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

Pirate hat and sword next to skull
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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.

Ducklings on a pier
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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
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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 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.

Slice of pumpkin pie
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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.

Ernest Hemingway preferred to write standing up.

Hemingway's office space
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Author Michael Nordine
October 16, 2023

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Every writer has their own routine, and it’s little surprise that Ernest Hemingway’s was as idiosyncratic as he was. The scribe behind A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises preferred to write in the morning, and did so standing up. This was “a working habit he has had from the beginning,” according to The Paris Review, and he might have picked up the habit from his editor, Maxwell Perkins. Though Hemingway preferred pencil, he turned to a tape recorder when he needed to get something down especially quickly, such as dialogue: “When the people are talking, I can hardly write it fast enough or keep up with it,” he told The New Yorker in 1950.

That was usually the second phase of his process. The first was often a rush marked by “paucity of punctuation, very few capitals, and often the period marked with an x,” as well as a daily word count, which The Paris Review marked as ranging from 450 on a slow day to 1,250 on an especially productive one. (These were usually followed by a full day of fishing, one of the writer’s lifelong pastimes.) That process yielded seven novels, two books of nonfiction, and six short story collections throughout Hemingway’s life, with several other works published posthumously. He won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Old Man and the Sea in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in literature the following year, the latter for “his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.”

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Hemingway survived two plane crashes in two days.

While flying over the Murchison Falls in Uganda in 1954, Hemingway and his then-wife, Mary Welsh Hemingway, crashed inside a small plane that left them on the crocodile-infested shore of the Nile. Many newspapers inaccurately reported them dead, but they were fine after camping overnight with some beer and whiskey to help pass the time. The ordeal didn’t end there, though: Their rescue plane’s fuel tank exploded the next day, crashing that aircraft as well. Hemingway suffered a fractured skull and traumatic brain injury, and his lingering injuries prevented him from traveling to Stockholm, Sweden, in order to accept his Nobel Prize. Instead, he penned a speech in which he said that a writer “does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.” 

In 1865, a single chord changed Western music forever.

"Tristan und Isolde" premier, 1865
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Author Michael Nordine
November 14, 2024

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Even if you haven’t heard of the Tristan chord, you’ve likely heard the sound itself. It was introduced to audiences on June 10, 1865, when Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde premiered at the National Theatre in Munich, Germany, and its unconventional tonality went on to transform Western music.

The augmented sixth chord (F, B, D#, G#) is fairly simple in and of itself, but subverted the long-standing musical tradition of a dissonant chord quickly being resolved. In the case of Tristan und Isolde, a tragedy about two doomed lovers, that would have been too easy. Instead, the unresolved tension of the chord reflects the sense of longing and yearning seen throughout the plot. The tonally ambiguous chord opens the opera, and it isn’t resolved until the end of the nearly four-hour performance, when the sad story itself concludes.

To call this groundbreaking would be putting it lightly. The augmented sixth chord had been used by such luminaries as Mozart and Beethoven before, but had always quickly been resolved. Wagner, in keeping with his characters’ deep pain, chose to delay that resolution. This influenced later composers such as Claude Debussy, Arnold Schoenberg, and Alexander Scriabin, all of whom went on to influence generations of composers themselves, and the Tristan chord is still being analyzed today.

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Several performers and conductors have died while working on "Tristan und Isolde."

Despite (or perhaps because of) its brilliance, Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde nearly didn’t make it to the stage. After more than 70 rehearsals for what was supposed to be its first performance, the opera was considered unperformable and canceled by the Vienna Court Opera. Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld became the first singer to perform the title role, but died just weeks later following a fever and then a stroke; Wagner vowed not to perform the opera again after blaming himself for the physically  demanding role, and indeed it was several years before another production was attempted. Conducting Tristan und Isolde proved fatal for both Felix Mottl, who collapsed during his 100th performance of the opera in 1911 and died soon after, and Joseph Keilberth, who also collapsed while conducting the opera in 1968. A study into the opera’s effects on its composers followed, but its results were never published. Both incidents occurred in the same place: Munich’s National Theatre, where Tristan und Isolde premiered in 1865.

Palm trees were a symbol of victory in ancient Rome.

Ancient Rome palm trees
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Author Darren Orf
October 14, 2023

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If there’s one thing ancient Rome is known for, it’s victory. First as a republic and then as an empire, Rome ruled the Mediterranean thanks to an impressive military winning streak. Centuries of overwhelming victories (with a few notable losses in the mix) eventually stretched Rome’s reach from the British Isles to the Middle East. Romans often marked these achievements with celebrations festooned with fronds from a date palm (Phoenix dactylifera). In fact, the palm trees (which, fun fact, are not actually trees) were so closely associated with victory, the Latin word “palma” is essentially a metonym for the word “victory.” In the Roman Republic (509 BCE to 27 BCE), victorious military leaders wore tunics known as “tunica palmata” during triumphs (massive military parades). Palms weren’t only a martial symbol; they were also given to victorious athletes, and Roman lawyers were known to affix palm fronds to their front doors when they won a case in the forum. 

