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The U.S. once banned sliced bread.

Old bread slicer
Credit: Heinz Jacobi/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bennett Kleinman
January 2, 2024

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Sliced bread was first sold commercially in 1928 and quickly grew into a culinary sensation — until its rise came to an abrupt halt when it was briefly banned 15 years later. On January 18, 1943, amid World War II, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard announced a ban on selling sliced bread in an effort to conserve wartime resources. The government hoped this ban would preserve the country’s supply of alloyed steel (used to build slicing machines) and wax paper (used to both wrap sliced bread, which required thicker wrapping than unsliced loaves, and protect military equipment from the elements). It was a common practice to ask Americans back home to ration goods in the name of the war effort, but the ban on sliced bread was met with furious and immediate backlash.

U.S. housewives in particular were dismayed over the ban. One woman named Sue Forrester wrote to The New York Times, “I should like to let you know how important sliced bread is to the morale and saneness of a household.” While hotels and restaurants were given a 60-day grace period to prepare, bakeries weren’t so lucky, and saw sales decline up to 10% while facing sizable fines for defying the ban. Given the ration’s widespread unpopularity, many government bureaucrats played dumb and refused to admit being involved, pointing fingers at others instead. Wickard finally rescinded the ban on sliced bread on March 8, 1943, claiming, “The savings are not as much as we expected,” while conveniently neglecting to acknowledge any public outcry.

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A sack of flour was auctioned off for over $275,000 in 1864.

In 1864, a Nevada merchant named Reuel Colt Gridley auctioned off a single sack of flour over and over again, raising a staggering sum for the U.S. Sanitary Commission (a precursor to the Red Cross). It all began after Gridley lost a friendly wager and was forced to carry a 50-pound sack of flour through town. He took the defeat in stride, decorating the sack with red, white, and blue ribbons and parading it around accompanied by a marching band. The spectacle attracted a crowd, and it was eventually suggested that Gridley auction off the famed flour sack to raise funds for charity. The winner paid $250, but didn’t actually want the flour, and suggested Gridley auction the sack again. The process repeated itself, and Gridley raised more than $5,000 by day’s end. In the weeks that followed, he traveled across the country holding auctions for the flour sack, raking in more than $275,000 (about $5.4 million today) for the cause. The flour was ultimately used to bake cakes at the 1864 Sanitary Fair in St. Louis.

The oldest D-Day soldier was a president’s son.

Roosevelt Jr. in uniform
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Author Michael Nordine
December 19, 2023

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More than 130,000 Allied troops landed at Normandy as part of D-Day, but only one of them was the son of a former U.S. president: Theodore Roosevelt Jr., who also held the distinction of being the oldest soldier to deploy. He was born on September 13, 1887, making the brigadier general 56 years old when he asked to land with the first wave. After two verbal requests were denied, Roosevelt submitted a written petition, in which he wrote, “I personally know both officers and men of these advance units and believe that it will steady them to know that I am with them.”

High command finally relented, and Roosevelt landed on Utah Beach equipped with his walking cane and service pistol on June 6, 1944. Later, soldiers from his unit indeed credited his “calm and humorous demeanor” with helping them push through. Roosevelt was already a decorated veteran at this point, having served with distinction in World War I, but his military career was cut short when he suffered a fatal heart attack barely a month after D-Day. General George Patton hailed him as one of the bravest men he ever knew, and Roosevelt received a posthumous Medal of Honor on September 21, 1944. His son Quentin Roosevelt II stormed Omaha Beach on D-Day, making them the only father-son duo to take part in the Normandy landings.

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The “D” in D-Day doesn’t really stand for anything.

Though you might logically assume it stands for any number of terms, from “deployment” or “disembarkation” to “departure” or “doom,” the “D” in D-Day doesn’t exactly stand for anything. The most likely explanation is that the “D” was a redundancy, and simply means “day.” The term dates back to World War I as a placeholder for the start of a military operation, and “H-Hour” was also used to specify the exact time an operation would occur. In addition to keeping such details out of enemy hands, these vague terms allowed some flexibility when planning attacks whose actual start times could change at the last minute.

