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The “Iliad” was thought to be pure fiction until Troy was discovered.

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Ruins at Hisarlık
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Author Michael Nordine
December 5, 2024

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Homer’s Iliad is perhaps the most famous work of mythology in history, not to mention one of Western literature’s foundational texts. And though the Trojan War and its legendary combatants are fictional, the city of Troy is not — not that everyone always knew it. First settled in the Bronze Age, Troy was destroyed and rebuilt several times during its 4,000 years of existence, and was eventually forgotten and lost to history. Because of this, the Iliad was thought to be pure fiction for centuries until the city of Troy was rediscovered in the 1870s. It was uncovered by Heinrich Schliemann, a businessman and amateur archaeologist from Germany, who also excavated the ruins of Mycenae and Tiryns.

What was once called Troy is now Hisarlık, an archaeological mound in present-day Turkey. Schliemann’s discovery also reignited the debate around whether the Trojan War itself actually took place. The ancient Greeks themselves certainly thought so, but there simply isn’t enough evidence to state that a conflict of the sort portrayed in the Iliad actually lasted 10 years and was waged by such larger-than-life figures as Achilles, Odysseus, and Agamemnon. There were certainly wars (or at least battles) fought in Troy, but not of the stature depicted in the epic poem.

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Very little is known about Homer, including whether he was a real person.

If you were to ask 10 historians when and where Homer was born, you might get 10 different answers. Very little is known about the famed poet, including what century he lived in, if he was actually blind, and whether he was a real person or rather a composite of several people. The consensus is that Homer — if he indeed existed — was born between the 12th and eighth centuries BCE, possibly on the coast of Asia Minor, and that he died on the Greek island of Ios. Because the Odyssey, the Iliad, and other epic poems were spoken aloud, not written down, some believe they were composed by a group of people to whom the single name Homer was later given, or that Homer was simply the one to compile their efforts. Even the idea that he couldn’t see is based solely on the fact that Demodocus, a poet in the Odyssey, is blind, and that Homer based the character on himself.

Suffragists caused a hatpin panic in the early 1900s.

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Woman with a hatpin
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Author Nicole Villeneuve
October 31, 2023

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At the beginning of the 20th century, elaborate hats were ubiquitous in women’s fashion. Hat brims were so wide, they often extended out past a woman’s shoulders, and the tops of the hats were adorned with taffeta, ribbons, and lots of feathers. Hatpins, themselves often decorative and sometimes as big as a foot long, were required to fasten the large hats to a woman’s hairstyle — but they also became inadvertent tools of self-defense for women who were gaining more independence and venturing out into the world alone.

The use of hatpins for self-defense dovetailed with a growing culture of “mashers,” as they were known at the time. These were men who leered at, catcalled, or unwantedly touched women in public. Suffragists and other women’s rights groups became increasingly vocal about the need for female safety, autonomy, and self-defense in the face of “masher” culture, but their efforts had the unintended effect of bringing negative attention to the female victims. Newspapers across the country reported stories of women using hatpins and umbrellas to fend off attackers, and by 1909, hatpins were considered dangerous around the world. Some regions attempted to regulate their length; in many U.S. states, women could be fined up to $50 for wearing hatpins that were more than 9 inches long. 

Eventually, measures were taken in some locations to punish “mashers,” including with fines and jail time. Still, women were sometimes told (by a judge in at least one instance) that they were simply too beautiful to be walking around alone. By the end of World War I, women’s hairstyles — and the size of their hats — were significantly smaller, and the “hatpin peril” was all but forgotten.

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British suffragettes’ self-defense was known as “suffrajitsu.”

The fight for women’s suffrage reached a fever pitch in the early 20th century, and in the U.K., women encountered increasing physical resistance by opponents and law enforcement during protests and demonstrations. In order to protect themselves, some women started learning the Japanese martial art of jiu-jitsu, which emphasizes using leverage and targeting pressure points to overcome physical aggression. Media outlets started reporting on the trend, as well as on martial artist Edith Garrud, who was teaching jiu-jitsu to members of the Women's Social and Political Union (the driving force of the U.K.’s suffrage campaign). Soon, the term “suffrajitsu” was being used. The word was later used as the title of a graphic novel trilogy on the self-defense movement.

