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Winston Churchill acquired hundreds of hats of every kind during his lifetime.

Winston Churchill with his daughter
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
January 23, 2025

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Winston Churchill had a larger-than-life personality, which was reflected in his unique fashion choices, including, on occasion, a velvet romper. Churchill was also known for his expansive hat collection, which numbered in the hundreds and wasn’t limited to just one style. In addition to the typical formal and casual hats of the time, the statesman boasted military, equestrian, and even trade headgear. As his son Randolph once said, “My father never met a hat he didn’t like.”

Hats became part of Churchill’s public image early on. After 1910, when a photographer snapped a photo of him in a too-small hat, political cartoons usually depicted the politician with little hats atop an outsized head. Rather than take offense, Churchill actively encouraged the caricature. A 1939 profile of Churchill in Life magazine featured 20 portraits of him throughout his life in some of his favorite hats, from a “schoolboy bowler” in his early 20s to an engineer’s cap in his early 60s. 

Churchill’s many official government and academic posts came with even more hats to add to his collection, which he often continued wearing long after his tenure — including a formal bicorn hat with gold filigree for his position as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, a high military rank that comes with a castle. Later in his life, Churchill was most closely associated with Homburg hats, which he made famous during World War II.

In one popular anecdote, a house where Churchill was staying with a group of guests for his brother’s wedding caught fire, and soon after, Churchill was spotted wearing a brass firefighter’s helmet with his dressing gown, bossing the fire brigade around. Truly, he could find a hat for any occasion.

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Churchill was hit by a car in New York City.

Churchill was visiting the United States on a lecture circuit in 1931 when, during a stop in New York City, he set out to pay a visit to an old friend. He didn’t have the exact address, so he was lost and running late when he thought he saw his friend’s building across a busy road. (He was actually about half a mile from his destination.) In England, cars drive on the left side of the street (compared with the right in the United States), so Churchill looked in the wrong direction before crossing the street, and was hit by a fast-moving car. Churchill was rushed to a hospital, where he wrote a long article detailing the incident. He sold it to the Daily Mail for $2,500 and, newly flush with cash, made a full recovery in the Bahamas. Churchill harbored no hard feelings toward the driver, and even gave him an inscribed copy of his book My Early Life, which had been published the year before.

The first New Year’s resolutions may date back 4,000 years.

New Year's clock with decorations
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Author Timothy Ott
December 17, 2024

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Perhaps because of the universally uplifting feeling of starting anew, you can find similarities between the lively New Year’s celebrations found in many countries today and those of the oldest recorded civilizations. The ancient Egyptians, for example, shared huge meals and partook in music and dancing to commemorate the pending flooding of the Nile with the festival of Wepet Renpet, meaning “opening of the year.” And the Babylonians of Mesopotamia enjoyed their own extended gala some 4,000 years ago with rituals that may have included a prototype of our modern-day New Year’s resolutions.

Held in March to mark the start of the planting season, the 12-day Babylonian festival of Akitu —which began on the first new moon of spring — was a time to honor the supreme god Marduk, his son Nabu, and the other deities who watched over the people. For the king, this included a humbling ceremony in which he was stripped of his regalia, struck across the face, and dragged by the ears by the high priest to atone for any sins committed. It’s believed the rest of the common folk, spared of such physical punishment, instead engaged in prayer, promising that they would repay their debts and otherwise conduct themselves in sterling fashion to please the gods.

While the Babylonians may have been the first to introduce these promises to a celebration marking the start of the year, the Romans were the first to deliver theirs in January. For that we can thank the wide-reaching Roman calendar, which moved the first month of the year from March to January. Named for the two-faced god Janus, who both looked back at the past and faced the unknown future, the first month became a time for officials to pledge their vows of loyalty to Rome — a custom that continues in the less urgent but no less earnest tradition of the countless people who pledge to get off the couch and hit the gym in the new year.

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“Auld Lang Syne” is one of the most frequently sung songs in English.