Historical evidence suggests palms were first associated with athletic victory in ancient Greece, and became incorporated into Roman culture around 293 BCE. Palms can be spotted in a variety of Roman art, pottery, and coinage, and were also an early symbol of Christianity, which originally developed within Rome’s borders. Similar to its association with victory, the plant was an emblem for martyrdom, which was perceived as victory over sin and death in the early Christian faith. In fact, some 2,000 years later, the religion still celebrates Palm Sunday to mark Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem days before his crucifixion, viewed by some as the ultimate victory over death. 

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The date palm played a major role in early human civilization.

With its large fronds providing much-needed shade from the desert heat, and its energy-packed fruit delivering vital calories for travelers, the date palm was a vital plant for the expansion of early human civilization in the Middle East and North Africa. When humans began transitioning from a hunter-gatherer society to a farm-based one some 11,000 years ago, date palms were one of the first plants to be cultivated throughout the Arabian Peninsula. The plant can withstand the hot and dry conditions of these regions, thrive in saline soils, and still produce sugary fruit that can be easily stored for long stretches at a time. For centuries, artisans have weaved baskets using the date palm’s leaflets, and crafted structures and tools from its wood. Thanks to its importance, the date palm developed strong cultural and religious significance as well, and is mentioned around two dozen times in the Quran. 

Marie Curie donated her Nobel Prize to the WWI war effort.

Marie Curie monument
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Author Adam Levine
October 13, 2023

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During her legendary career as a physicist and chemist studying radioactivity, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize twice: once in physics in 1903, an award she shared with her husband Pierre and their colleague Henri Becquerel, and once in chemistry in 1911. When World War I broke out across Europe, Curie decided that she would use her prize to assist the war effort. She offered to donate the gold from her two medals to be melted down, but the French National Bank refused to accept the offer. Instead, Curie used most of the prize money she had received to purchase French war bonds.

The scientist’s contributions to the war effort didn’t stop there. She also used her expertise in radiology to develop mobile X-ray vans, which she and dozens of trained women, including her daughter and future Nobel winner Irène Curie, used to treat wounded soldiers. Curie’s mobile X-rays were a crucial innovation: Though X-ray machines were becoming commonplace in French hospitals, they were often far from the battlefield and too complex to carry in combat. The X-ray vans, nicknamed “little Curies,” were equipped with machines that could locate shrapnel and broken bones in wounded soldiers, and provide them with more immediate medical care.

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President Warren G. Harding gave Marie Curie a gram of radium.

During Marie Curie’s career, radioactive elements were incredibly rare, and Curie and her colleagues had trouble finding sufficient amounts for study. In a 1921 interview with American journalist W.B. (Marie) Meloney, Curie revealed that her laboratory only had 1 gram of radium available for experimentation. Upon learning this, Meloney founded the Marie Curie Radium Fund, which raised money, mostly from American women who admired Curie’s work, to purchase more radium for the esteemed scientist to study. The effort was a massive success: Donors raised $100,000, a fortune sufficient to purchase an additional gram of radium. Curie received the gram of radium during a trip to the U.S., where it was presented to her by President Warren G. Harding. During the ceremony, the President called Curie the “foremost among scientists in the age of science,” and a “leader among women in the generation which sees woman come tardily into her own.”

Pangaea wasn’t the only supercontinent.

Supercontinent Rodinia
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Author Michael Nordine
November 14, 2024

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Despite breaking apart into the seven continents we know and love around 200 million years ago, Pangaea remains fairly well known long after its heyday. Less well known is the fact that it wasn’t the only supercontinent in Earth’s history. Pangaea was preceded by at least one other: Rodinia, which formed about 1.3 billion years ago and separated 750 million years ago. There was also the relatively short-lived Pannotia, which was here for about 50 million years beginning 600 million years ago, though there’s debate as to whether its landmasses ever fully formed into a single continent.

A number of other supercontinents may also have existed, including Gondwana (likely the best known), as well as Atlantica and Vaalbara, which remain disputed due to a lack of evidence. Some consider these megacontinents instead, which are smaller — the conventional definition of a supercontinent is a landmass consisting of at least 75% of the planet’s continental crust. Pangaea formed between 320 million and 195 million years ago due to plate tectonics — an incredibly slow process that shifts the Earth’s surface over the course of hundreds of millions of years — and broke apart for the same reason. This is also why North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica won’t be here forever, with several continents likely to merge, but we probably won’t have to update our maps anytime soon.

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Another supercontinent might form in the next 250 million years.

Supercontinents are believed to form every 300 million to 500 million years or so, which means we’re due for another one in a few hundred million years. When they aren’t busy deciding whether to call it Pangaea Ultima, Pangaea II, or Pangaea Proxima, scientists have been speculating as to the effects the supercontinent will have on life — most of which aren’t especially rosy. Due to increased volcanic activity and much higher carbon dioxide levels, as much as 92% of the planet could be uninhabitable to mammals when the next supercontinent forms in about 250 million years.

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