The Roman Empire taxed urine.

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Roman public lavatories
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
October 26, 2023

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In ancient Rome, you didn’t have to pay a tax to pee, but for a while, you did have to pay a tax to use urine commercially. The fluid is rich in ammonia, a caustic substance that’s sold in many cleaning solutions and even fertilizers today. Roman launderers used aged urine to clean clothes and dye fabrics, and tanners used it to loosen flesh from animal hides. Some people even used it as toothpaste. It sounds strange, but at the time, collecting human urine was a common practice in order to take advantage of its cleaning properties. Aware of its wide applications, one Roman emperor, Vespasian, even taxed the stuff. Vespasian, who ruled from 69 to 79 CE and was known for implementing and increasing taxes, decided to impose vectigal urinae (literally: urine tax) on urine that was taken from public restrooms.

Many ancient Romans thought this income stream was, understandably, pretty gross, including Vespasian’s own son Titus. According to the Roman historian Suetonius, Titus once chastised his dad for profiting off excessive taxes such as urine, and in response, Vespasian placed a coin over his son’s nose and asked if it stunk. Titus replied that it didn’t, and Vespasian responded, “Yet it comes from urine.” In fact, Vespasian’s urine tax is the origin of the Latin phrase pecunia non olet, or “money doesn’t stink” — meaning that dirty money is still money.

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Peter the Great taxed beards in Russia.

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Tsar Peter I, also known as Peter the Great, was on a mission to modernize Russia. After noticing many clean-shaven men during his travels through Western Europe, he decided that his countrymen should follow suit, and even went so far as to personally shave the beards off the guests of a party held in his honor. He originally tried to ban beards outright, but the policy was massively unpopular, especially since clean shaves were considered blasphemous in the Russian Orthodox Church. Instead, Peter imposed a beard tax of 100 rubles or more for noblemen and merchants, and as low as 1 kopek (or 1% of a ruble) for commoners. Those who paid the tax were given a medal inscribed with the phrase “the beard is a useless burden” as proof. Still, the tax caused a lot of tension between the church and state in Russia, and even caused a rebellion among one military division, though the revolt was swiftly crushed.

Tulips were once more valuable than gold.

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White tulip bouquet
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Author Fran Hoepfner
October 26, 2023

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We think of tulips as commonplace spring flowers, but the bulbous, vibrant plant was once one of the most sought-after commodities in the Netherlands. Tulips were seen as exotic given their Middle Eastern origins — they were attractive and stylish, with highly saturated colors, and they looked like no other flower in Western and Northern Europe. Between 1634 and 1637, tulip prices skyrocketed in the Netherlands and other parts of Europe, and the flower became a status symbol, indicating both wealth and a certain aura of worldly cosmopolitanism. The demand for tulips in a variety of both colors and patterns (striped tulips became a particular point of obsession for their rare “broken” appearance) became so frenzied that a single bulb could be used as the dowry for a marriage. The phenomenon was dubbed “Tulipmania,” and at the height of the market, tulips were even more valuable than gold. 

The florin (the Dutch currency at the time, also known as the guilder) had a gold content of roughly 0.77 grams, and a tulip bulb weighed around 20 grams, meaning any bulb that sold for more than 26 florins was worth more than its weight in gold. At the peak of the tulip craze, bulbs regularly cost more than 100 florins, and a Semper Augustus tulip — the most expensive bulb ever sold — could cost as much as 5,200 florins, or roughly a quarter-million dollars today. Alas, the flower’s moment in the sun eventually came to an end. Like many economic bubbles, the tulip market burst in part because a number of people bought bulbs on credit that they were not able to pay back. In the winter of 1637, the bottom fell out of the tulip market, and the price halved in a matter of days. 