The first toy advertised on TV was Mr. Potato Head.

Mr. Potato Head
Robert Linder/ Unsplash
Author Bennett Kleinman
January 2, 2024

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While toy commercials are ubiquitous today, they were virtually unheard of before April 30, 1952. That day, a television ad for Mr. Potato Head aired for the first time. George Lerner created an early version of the toy tuber in 1949, and sold the rights to Hassenfeld Brothers (which became Hasbro) three years later. The original package contained 30 plastic accessories, including facial features, hands, and feet, which could be affixed to any real potato or similar vegetable. What transformed the toy into a major success, however, was the innovative TV advertising campaign that soon followed.

The inaugural Mr. Potato Head commercial was the first of its kind to advertise directly to children rather than their parents, revolutionizing the marketing industry. The ad featured a cartoon mascot talking to kids about how to play with Mr. Potato Head and all the fun they could have. More than a million kits were sold in the first year, and the Mr. Potato Head line soon expanded to include a Mrs. Potato Head, Brother Spud, Sister Yam, and many additional parts. When new government regulations in the 1960s forced the company to pivot away from the sharp accessories necessary to puncture real potatoes, Hasbro began selling a plastic potato body with premade holes.

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Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son.

John Lloyd Wright, son of famed American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, based Lincoln Logs on a real project that he worked on alongside his father. John began as his father’s apprentice in 1913, and while the professional relationship was short-lived, John briefly played a role in planning Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel. The hotel plan featured an innovative design of interlocking timber beams to increase stability, which actually helped the structure survive the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. Though John quit before the project was complete, he drew great inspiration from its design, and in 1920 he patented an interlocking log cabin toy. He chose the name “Lincoln Logs” to evoke a sense of Americana, basing it on the 16th president’s childhood log cabin. 

George Washington wrote reviews of early American inns.

Portrait of George Washington, 1846
Credit: American portraiture/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine
April 5, 2025

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When he wasn’t busy winning the Revolutionary War and not telling lies, George Washington had a thoroughly modern pastime: reviewing American inns. The founding father penned a series of these assessments early in his presidency, a time when he swore not to accept invitations to stay in his fellow Americans’ private residences while traveling. This was not because he didn’t enjoy home-cooked meals, but because he didn’t want to “incommode any private family,” as he wrote in a 1791 letter, and also to avoid any appearance of political favoritism. This necessitated patronizing inns during two major trips — one to New England and one to the South — as he got the lay of the land and greeted citizens, who he hoped would think of him as a man of the people.

Most of these accommodations, according to his extensive writings, were hardly five-star experiences. One he described as “not a good House” situated near an “intolerable” road, while at another “the entertainment was not very inviting.” Conditions were especially dire in the rural South, where, Washington wrote, he failed to find “a single house which has anythg. of an elegant appearance.” He fared better in Boston, where he noted a widow kept a “very decent & good House” and found that Delaware’s Buck Tavern was “a better house than the appearances indicate.” 

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George Washington didn’t have children.

Despite being a founding father, the first U.S. president never had biological children of his own. He and Martha Washington were married for 40 years, and together they raised her two surviving children from her first marriage: John Parke Custis and Martha Parke Custis. Martha also had four grandchildren in addition to several nieces and nephews who came to live with the couple at Mount Vernon. Five other presidents had no known biological children: James Madison, James Polk, Warren G. Harding, James Buchanan, and Andrew Jackson.

The phrase “raise a toast” refers to actual toasted bread.

Wassail Bowl, Middle Ages
Credit: Chronicle/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Nicole Villeneuve
January 2, 2024

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By the Middle Ages, the custom now known as a “toast” had evolved from its ancient Greek origins and was common in Europe, and the medieval era’s culinary habits contributed to its eventual name. Many meals at the time included a piece of soaked bread or toast (known as “sop”), and during the holiday season in England, communal bowls filled with a warm, spiced alcoholic drink such as mulled cider or ale were common. They were known as wassail bowls, a name derived from the Anglo-Saxon greeting of “waes hael,” meaning “be well” or “be in good health.” Wassail bowls were garnished with slices of toasted, spiced bread. 