Well before anyone attempts to enact their ambitious resolutions, they often ring in the new year by singing — or at least humming along to — the cryptic but irresistibly catchy Scottish folk song “Auld Lang Syne.” Based on works that date back to at least the 16th century, the “Auld Lang Syne” we know today is the result of Scottish poet Robert Burns capturing and rewriting lyrics he overheard from a man singing in the late 18th century. Set to its now-distinct melody by music publisher George Thomson, the song became a New Year’s standard thanks to a 1929 radio performance by Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians. But the nostalgic tune has long since found its way into other occasions, including British political ceremonies, international Scout Movement events, and graduations in the U.S. and Asia. Its popularity boosted by appearances in such famous films as It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and When Harry Met Sally… (1989), “Auld Lang Syne” has earned a spot in Guinness World Records as one of the three most frequently sung songs in English, along with “Happy Birthday to You” and “For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.”

The biggest blizzard in U.S. history saw nearly 5 feet of snow.

Brooklyn after the Blizzard of 1888
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Author Michael Nordine
January 16, 2025

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Records are meant to be broken, but at least one weather-related event is unlikely to be bested anytime soon: the biggest snowstorm in American history, which dumped nearly 5 feet of snow on the Northeastern U.S. The aptly named Great Blizzard of 1888, also known as the Great White Hurricane, occurred in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut between March 11 and 14, and saw as much as 58 inches (4.8 feet) of snowfall. That was in Saratoga Springs, New York, while Bennington, Vermont, reported 48 inches and Middletown, Connecticut, received 50 inches.

By midnight on March 12, winds reached speeds of 50 miles per hour. Snowdrifts as high as 40 feet accumulated in the small town of Bangall, New York. Railways and telegraph lines shut down — inspiring the creation of the first underground subway system — and people were stuck indoors for as long as a week. By the time it was over, at least 400 people had lost their lives and $25 million in damages (roughly $850 million today) had been caused. Among the victims was Roscoe Conkling, a powerful senator who represented New York from 1867 to 1881. He contracted pneumonia after attempting to walk 3 miles in New York City on March 12. 

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Antarctica is the world’s largest desert.

Though we think of deserts as hot and sandy, the technical definition is simply a place with very little precipitation. That’s why the mighty Sahara, which reaches temperatures of 122 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer and covers an area of 3.6 million square miles, isn’t the largest desert on Earth. That superlative belongs to Antarctica, which is 5.5 million square miles and nearly the opposite of what springs to mind when thinking of deserts: It is very, very cold. Temperatures as low as -128.2 degrees Fahrenheit have been recorded there, and the ice is an average of 1.5 miles thick. But it isn’t snowy, and receives only about 2 inches of precipitation per year. That makes it one of the driest places on Earth, and certainly one of the most inhospitable — it has very little vegetation and is the only continent with no permanent human settlements.

The first known vending machine dispensed holy water.

Holy Water dispenser
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Author Nicole Villeneuve
November 21, 2023

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Because vending machines are now automated, they can feel like a relatively modern invention. However, the basic contraption has actually been around for more than 2,000 years. Introduced around the first century CE by Greek engineer and mathematician Heron of Alexandria, the first vending machine didn’t deliver snacks — it dispensed holy water. Similar to modern machines, Heron’s device required inserting a coin into a slot. The coin fell onto a pan that was connected to a lever, which opened a valve on the other end where the holy water flowed out. The pan continued to move under the weight of the coin until, eventually, the coin slid off. The lever would then raise back to its initial state and close the valve, stopping the flow of water.

The machine — described by Heron as a “sacrificial vessel” — was made to limit the amount of holy water people were using at ancient temples. (This was during the Hellenistic period, when Alexandria was a multicultural hub for various Roman, Greek, and Egyptian faiths.) Heron’s invention didn’t stick around with any regularity until centuries later, however. Throughout the 1600s and 1700s, coin-operated machines were used to sell tobacco in English taverns, and by the 1800s, they were selling everything from banned literary works to stamps. In 1888, a new chewing gum called Tutti-Frutti appeared in custom penny-operated vending machines on New York City subway platforms, introducing the United States to vending machines as we know them today.

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The microwave was invented by accident.

