Alfred Nobel. The powerful explosive was one of the most consequential inventions of the Industrial Revolution, transforming the way large-scale infrastructure projects such as roads, canals, and bridges were built. Dynamite was not only more potent than previous forms of explosives, but also more stable and easier to control, making it an ideal substance for efficiently blasting through mountains, earth, and other obstacles. 

The invention of dynamite and several related substances made Nobel a very wealthy man: By the time of his death in 1896, he had amassed what was at the time one of the world’s largest private fortunes. In his will, he stipulated that the majority of his personal wealth should be invested in a fund of stable securities and apportioned out every year in the form of prizes recognizing individuals who had “conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” The prizes were awarded in five categories: physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and (perhaps ironically for a man whose fortune came from explosives and weaponry) peace. The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, five years after the namesake inventor’s death. In 1968, Sweden’s central bank introduced a sixth Nobel Prize category, economics, which is now awarded annually alongside the five original categories dictated by Nobel’s will.

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Alfred Nobel had to flee France after being accused of high treason.

In 1881, Alfred Nobel purchased a large house with an adjacent laboratory in Sevran, a French village northeast of Paris, where he continued his research into ballistics and explosives. Most significantly, Nobel’s work at Sevran led to the invention of ballistite, a form of gunpowder that was nearly smokeless upon combustion. The Italian government recognized the power of ballistite and purchased a large amount of the gunpowder from Nobel for military use, but when the French government learned that Nobel, a French resident, had sold this powerful new weapons technology to a foreign military, they accused Nobel of high treason. They also implied that Nobel had developed ballistite through espionage by spying on the French military and stealing the formula for a type of gunpowder called Poudre B, another smokeless gunpowder that was developed around the same time but relied on an entirely different chemical process. In the face of these false accusations, Nobel was forced to flee France in 1891 and relocate to Italy, where he lived for the last five years of his life.

William Howard Taft served as governor of the Philippines and Cuba.

  • Philippines & Cuba flags
Philippines & Cuba flags
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Author Michael Nordine
November 8, 2023

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Plenty of presidents were governors before ascending to the White House, but most of them oversaw states within the U.S. One exception was William Howard Taft, who served as governor of the Philippines and Cuba. Taft’s political aspirations were matched (if not surpassed) by those of his wife, Helen “Nellie” Herron Taft, who vowed as a young woman to become first lady; when President William McKinley asked William Howard Taft to establish a civilian government in the Philippines, which was then a U.S. protectorate, Nellie was considerably more pleased than her husband was. Taft served as governor-general from July 4, 1901, until December 23, 1903, twice turning down what in many ways was his true lifelong ambition: a spot on the Supreme Court.

His foreign service didn’t end there. While serving as secretary of war under Theodore Roosevelt from 1904 to 1908, Taft traveled to Cuba after the island’s president, Tomás Estrada Palma, asked the U.S. to intervene in ongoing conflicts over its recent election following the country’s 1902 independence. The terms of the 1903 Cuban–American Treaty of Relations allowed the U.S. to intervene militarily in order to preserve Cuba’s independence, and Palma resigned when he realized Taft wasn’t going to do so on his behalf. The following day, September 29, 1906, Taft established a provisional government in Cuba and made himself its provisional governor, a post he held for two weeks before being succeeded by Charles Edward Magoon. Taft went on to serve as president of the United States from 1909 until 1913 and as chief justice of the United States from 1921 until 1930.

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Taft never got stuck in the White House bathtub.

While it’s true that William Howard Taft was a heavyweight of both the literal and figurative variety — he was nearly 350 pounds and a wrestler while at Yale — the story of President Taft getting stuck in a White House bathtub and needing to be helped out by several aides isn’t true. In fact, the myth didn’t even surface until Taft’s longtime usher Irwin Hoover published his dishy 1934 memoir, 42 Years in the White House. According to Dead Presidents author Brady Carlson, “The funny part is that while Taft was president, the White House got a tub that was so big a president couldn’t possibly get stuck in it.” There’s even a photo of the 7-foot-long, 41-inch-wide tub, which literally weighed a ton.

Traffic lights were invented before stop signs.

  • Early traffic light, 1868
Early traffic light, 1868
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Author Darren Orf
November 8, 2023

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Although modern traffic lights are inextricably linked with the automobile, the world’s first traffic light existed nearly 20 years before German inventor Karl Benz patented the first modern car. On December 9, 1868, a 20-foot-tall traffic light was installed at the intersection of Bridge Street and Great George Street outside the Palace of Westminster in London, as a way to control the flow of carriage and pedestrian traffic. An adaptation of the signaling system used by railroads, the light used pivoting “arms” (known as semaphore arms) to communicate “stop” and “go” during the day, and gas-powered red and green lights at night. (Unfortunately, relying on gas proved to be a serious problem when the traffic light exploded less than a month later.) 

Surprisingly, this complex signaling system predated the idea of a simple stop sign by nearly 30 years. Stop signs originated in response to appeals for some sort of safety signage to tame the chaotic streets of early 20th-century America, which lacked speed limits, directional signs, or any traffic laws. In the year 1900,  New York businessman William Phelps Eno (considered the father of U.S. traffic law, though he never drove a car himself) wrote an article suggesting stop signs be placed at intersections. It took another 15 years, but the first stop signs were installed in Detroit, Michigan — the heart of the U.S. automotive industry — and the idea was soon exported to the rest of the country and around the world. 

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Stop signs were originally black-and-white squares.

Although red octagonal stop signs are a fixture of today’s roads, the stop sign has undergone a few changes over the years. Early stop signs in Detroit were 2-foot square pieces of sheet metal with black lettering on a white background. The first official signs to use the iconic octagonal shape arrived years later in 1923, courtesy of the Mississippi Valley Association of State Highway Departments, which decided that the number of sides on a sign should convey the level of danger. Eight was the second-highest danger level. The highest is the circle, which technically has infinite sides, and is used for railroad crossings in the U.S. 

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