Some theories suggest the toast was used to augment the drink’s flavor or to serve as an accompanying snack — not hard to believe given the prevalence of sops. But it possibly had another purpose: In some cider-producing regions, the wassail tradition also included a blessing for good crops from farmers’ apple trees, during which villagers hung pieces of wassail-soaked toast in the branches for the robins. Throughout the 17th century, the word “toast” became distanced from just the charred drink topper. By the 18th century, according to linguist Dan Jurafsky, English dinner parties often honored a guest as the “toast” of the night, a tradition that eventually evolved into the verb “to toast.”

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Shaking your head “no” actually means “yes” in some parts of the world.

The popular phrase “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” is an important reminder to respect unique customs and cultural etiquette around the world. In Bulgaria, that means adopting a cue that’s altogether the opposite of most other places in the world: shaking your head side to side to express “yes,” and nodding up and down for “no.” One theory for how this regional body language developed suggests that, during Ottoman rule, Orthodox Bulgarians used it as a way to resist pressure to renounce their faith, nodding their head “yes” when asked to convert religions while inside meaning “no.” Today, many Bulgarians try to accommodate visitors, who, if they’re aware of the custom, do the same for locals — leading to potentially confusing conversations.

Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. president born in a hospital.

Jimmy Carter in his study
ZUMA Press, Inc./ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bennett Kleinman
November 15, 2023

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The majority of U.S. presidents were born in their parents’ homes, as it wasn’t until the early 20th century that hospital births became common throughout the United States. In fact, the first president born in a hospital was Jimmy Carter, on October 1, 1924. America’s 39th president (who served as commander in chief from 1977 to 1981) was born at the Wise Sanitarium in Plains, Georgia, where his mother, Lillian Carter, worked as a nurse at the time. (The institution was later renamed the Lillian G. Carter Nursing Center in her honor.) Jimmy Carter’s upbringing was far from modern, however; when he left the hospital as a baby, he went home to the family farm, which lacked plumbing and electricity.

Only five other U.S. presidents have been born in hospitals: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, was born in his parents’ apartment in Tampico, Illinois. George H.W. Bush, who succeeded Reagan, was born at the family home in Milton, Massachusetts, and remains the last U.S. president not born in a hospital.

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Martin Van Buren was the first president born a U.S. citizen.

From George Washington through Andrew Jackson, America’s first seven presidents were born as British subjects, before the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Martin Van Buren, who came into the world on December 5, 1782, was the first U.S. president born after America declared independence from Britain, and thus the first president born a U.S. citizen. Van Buren was raised in the Dutch community of Kinderhook, New York; in fact, Dutch was Van Buren’s first language, making him the only president to learn English as a second language. He was elected to the presidency in 1836 and served a single term before being succeeded by William Henry Harrison. Born in 1773, Harrison was older than Van Buren and was the last U.S. president born before the country’s independence. 

Stonehenge was designed to frame the sunset on the winter solstice.

Stonehenge at sunset
inigofotografia/ iStock
Author Nicole Villeneuve
December 7, 2023

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Humans have long viewed the sun as a crucial part of life. Many early civilizations such as ancient Egypt and Rome, as well as the Japanese and the Maya, even deified the sun. It was so revered by the Neolithic people of modern-day England, in fact, that it’s believed they may have built Stonehenge to frame the rising sun on the summer solstice and the sunset on the winter solstice.