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The tulip market never crashed the Dutch economy.

While the tulip market did experience a fascinating boom in the 1630s, the Dutch economy didn’t exactly rise and fall with the flower frenzy as some accounts have suggested. Like many economic fads — including the present-day cryptocurrency trend — participation in the tulip market was limited to a very small number of already-wealthy people. Tulipmania did not affect all of Dutch society, and it never upended the country’s economy. Contrary to the many myths around this fragrant chapter of Dutch history, no one ever went bankrupt over the flower. Historians have only ever identified about 350 people who participated in the tulip trade. That’s certainly no small feat for a simple flower, but the tulip’s storied economic impact wilts under closer scrutiny.

A 19th-century Spanish nobleman had 88 names.

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Spanish name keychains
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Author Michael Nordine
October 26, 2023

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Though he’s usually referred to as Don Alfonso de Borbón y Borbón for simplicity’s sake, that wasn’t the 19th-century Spanish nobleman’s full name. It was actually Alfonso María Isabel Francisco Eugenio Gabriel Pedro Sebastián Pelayo Fernando Francisco de Paula Pío Miguel Rafael Juan José Joaquín Ana Zacarias Elisabeth Simeón Tereso Pedro Pablo Tadeo Santiago Simón Lucas Juan Mateo Andrés Bartolomé Ambrosio Geronimo Agustín Bernardo Candido Gerardo Luis-Gonzaga Filomeno Camilo Cayetano Andrés-Avelino Bruno Joaquín-Picolimini Felipe Luis-Rey-de-Francia Ricardo Esteban-Protomártir Genaro Nicolás Estanislao-de-Koska Lorenzo Vicente Crisostomo Cristano Darío Ignacio Francisco-Javier Francisco-de-Borja Higona Clemente Esteban-de-Hungría Ladislado Enrique Ildefonso Hermenegildo Carlos-Borromeo Eduardo Francisco-Régis Vicente-Ferrer Pascual Miguel-de-los-Santos Adriano Venancio Valentín Benito José-Oriol Domingo Florencio Alfacio Benére Domingo-de-Silos Ramón Isidro Manuel Antonio Todos-los-Santos de Borbón y Borbón — a total of 88 names, for a world record among historic royalty.

Born on November 15, 1866, Alfonso wasn’t especially notable beyond his lengthy moniker and the fact that he was part of the House of Bourbon as King Charles III of Spain’s great-great-grandson. Spanish royalty at the time gave their children and heirs long names in order to honor as many saints as possible, and it seems Alfonso’s parents, Dom Sebastian Gabriel and Maria Christina, were determined to go all out. Both of them were infantes, a title given to the children of Spanish and Portuguese monarchs, but Alfonso lost his claim to the Spanish throne when he married a commoner named — simply — Julia Méndez y Morales. Spain’s current king, Felipe VI, also belongs to the House of Bourbon.

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The longest word in the world has 189,819 letters.

