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France had a calendar with 10-hour days during the revolution.

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10-hour decimal clock
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Author Bennett Kleinman
October 11, 2023

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French Revolutionary Time was a short-lived concept that used a base-10 timekeeping system. Otherwise known as “decimal time,” this unprecedented method included 10-hour days, 100 minutes per hour, and 100 seconds per minute. Each day was divided into 10 equal parts, with “zero” marking the start (what is now midnight) and “five” denoting the midpoint (noon). This meant that every hour was more than twice as long as an hour of standard time. New clocks and watches were even manufactured displaying both decimal time and standard time, to considerable confusion. 

While France formally adopted this practice on November 24, 1793, the idea was first promoted in 1754. That year, mathematician Jean le Rond d’Alembert drew inspiration from the base-10 numeral system that had existed since ancient times and argued that it would be easier and more convenient to calculate times that were divisible by 10. The concept was revived in 1788 and met with enthusiasm from French revolutionaries seeking to shed their ties to the past. French Revolutionary Time was later adopted by the French Parliament, though it proved to be unpopular among citizens who found the switch confusing. The new system was deemed optional on April 7, 1795, and the country ultimately reverted to the previous timekeeping method.

In addition to changing how the country kept time, revolutionary France also adopted the French Republican calendar. The new formula divided the year into 12 months, each of which contained three 10-day weeks. To bring the total days up to 365, France tacked on five additional days at the end of the year as holidays. Debuted on October 24, 1793, the new calendar was also short-lived, and was abolished by Napoleon Bonaparte on January 1, 1806.

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September 1752 was only 19 days long in Britain.

In 1752, the month of September was only 19 days long throughout the British Empire (including its colonies in America), due to the Calendar (New Style) Act of 1750. That parliamentary move transferred the British from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, the former having overestimated each year's length by about 11 minutes. Back in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII had declared that all countries under the dominion of the Catholic Church needed to adopt the Gregorian calendar, but many Protestant nations — including England — resisted those demands. When Britain finally converted to the Gregorian calendar in 1752 in an effort to catch up with other nations, the country jumped straight from September 2 to September 14, skipping the 11 days in between to account for the errors of the old calendar. 

The oldest known song is from the 14th century BCE.

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Hurrian hymn tablet
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Author Darren Orf
September 20, 2023

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Music is as old as humanity itself: Our Paleolithic ancestors likely sung lullabies to their children, and evidence of ancient instruments dates back some 40,000 years. But when it comes to recorded history, specific melodies are hard to come by. That’s why the cuneiform tablet known as “Hurrian Hymn No. 6” is such an incredible artifact. Dating back to the 14th century BCE — some 3,400 years ago — it is the oldest known melody in human history. 

As the name suggests, the song was originally composed by the Hurrians, an ancient people who lived in parts of modern-day Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Originally a dedication to the Mesopotamian goddess Nikkal, the hymn was unearthed in the Syrian city of Ugarit in the 1950s, and the artifact is now housed at the National Museum of Damascus. The tablet contains not only near-complete musical notation and lyrics, but also instructions on how to perform the song on a nine-stringed lyre, a U-shaped harp that was popular throughout Mesopotamia. Many varied versions of “Hurrian Hymn No. 6” exist today, largely due to translation inconsistencies, but one of the most popular compositions is from Syrian American composer Malek Jandali, who has performed the ancient piece with a solo piano and also a full orchestra. 

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An organ in Germany is currently playing a song that will end in the year 2640.

On September 5, 2001, a song began playing at St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany, and it won’t be over until the year 2640. Composed by avant-garde artist John Cage in 1987, the song is titled “Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow As Possible),” and although the piece began in 2001, it opened with a 17-month-long pause before the first tone began to sound — and notes can last much longer. In early September 2020, for example, a crowd gathered at St. Burchardi to usher in a note change, the first in about seven years. The selection of this particular church to host the musical experiment is no coincidence. In 1361, the first organ to split an octave into 12 semitones was installed in the church, and some consider that occasion to be the birth of modern music. When Cage’s drawn-out composition sounds its final note six centuries from now, the church will bag another accolade: as host to the longest song ever performed.

Bootleggers wore cow shoes to cover their tracks during Prohibition.

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Bootlegger cow shoes
Credit: Everett Collection Inc/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bennett Kleinman
September 25, 2024

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During the Prohibition era in the U.S., the continued demand for alcohol led to a drastic increase in the illegal manufacturing and trafficking of booze. This illicit profession, known as bootlegging, required clever work-arounds to avoid detection from federal officials. One unusual trick that bootleggers turned to was wearing “cow shoes” in an effort to quite literally cover their tracks. The disguise entailed outfitting the soles of normal shoes with wooden blocks that left behind markings that looked like cow tracks instead of shoe prints.