Starting about 5,000 years ago, the prehistoric monument was constructed in several stages on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England. Without any written record, many theories about the origin and purpose of the mysterious monolith have emerged over the years. One of the most plausible is that Stonehenge was built as an astronomical observatory to help mark the seasons. On the winter solstice, the sun currently falls behind one of the site’s several trilithons — a structure consisting of two vertical stones with a horizontal one across the top — creating a picture-perfect framing. Although some of the rocks have fallen over the years, affecting the current view, laser surveys have all but confirmed that Stonehenge was designed in relation to the path of the sun on the solstice. On the winter solstice, the sun also sets perfectly in line with an individual stone known as the Heel Stone, about 100 feet away from the main site. On the summer solstice, the sun rises over the Heel Stone.

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The Black Sabbath and "Spinal Tap" Stonehenge jokes were likely a coincidence.

For their Born Again tour in 1983 and 1984, the metal band Black Sabbath created a replica of Stonehenge, a nod to the track of the same name from their latest album. But the prop ended up being too big for all of the pieces to actually fit on stage, the result of a mix-up between meters and feet in the design specs. In 1984, a suspiciously similar mistake occurred in the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap. In the film, the fictional rock band decides to create a replica of the prehistoric monument for their own song “Stonehenge,” only the prop ends up being comically small. It has widely been speculated that the joke was inspired by the Black Sabbath mishap, yet it’s possible it was just an unlikely coincidence. This Is Spinal Tap director Rob Reiner maintains that the movie’s production timeline would have made a Black Sabbath mockery impossible; according to some reports, Reiner filmed a 20-minute demo reel in 1982 that included early versions of the Stonehenge scenes, a year before Black Sabbath’s tour.

The ancient Egyptians were the first to divide the day into 24 parts.

Hipparchus
Chronicle/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Mark Dolan
December 20, 2023

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Ever wondered why there are 24 hours in a day? We have the ancient Egyptians to thank, at least in part. The basis for our modern calendar dates back to the New Kingdom period of ancient Egypt, around 1550 BCE to 1069 BCE. During this era — about a thousand years after the construction of the Great Pyramids of Giza — the Egyptians became the first civilization to divide the day into 24 smaller parts — though with a couple of key differences to how we do it today. 

For starters, the ancient timekeeping system tracked daytime and nighttime separately, with each divided into 12 parts. Also, these parts — which were measured in various ways, including sundials and water clocks — were not hours as we think of them today. Known as temporal hours or daylight hours, their length changed with the total amount of daylight at different times of year: For instance, the daytime hours would be longer in the summer than in the winter. So why 12? There are a couple of theories. Ancient astronomical tables suggest that nighttime was divided into 12 hours based on how the stars moved across the sky over time, as well as the cycles of the moon. It’s also possible these Egyptian timekeepers were following the duodecimal system, which is based on the easily divisible number 12, and was used in many ancient cultures. 

It wasn’t until the second century BCE that the idea emerged to break the day into 24 parts of equal length, a concept first introduced by the ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus. The 24-hour day became the standard for tracking time throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, and remains so to this day.

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The term “o’clock” originated to differentiate between sundials and mechanical clocks.

Mechanical clocks were invented in Germany in the early 14th century. As they increased in popularity throughout Europe, people began to replace previous forms of timekeeping that relied on tracking the sun, such as sundials. Before long, a term originated in the English language to distinguish between these different ways of telling time. People would say it was, for example, four “of the clock” when referring to a mechanical timepiece. This eventually became shortened to just “four o’clock.” According to Merriam-Webster, the first known use of the term “o’clock” dates back to 1535. 

There was a “hole race” alongside the space race.

Project Mohole drilling operation, 1961
Credit: John Malmin/ Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
March 20, 2025

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As the United States and the Soviet Union started competing for space supremacy in the mid-20th century, they were also racing in the opposite direction. Both countries wanted to dig the deepest hole, with the goal of reaching the Earth’s mantle in order to better understand the planet’s interior and also demonstrate technical prowess. A group of American scientists took a first stab at the deep hole in 1961 by drilling into a deep sea bed, where the Earth’s crust is thinner. The Soviet Union, after years of planning, started drilling a hole on the Kola Peninsula in the Arctic Circle in 1970. Eventually, the Germans launched their own effort in Bavaria in 1990.