That would be methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylalanyl…isoleucine, which is abbreviated here for obvious reasons — pronouncing the entire thing would take three hours. Because it’s the chemical name for a protein, some folks consider it cheating to dub it the world’s longest word, and instead go with a Sanskrit word that’s 195 characters long (or 428 when transliterated into English): निरन्तरान्धकारित-दिगन्तर-कन्दलदमन्द-सुधारस-बिन्दु-सान्द्रतर-घनाघन-वृन्द-सन्देहकर-स्यन्दमान-मकरन्द-बिन्दु-बन्धुरतर-माकन्द-तरु-कुल-तल्प-कल्प-मृदुल-सिकता-जाल-जटिल-मूल-तल-मरुवक-मिलदलघु-लघु-लय-कलित-रमणीय-पानीय-शालिका-बालिका-करार-विन्द-गलन्तिका-गलदेला-लवङ्ग-पाटल-घनसार-कस्तूरिकातिसौरभ-मेदुर-लघुतर-मधुर-शीतलतर-सलिलधारा-निराकरिष्णु-तदीय-विमल-विलोचन-मयूख-रेखापसारित-पिपासायास-पथिक-लोकान्. More of a sentence than a word, it appeared in the poet Tirumalāmbā's 1970 book Varadāmbikā Pariṇaya Campū, and can be translated, quite evocatively, as follows: “In it, the distress, caused by thirst, to travelers, was alleviated by clusters of rays of the bright eyes of the girls; the rays that were shaming the currents of light, sweet and cold water charged with the strong fragrance of cardamom, clove, saffron, camphor, and musk and flowing out of the pitchers (held in) the lotus-like hands of maidens (seated in) the beautiful water-sheds, made of the thick roots of vetiver mixed with marjoram, (and built near) the foot, covered with heaps of couch-like soft sand, of the clusters of newly sprouting mango trees, which constantly darkened the intermediate space of the quarters, and which looked all the more charming on account of the trickling drops of the floral juice, which thus caused the delusion of a row of thick rainy clouds, densely filled with abundant nectar.”

A pirate once attacked a ship and stole hats instead of treasure.

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Pirate hat and sword next to skull
Credit: Pixel-Shot/ Shutterstock
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
November 27, 2024

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Benjamin Hornigold was a powerful fleet captain during the golden age of piracy — the period in the late 17th and early 18th centuries when most of the pirates you’ve heard of were doing their plundering. Blackbeard, for instance, started his career under Hornigold’s command, eventually becoming his second before going out on his own, as did many other notorious pirates. 

It’s easy to imagine a fearsome pirate captain like Hornigold filling his ships’ coffers with booty from wealthy merchant ships, but in reality, not every trading ship targeted by pirates was carrying high-value goods. Often, ransacking a vessel was just a means to run errands — picking up rum, foodstuffs, ammo, ship repair parts, and other basics that were critical to maintaining the swashbuckling lifestyle.

Hornigold’s crew had a pretty short shopping list when they boarded a sloop off the coast of Honduras one day. According to the journal of one passenger, “They did us no further injury than the taking most of our hats from us.” The pirates explained that they’d gotten very drunk the previous night and thrown their hats overboard, and simply needed replacements.As far as pirates went, Hornigold was among the more polite; according to Woodes Rogers, the English governor of the Bahamas known for bringing pirates to justice, “Most people spoke well of his generosity.” Eventually, Hornigold accepted a royal pardon and made a drastic career change from pirate captain to pirate hunter.

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The “pirate accent” emerged in the 1950s.

What we often think of today as the “pirate voice” wasn’t actually associated with pirates until the 1950s, when actor Robert Newton played the lead in several popular pirate movies. Newton used an exaggerated version of his own West Country English accent, which, unlike many British accents, includes a very pronounced “r” sound. It’s likely some English pirates did sound something like that, since many folks from the West Country were the seafaring sort. But pirates came from all sorts of national origins, and had voices to match.

Ducklings were used for medical therapy in the 1950s.

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Ducklings on a pier
Credit: Brinja Schmidt/ Shutterstock
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
November 21, 2024

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The November 12, 1956 issue of Life magazine included a profile of a then-unique program at the University of Michigan’s hospital. The facility’s youngest patients received regular visits from animals to cheer them up during their long stays. Working animals included bunnies, kittens, puppies, and piglets, and some photos even showed coatis swinging from wires above the children’s heads. By the time the article was published, the university had maintained its animal program for 30 years, with a veritable menagerie of past visitors, including alligators and ostriches. But some of the most heartwarming photos were of kids with ducklings.

Hospital staff had at least one specific method for duckling therapy: Kids were encouraged to cuddle the sweet baby birds wrapped in a towel. But ducklings turned out to be pretty versatile, and were an accessible ray of sunshine for kids of most mobility levels. The largest photo in the Life spread shows a crowd of children feeding a pool full of ducklings that had been set up on a hospital sun deck; some kids are standing, while others are in beds arranged along the sides. One 3-year-old polio patient attached to a chest respirator is pictured smiling and watching the ducklings swim around a small tub next to her bed.

