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Humans have been wrapping gifts since the second century.

Measuring wrapping paper
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Author Nicole Villeneuve
December 5, 2024

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Decorative wrapping has long been an integral part of gift-giving. Over the years, studies have shown that gift wrap can even positively influence the perception of a gift — a fact that was clearly understood in some ancient cultures. When paper first emerged in ancient China around the second century BCE, it was primarily used for wrapping medicine and delicate goods. But during the Southern Song dynasty from 1127 to 1279 CE, wrapping paper took on an intentional and meaningful role not unlike how it’s used today: Monetary gifts from the imperial court were presented wrapped in paper envelopes known as chih poh. 

In Korea, wrapping gifts may have started even earlier. Records such as the Samguk sagi, a 12th-century historical Korean text, note the use of a decorative cloth known as bojagi for wrapping gifts throughout the Three Kingdoms period from 57 BCE to 668 CE; most early bojagi artifacts, however, date to the later Joseon period, from 1392 to 1910.

The Western world was much slower to embrace the practice. The proliferation of elaborately decorated Christmas cards in Victorian England led to early gift wrapping, and the tradition spread from there to the U.S., where the wrapping paper industry boomed. In 1917, while running their namesake Hallmark stationery store in Kansas City, Missouri, the Hall brothers ran out of traditional tissue paper during the Christmas season. Scrambling for a solution, they began selling decorative paper envelope liners as a replacement. The colorful sheets were a hit, and by 1919, the brothers began producing and selling their own printed wrapping paper for several occasions, transforming how we give gifts.

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Christmas was once banned in Massachusetts.

When early English settlers arrived in Virginia in 1607, they brought with them a reverence for their European Christmas traditions. Though their celebrations didn’t match those back home — the hardships of colonial life didn’t allow much fanfare — the Virginia colonists still considered Christmas a sacred and restful day. In Massachusetts, however, following England’s lead during the English Civil Wars, the Puritans outright banned Christmas in 1659. The extreme Protestants believed the holiday had no biblical basis and denounced its pagan traditions; the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony fined anyone caught celebrating the holiday five shillings. Though England lifted its ban with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Massachusetts enforced its law until 1681. Even after that, the holiday remained controversial in New England for decades. It wasn’t until 1856 that Christmas officially became a public holiday in the Bay State.

British kings had attendants to help them go to the bathroom.

The royal toilet
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
November 1, 2023

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During the reign of Henry VII, a curious job emerged to serve the king of England: the “groom of the stool,” an attendant who helped with the monarch’s toileting. The “stool” in the title refers not to excrement, but to the “close stool,” a luxurious portable toilet that followed the king during his travels. One close stool made for Henry VIII in 1546 was trimmed in ribbon and gilt nails, and came with a leather carrying case.

The groom was in charge of the close stool and monitoring the king’s bathroom habits, and may have even helped clean the royal bottom afterward. But it wasn’t considered a menial job — it was a prestigious position held by men of influence. Perhaps due to the intimate nature of the gig, the groom of the stool was a close royal adviser, too. Henry VII’s longtime groom Hugh Denys eventually became the king’s personal treasurer. Henry VIII’s first groom, William Compton, handled many of his personal affairs from the get-go, including arranging romantic encounters. (He eventually became fabulously rich.) Henry VIII’s final groom, Arthur Denny, even controlled his signature stamp.

The last known groom of the stool, at least by that name, was Michael Stanhope, who worked under King Edward VI in the 16th century. The office lapsed during the reign of two female monarchs, Queen Mary and the last Tudor monarch, Queen Elizabeth I, who both had their own set of domestic staff. During the reign of the Stuarts, starting in the early 17th century, the title changed to the more polite “groom of the stole,” referring to dressing the king rather than doing his dirty work. King Edward VII eliminated the position entirely when he ascended to the throne in 1901.

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Shakespeare was not above toilet humor.

Don’t let the dense verse fool you: Shakespeare loved a potty joke. In The Comedy of Errors, for example, Dromio of Ephesus delivers this line about flatulence: “A man may break a word with you, sir, and words are but wind / Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind.” The Bard even made a couple of jokes about close stools specifically, such as in All’s Well That Ends Well, when Parolles requests that the clown deliver a letter. “Foh! prithee, stand away,” the clown responds, “a paper from fortune's close-stool to give to a nobleman!”

Roman ships used flamethrowers as far back as the seventh century.

Byzantine flame thrower
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
December 5, 2024

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Modern flamethrowers emerged at the turn of the 20th century, but the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire, was far ahead of the curve. The empire’s most closely guarded secret — its exact formula is a mystery even today — was its recipe for Greek fire, a napalm-like incendiary substance. The Byzantines first deployed it to defend Constantinople from an Arab attack, loading it into bronze siphons and firing it under pressure at enemy ships, like an early version of a flamethrower. (They would also fill pots with Greek fire and hurl them like grenades.) Because it caught fire spontaneously and couldn’t be extinguished by water, it was a powerful and destructive naval weapon, and it helped the Byzantines stay in power for centuries.