As described in a 1922 article in the Evening Independent of St. Petersburg, Florida, “The cow shoe is… a wooden block carved to resemble the hoof of a cow, which may be strapped to the human foot.” The idea was to make it more difficult for feds to track down hidden bootlegging operations in places such as the middle of the woods, where many crime syndicates set up shop. The simple scheme was rumored to be inspired by a Sherlock Holmes short story called “The Adventure of the Priory School,” in which a criminal uses fake cow tracks to cover up their crimes. By the mid-1920s, however, federal officials had seized some cow shoes and were well aware of the ruse, and so the practice waned in popularity.

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Mississippi continued to ban alcohol until 1966.

When Prohibition ended in 1933, many states were quick to allow the sale and manufacture of alcohol once again — but not all of them. Kansas continued to ban alcohol until 1948, and Oklahoma held out until 1959. But Mississippi was the longest such holdout, continuing to impose statewide alcohol restrictions until 1966. The people of Mississippi voted against repealing Prohibition in both 1934 and 1952, and  future legislative debates on the topic failed to produce any change. Governor Paul B. Johnson Jr. finally repealed the ban a full 33 years after the 21st Amendment was ratified. While there are no dry states today, there are still several dry counties, including dozens throughout Mississippi.

The Senate picked the vice president once in history.

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U.S. Senate chamber
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Author Michael Nordine
September 20, 2023

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The United States has had some strange elections over the last 230-odd years, few more so than the presidential contest of 1836 — the one and only time that the Senate picked the vice president. Like the president, veeps are chosen by the Electoral College, and that year three names were on the ballot: Richard Mentor Johnson (who received 147 electoral votes), Francis Granger (77), and John Tyler (47). Johnson was the running mate of Democrat Martin Van Buren, who emerged victorious in the presidential race with 170 electoral votes. When it came to the vice presidential race, however, the Virginia delegation became faithless electors due to Johnson’s many controversies — including the fact that he had a relationship and two children with an enslaved woman named Julia Chinn — and cast their votes elsewhere. As fate would have it, the 147 electoral votes Johnson received left him one shy of a majority.

The Senate was thus called upon to exercise one of its rarest and most important duties. On February 8, 1837, it elected the beleaguered Johnson as vice president by a party-line vote of 33 to 16. Johnson had represented Kentucky in the upper chamber for 10 years, and upon being elected expressed the self-deprecating hope that “the intelligence of the Senate will guard the country from any injury that might result from the imperfections of its presiding officer.” He spent much of his term running his tavern back in Kentucky, eventually came to be considered a liability for Van Buren, and was dropped by the Democratic Party for the reelection campaign, leaving Van Buren without an official running mate. 

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The vice president wasn’t officially first in the line of succession until 1967.

From John Tyler to Lyndon B. Johnson, many veeps have fulfilled the solemn duty of becoming president when their predecessors died in office. Though this has always been tradition, it wasn’t formalized as law until the 25th Amendment was ratified in 1967 — four years after the last time it was actually needed. Section 1 reads, quite simply, “In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.” It also allows for the temporary transfer of power when the commander in chief is incapacitated, as when undergoing surgery, in which case the VP briefly serves as acting president.

James Joyce used crayons when writing his novels.

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James Joyce portrait
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Author Michael Nordine
September 20, 2023

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James Joyce didn’t just write some of the most acclaimed novels of the 20th century — he did so using crayon. Though it sounds like a quirky affectation on the part of the Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man author, it was actually a medical necessity. Because Joyce had trouble with his eyesight and was nearly blind by the time he wrote Finnegans Wake in the last few years of his life, “the large crayons thus helped him see what he was writing,” according to culture writer Maria Popova. Joyce was farsighted as a child and had severe issues with his eyesight by the time he reached his 20s; these problems only worsened after a bout of rheumatic fever left him afflicted with the condition iritis.

Fortunately for readers, Joyce was as adaptable as he was brilliant. He began writing while “lying on his stomach in bed, with a large blue pencil, clad in a white coat” that reflected more light back at the empty page at night. This process became even more elaborate during the editing phase, when Joyce relied on crayons of varying colors (namely orange, blue, red, and green) to underline and circle individual words or sentences and even cross out entire pages. Finnegans Wake in particular remains one of the English language’s most difficult and inscrutable works some 85 years after it was written, but at least there’s no mystery as to how it was written.

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Some of Joyce’s most celebrated contemporaries hated his work.