During World War II, Allied forces gained a significant tactical advantage by deploying the world’s first true radar system. The success of this system increased research into microwaves and the magnetrons (a type of electron tube) that generate them. One day around 1946, Percy Spencer, an engineer at the aerospace and defense company Raytheon, stepped in front of an active radar set and noticed, to his surprise, that microwaves produced from the radar melted a candy bar in his pocket. After getting over his shock — and presumably cleaning up — Spencer conducted a few more experiments using eggs and popcorn kernels, and realized that microwaves could be used to cook a variety of foods. Raytheon patented the invention a short time later, and in 1947, the company released its first microwave.

The Rocky Mountains were once called the Stony Mountains.

Pikes Peak in the Rocky Mountains
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Author Michael Nordine
January 16, 2025

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The Rocky Mountains have had many names since humans first came into contact with them, some more fanciful than others. Their current moniker comes from the Plains Cree term ᐊᓯᓃᐘᒋᐩ, usually transcribed as asinîwaciy and literally meaning “rocky mountain” or “alp.” The first European to describe the pride of Colorado was explorer Jacques Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, who gave them their current name when he called the mountains “montagnes de Roche” in a 1752 journal entry. Four decades later, the John Reid Company published a map in which they were called the Stony Mountains.

Another journal, this one belonging to fur trader Gabriel Franchere and written between 1811 and 1814, claimed “the first travellers called them the ‘Glittering Mountains,’ on account of the infinite number of immense rock crystals, which, they say, cover their surface, and … reflect to an immense distance the rays of sun.” The Rockies have also been called the Mountains of Bright Stones and the Shining Mountains, each name a testament to how striking they are.

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The Andes are the longest mountain range in the world.

The Rockies are massive, passing through six U.S. states (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico) in addition to two Canadian provinces (Alberta and British Columbia), but they aren’t the longest above-water mountain range in the world. That would be the Andes, which are 5,500 miles long — 2,500 miles longer than the Rockies. (The longest mountain range of any kind is the mid-ocean ridge.) The Andes extend across the entire western edge of South America, passing through Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela on their way to the Caribbean. Aconcagua, a mountain in Argentina, is the range’s peak at an elevation of 22,831 feet. The world’s highest volcanoes are also in the Andes, including the 22,615-foot-tall (and, thankfully, dormant) Ojos del Salado.

The average life expectancy in ancient Rome was 35 years.

Ancient Rome citizens
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Author Michael Nordine
January 15, 2025

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The Roman Empire is responsible for countless innovations that are still used on a daily basis, but it would be putting it lightly to say that medical science has advanced quite a bit since Rome fell. Given that — as well as all the gladiators, wars, and assassinated emperors — it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to learn that life expectancy in ancient Rome was just 35 years. Yet the real culprit behind that figure is actually the infant mortality rate at the time, as some 25% of babies born in the first century CE didn’t make it past 1 year old, and only half survived past the age of 10.

Life expectancy is an average, and one that has tended to increase over time, but lifespan hasn’t actually changed much in human history. Indeed, it was not uncommon for ancient Romans to live to a ripe old age. Gordian I was 81 when he became emperor of Rome, and Roman statesman Cicero’s wife Terentia lived to be 103, for instance. Pliny the Elder (who, despite his moniker, lived to be just 55 before dying in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius) was particularly impressed by one centenarian he studied. He wrote, “The solitary instance of Xenophilus, the musician, who lived one hundred and five years without any infirmity of body, must be regarded then as a kind of miracle.”

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The king of Pontus consumed small amounts of poison to develop an immunity to it.

History is written by the victors, but even Rome had to have been impressed by one of its greatest foes: Mithridates VI Eupator, who led the Kingdom of Pontus for nearly six decades and regularly waged war against the Roman Republic. The Romans considered him their most formidable opponent since Hannibal, with the three Mithridatic Wars fought between 89 BCE and 63 BCE to show for it. As he rightly believed he had a target on his back, Mithridates began ingesting small quantities of poison on a regular basis in order to develop an immunity to its effects. According to Roman physician Aulus Cornelius Celsus, this toxic concoction consisted of 36 different ingredients that were ground into a powder before being mixed with honey and formed into chewable tablets the size of an almond. It seems to have been effective: Mithridates tried to take his own life via poison after being soundly defeated by Pompey, but it didn’t work. More than 2,000 years later, the term “mithridate” survives to describe an antidote against poison.

People once used animal fat to do laundry. 

Woman with tub of laundry
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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
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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
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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
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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.  

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