Animal therapy programs are far more common in hospitals, schools, and other facilities today. But while species of therapy animals may be more diverse than you think — ducks are still on the table! — you’d be hard-pressed to find a therapy alligator in a medical setting now.

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The first American guide dog school opened in 1929.

While guide dogs for blind people have a long history, the idea really took off after World War I, when many soldiers in the trenches were blinded by mustard gas. The movement started in Germany and piqued the interest of Dorothy Harrison Eustis, a wealthy American who trained police dogs, in the 1920s. After visiting a German training school, she chronicled her experience in the Saturday Evening Post, which caught the attention of a 19-year-old blind man named Morris Frank. Together, the pair founded The Seeing Eye, a guide dog school in Morris Township, New Jersey, that’s still in operation today — and is where the term “seeing eye dog” comes from. 

Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to fly in an airplane.

  • Teddy Roosevelt (left) preparing for flight
Teddy Roosevelt (left) preparing for flight
Credit: Glasshouse Images/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bennett Kleinman
November 21, 2024

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On October 11, 1910, former President Theodore Roosevelt took to the skies above St. Louis, Missouri, aboard a Wright Company aircraft. This unprecedented event, which took place roughly 19 months after Roosevelt left office, made Roosevelt the first U.S. president to fly in an airplane. The decision to fly was off the cuff: Roosevelt was visiting Missouri to support state Republicans in their election campaign when he was invited to hop aboard the airplane by aviator Arch Hoxsey. He initially declined, but then changed his mind and climbed aboard. The plane took Roosevelt to “a height of less than one hundred feet,” according to a New-York Tribune article, and covered 3 miles over the span of 3 minutes and 20 seconds. Roosevelt was described by a reporter from the United Press as having “defied death” in front of 10,000 breathless onlookers, and emerged saying, “That was the bulliest experience I ever had.”

Teddy wasn’t the only Roosevelt to make aviation history. In 1932, his fifth cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt flew from New York to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to accept the party’s presidential nomination. FDR later became the first president to fly on a plane on January 13, 1943, when he flew to Morocco to meet with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The journey was more than 15,000 miles total, as the plane made refueling stops in Trinidad, Brazil, and the Gambia on the way. The president would have normally taken a boat, but doing so was far too risky given the German submarine activity in the Atlantic Ocean at the time.

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Teddy Roosevelt ran for president as a member of the Bull Moose Party.

While serving as president from 1901 to 1909, Theodore Roosevelt was a member of the Republican Party. But in 1912, he ran for president once again — this time as a member of the Bull Moose Party. Back in 1909, Roosevelt handed the presidential reins over to successor William Howard Taft, despite being eligible to seek a second full term. But Roosevelt quickly became disillusioned by Taft’s performance, and challenged Taft for the 1912 Republican nomination. Though Roosevelt was unsuccessful in securing the nomination, he persisted and formed a new Progressive Party, which was nicknamed the Bull Moose Party after Roosevelt quipped to a reporter that he was “fit as a bull moose.” On Election Day, Roosevelt and Taft both lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson, but Roosevelt made history by finishing second as an independent. His 88 electoral votes are still the most votes ever won by a third-party presidential candidate in the U.S.

Wilbur and Orville Wright flew together only once.

  • Wilbur Wright, seen here with Ernest Zens, flew with his brother Orville only once
Wilbur Wright with Ernest Zens
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Author Bennett Kleinman
October 19, 2023

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The Wright brothers made aviation history on December 17, 1903, as Orville Wright piloted the groundbreaking Wright Flyer aircraft for the world’s first powered flight while Wilbur Wright ran alongside. This event marked one of many instances where one brother took to the skies while the other remained on land, as the pair flew in an aircraft together only once. It was a conscious decision stemming from a promise that Orville and Wilbur made to their father, Milton Wright, vowing to never fly together because of the risk of a plane crash. The safety measure also ensured that if one suffered an accident, the other could continue their pioneering aeronautical work. Such an incident nearly occurred on September 17, 1908, during the world’s first fatal plane crash. With Orville at the helm, the flight tragically claimed the life of a passenger on board, U.S. Army Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge, though Orville survived the ordeal.