Ultimately, nobody reached the Earth’s mantle. The Soviet Union still finished on top: Around 1989, after drilling the Kola Superdeep Borehole for about 20 years, the Soviets reached a depth of about 7.5 miles. The hole is only about 9 inches across, too small for a human being to fall in, but it was sealed up with a metal cap in 2008 anyway. It’s still the deepest human-made hole on Earth.

The United States made it 601 feet deep under 11,700 feet of water before funding was pulled in 1967, although the project helped launch a new era of ocean exploration and brought up some valuable geological samples. Germany drilled more than 5.5 miles, but the drill got too hot to continue — a lower temperature is one advantage the Soviet Union had in the Arctic Circle. All of these efforts helped pave the way for future scientific drilling projects, ushering in technology that is still used by the oil and gas industry.

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More than a million acres of swampland was drained to create the Missouri Bootheel.

Before 1914, the Missouri Bootheel, a little panhandle at the southeast corner of the state, was a massive, 1.65 million-acre swamp fed by the Missouri River. Then one of the biggest drainage projects in the world transformed the land into the agricultural center it is today. In the early 20th century, landowners, many of whom were logging companies that had cleared the swamp’s hardwood forests, organized a massively ambitious drainage district. The digging started in 1914 and lasted until 1928, during which workers ultimately dug 900 miles of ditches and built 304 miles of levees, which currently drain 1.2 million acres of land. 

At the time, the environmental impact of swamps wasn’t as well understood as it is today, and while the farmland created by the project produces about a third of Missouri’s economic output, it did diminish the habitat for many wildlife species. Only around 84,000 acres of the original swamp remain today, and much of it is in conservation districts.

France and Mexico fought a war over pastries. 

San Juan de Ulua, Mexico
Credit: Chronicle/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
December 19, 2023

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After Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, its political environment was unstable, and its relationship with France — another European colonial power — was tense. These tensions came to a head in 1832, when a group of Mexican army officers went into a pastry shop outside Mexico City. The shop was owned by one Monsieur Remontel, a French national. The officers helped themselves to every pastry in his shop — after confining the owner to a room, according to some sources — and then left without paying. Afterward, Remontel demanded an enormous sum of 60,000 pesos as compensation from the Mexican government — about 60 times the total value of his shop.

Remontel wasn’t the only Frenchman to lodge such a complaint. Foreign nationals living in Mexico at the time, including a large population of French residents, started to complain about property damage sustained during civil disturbances, and sought redress from the Mexican government, with no success. Remontel became a kind of poster child for the growing demands, and in 1837, the French government got involved. France drew a hard line, demanding that Mexico pay a total of 600,000 pesos or prepare for war. The Mexican government couldn’t pay, so the French navy instituted a blockade at Veracruz, the main Mexican port along the Gulf of Mexico. After seven months, French soldiers escalated by firing on the fortress of San Juan de Ulúa and occupying the city. France eventually withdrew after being guaranteed payment through Great Britain.

Officially, the conflict was called the first Franco-Mexican War, but it became known derisively as the Pastry War in Mexico. Though the conflict may sound petty, it had a major influence on Mexican history. During the war, troops were led by Antonio López de Santa Anna, the former president of Mexico who was disgraced after losing Texas to the United States. Santa Anna lost a leg fighting the French (it was amputated after being injured by cannon fire), and the incident restored his public reputation. He went on to become president of Mexico seven more times.

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The Mexican president staged an elaborate funeral for his leg.

Antonio López de Santa Anna was known for his flamboyant personality. After losing his leg in the Pastry War, he had it buried at his hacienda in Veracruz. In 1842, while he was serving as president of Mexico, he dug up the limb and had an ornate coach parade it to Mexico City, where he gave it a full state funeral with cannon fire, poetry, and speeches. But public opinion turned against Santa Anna again, and just two years later, when three-time Mexican President José Joaquín Antonio de Herrera led a successful revolt against Santa Anna, protesters dug the leg back up and dragged it through the streets.

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