Callinicus of Heliopolis, a Greek-speaking refugee who fled to Constantinople from Syria after the city was conquered and became part of the Rashidun Caliphate, is widely credited for inventing Greek fire. Historians are pretty confident that it was petroleum- or naphtha-based, possibly sourced from Crimea. Other possible ingredients include quicklime, sulfur, and saltpeter. Its volatility meant that it was extremely dangerous to manufacture — and distilling the petroleum product would have been pretty advanced tech for the time. The weapon was a mainstay of the Byzantine arsenal for centuries, and despite one of their flamethrowers being captured once, nobody else managed to crack the code.

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Sword fighters in Renaissance Italy had lantern shields.

Sword fighters in Renaissance-era Italy would often duel at dawn, carrying lanterns to both light their way and also use as weapons in their own right. Fencing manuals at the time instructed students on how to use lanterns to blind opponents and deflect blows. Armorers started adding a hook for hanging these lanterns on shields, sometimes even embedding lanterns into them. Eventually, things got a little out of hand; one particularly famous lantern shield also includes a gauntlet and a dagger. Ultimately, lantern shields turned out to not be very practical, since it was pretty easy to accidentally snuff out the lantern or scald yourself with lamp oil.

“Pennsylvania” is written with a missing “n” on the Liberty Bell.

Liberty bell up close
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Author Adam Levine
October 31, 2023

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In 1751, Pennsylvania statesman Isaac Norris placed an order to the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London for a large bell to be placed in the State House in Philadelphia. The bell was meant to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Pennsylvania Charter of Privileges, the colony’s original constitution. Now known as the Liberty Bell, this colonial landmark remains on display in Philadelphia as a symbol of the United States’ ideals of liberty and equality. The bell is inscribed with a Bible verse extolling the virtues of liberty, as well as these words: “By Order of the Assembly of the Province of Pensylvania for the State House in Philada.” That’s right, Pennsylvania is spelled with a missing “n” on the Liberty Bell — but it’s not a typo. Though it looks unorthodox today, “Pensylvania” was generally accepted in the 18th century as one of several legitimate spellings for the colony’s name, along with “Pensilvania” and “Pennsilvania.” 

In fact, this same spelling of “Pensylvania” appears in the U.S. Constitution, in the section where delegates from Pennsylvania signed their names to the document. The word was written by Alexander Hamilton in that instance, but the “Pennsylvania” spelling we know now appears elsewhere in the Constitution. To this day, the word “Pensylvania” remains unaltered on both the Liberty Bell and the Constitution, forever enshrining this alternate spelling in the story of the nation’s founding.

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The Liberty Bell was hidden during the Revolutionary War.

For about 10 months during the American Revolutionary War, the Liberty Bell was rushed away from Philadelphia to a hidden location that was classified as a military secret. The mission to hide the bell was launched in 1777, and in September of that year, George Washington’s troops were defeated by the British army at the Battle of Brandywine in Pennsylvania. Washington’s defeat left Philadelphia vulnerable to British occupation, and the British began advancing on the city. Anticipating the impending invasion, Philadelphians rushed to remove all the large bells in the city — including the Liberty Bell — so that the occupying soldiers wouldn’t be able to melt them down to make new weapons. The bell was relocated from Philadelphia to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where it was hidden underneath the floorboards of a local church. It remained concealed in the church until June 1778, when the British occupation of Philadelphia ended and the bell could safely be returned to Philadelphia.

Some Civil War ships used cotton for armor.

Civil War battle ship
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Author Michael Nordine
October 31, 2023

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When the Civil War began in 1861, the United States Navy had just 90 warships. By the conflict’s end four years later, it had 626. Sixty-five of the ships were ironclads, which were the strongest seafaring vessels in the world at the time. But they were also expensive and made from scarce resources, which is why they accounted for such a small percentage of either side’s fleet. Hence the Confederacy’s eventual reliance on “cottonclads,” which were armored with 500-pound bales of cotton lining their sides. Because they were weaker than their iron counterparts, cottonclads would often steam at full speed toward their combatants as the cotton absorbed as much enemy gunfire as possible, then would attack once they were within firing range. 

This proved more successful than you might expect. The Battle of Galveston began before dawn on January 1, 1863, with cottonclads playing a crucial role in the Confederate victory; the South held the Texas port for the rest of the war. Nevertheless, the Confederates were ultimately bested on the sea just as they were on land, failing to defend their rivers, coasts, and seas en route to their eventual surrender.

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Civil War generals were more likely to die in combat than privates.

We often think of the lowest-ranking soldiers as the most vulnerable when it comes to dying in combat, but that wasn’t the case during the Civil War. Generals and other high-ranking officers personally led their troops into battle during the internecine conflict (which remains the war with the most American fatalities by a considerable margin), making them 50% more likely to die in combat than privates. Six generals were killed and several more were wounded during the Battle of Antietam alone, the bloodiest one-day battle in American history. Perhaps unsurprisingly, generals have rarely entered the fray in subsequent wars.  

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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