On May 25, 1910, the Wright brothers flew together for the first and only time in their lives. That day, Milton Wright permitted his sons to conduct a six-minute flight together near Dayton, Ohio. With Orville piloting the plane and Wilbur as his passenger, the duo ascended into the sky and landed without issue. Orville then took his 81-year-old father aboard the plane for the first and only flight of the patriarch’s life; as the plane gained elevation, Milton excitedly shouted, “Higher, Orville, higher!” 

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Pieces of the Wright Flyer went to the moon in 1969.

As a pioneering aviator and fellow Ohioan, Neil Armstrong long admired the Wright brothers and their contributions to flight. In July 1969, Armstrong paid homage to his heroes by stowing several pieces of the original 1903 Wright Flyer aboard the Apollo 11 lunar module. During the Apollo moon mission, each astronaut was permitted to bring a “personal preference kit” containing items of significance. Buzz Aldrin’s kit was filled with wine and bread that he used to perform the first known communion on the moon. Armstrong, meanwhile, carried pieces of muslin fabric and wood from the Wright Flyer propeller, which he had acquired as part of a special agreement with the U.S. Air Force Museum. These relics traveled all the way to the surface of the moon aboard the lunar module Eagle and were donated to the Smithsonian upon the astronauts’ return, though Armstrong kept several of the artifacts for his personal collection.

Pumpkin pie has Indigenous roots.

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Slice of pumpkin pie
Credit: MargoeEdwards/ iStock
Author Michael Nordine
November 14, 2024

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Pumpkin pie has been an American tradition for as long as the United States has had traditions, and we largely have the country’s Indigenous populations to thank for that. Pumpkin itself is native to North America and was first cultivated around 5500 BCE. The winter squash was almost certainly introduced to European settlers by the Wampanoag people of Massachusetts, who helped the newly arrived colonists at Plymouth survive their first winter. Though it’s unknown who made the first pumpkin pies, we do know the earliest versions had no crust, but were cooked (and served) inside hollowed-out pumpkins — an obvious-in-hindsight innovation that some adventurous bakers still prepare on occasion.

Pumpkin in all its many forms proved popular with the English, who eventually began cooking pies in the form we know today. And though pumpkin pie was not served at the first Thanksgiving, it has been a staple of the holiday for centuries; the town of Colchester, Connecticut, went so far as to delay the holiday by a week in 1705 because there wasn’t enough molasses to prepare the dessert. As with much else in America, including Thanksgiving itself, none of this would be possible without the contributions of Indigenous people. The autumn treat remains popular to this day, with 36% of Americans citing it as their favorite Thanksgiving pie — more than twice the number that opt for pecan pie (17%) or apple pie (14%) instead.

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No one’s sure how big pumpkins can get.

Pumpkins keep getting bigger, with new records set every few years. The current record holder, a pumpkin known as Michael Jordan, weighed 2,749 pounds and was grown in 2023; it dethroned a 2,702-pounder that was grown in Italy two years earlier, which beat a previous 2,624-pound Belgian pumpkin. This could be seen as an example of the Bannister Effect, which suggests that, once a seemingly unbreakable record is broken by one person, it becomes easier for other people to break it as well. But the trend is also evidence that no one actually knows how big pumpkins can get. At the first edition of the Half Moon Bay Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off, which was held in 1974, the winner was 132 pounds. That number seems positively puny now, and it’s possible that the current record holder will likewise be eclipsed before too long — growers are already working on surpassing 3,000 pounds.

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