Virginia Woolf — who, like Joyce, lived from 1882 to 1941 — famously responded to Ulysses by describing its author as “a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples,” adding that “one hopes he’ll grow out of it; but as Joyce is 40 this scarcely seems likely.” Author H.G. Wells, widely regarded as the father of science fiction, was equally harsh in his appraisal of Finnegans Wake. “Do I get much pleasure from this work? No,” he wrote. “So I ask: Who the hell is this Joyce who demands so many waking hours of the few thousand I have still to live for a proper appreciation of his quirks and fancies and flashes of rendering?” Then there was D.H. Lawrence, who proclaimed, “My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is!” Joyce’s work is challenging, so it makes sense that he’s more acclaimed now than he was in his own time. Still, he was understandably bothered by the fact that his wife, Nora Barnacle, couldn’t make sense of his work either. After Ulysses was published, she asked him, “Why don’t you write sensible books that people can understand?”

Couples in the Victorian era exchanged engraved coins. 

  • 17th-century love tokens
17th-century love tokens
Credit: Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum/ CC BY-SA 4.0
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
September 19, 2024

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People have always used trinkets to show their love, whether in the form of jewelry, locks of hair, or even fancy spoons. In the Victorian era, love tokens — ordinary coins that were engraved for a loved one — were a popular choice. The practice of exchanging love tokens dates back to at least the 18th century (and possibly even earlier), and it reached its peak in the United States and Great Britain in the late 19th century.

One possible influence on love tokens were treizains (French for “thirteen”), a set of 13 custom-carved coins given to French couples on their wedding days. Some early love tokens were also carved by people about to be sent off to Britain’s penal colony in Australia for the loved ones they were leaving behind; sometimes called “prisoner tokens,” these were typically carved by tapping out little dots with a hammer and nail. Meanwhile, love tokens took off in America during the U.S. Civil War, when many soldiers had someone waiting for them back home.

By the middle of the Victorian era, love tokens had become — like most hallmarks of the time — quite ornate. Engravers found extra work carving elaborate designs for customers to give not just to romantic partners, but also to family members and dear friends, too. They could even be used to propose marriage; diamonds weren’t marketed as an engagement must-have until the 1930s. Initials — typically those of the recipient — were common coin designs, as were birds — often bluebirds for happiness, or lovebirds, or turtle doves for romance — and landscapes. But because these were deeply personal gifts, all sorts of images that were meaningful to the recipient or the relationship made their way into the carvings. The popularity of love tokens declined by the turn of the 20th century, when they were largely usurped by lockets — although soldiers in both world wars carved coins in the trenches for their loved ones back at home.

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The souvenir penny press debuted at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

Many love token artisans set up shop at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, but so did a more mechanical coin designer. The fair marked the first known creation of what coin enthusiasts call “elongated pennies” — those souvenir pennies pressed into commemorative designs at tourist spots. For an extra nickel, the machine’s operator would take a coin from fairgoers and run it through a hand-cranked machine that embossed it with the words “Columbian Exposition 1893.” You may have cranked one of these machines on your own vacation at museums and other tourist hot spots. Disney has around 40 of the machines scattered throughout its theme parks; Disneyland even has a dedicated mechanic to repair them.

French waiters once went on strike for the right to grow mustaches.

  • Paris waiter circa 1900
Paris waiter circa 1900
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Author Nicole Villeneuve
September 20, 2023

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In 1907, one of the more unusual strikes in France’s history unfolded. Better wages and working conditions were at stake, as is often the case, but this strike was also about something unexpected: the right to grow a mustache. Mustaches were at their peak in early 20th-century Europe, and were even obligatory for policemen — an attempt to convey military-like masculinity and authority. Restaurant servers, however, were forced to be clean-shaven, a reminder of their “lower class” status. Behind closed doors, trade unions began organizing a strike for workers’ rights to autonomy over their facial hair. They were also fighting for one day off a week and their fair share of tips, which were often the only source of pay for servers. Surveys about dates and times were sent to the various unions and, after results were compiled, strike instructions were sent to union members. On April 17, 1907, at 6:30 p.m. sharp, waiters walked off the job. 

Although the number of servers who took to the streets in protest is unclear, The New York Times estimated it at about 500 by late April. While the strike wasn’t without its critics, the waitstaff found solidarity in high places, including in Parliament. Socialist Deputy Antide Boyer — who, even before the strike, had proposed a bill that would make mustache bans illegal — told The New York Times the mustache rule was “grotesque and humiliating.” Boyer’s bill never actually passed, but the strike resolved quickly. After 16 days, the waiters returned to work. They did not get their desired one day off per week, but a fairer pay structure was in place — as were their mustaches.

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Mustaches were required for British soldiers in the 19th century.

Despite changing views on facial hair over time, in 1860, mustaches were a requirement in the British Army. “The chin and the under-lip will be shaved, but not the upper lip,” read the Regulations and Orders for the Army. Facial hair had previously been banned, but during the Crimean War (1853-1856), soldiers grew out their facial hair as insulation against the bitter Eastern European cold. When they returned, their beards were seen as symbols of heroism; even Queen Victoria remarked on the soldiers’ appearances. “They had all long beards & were heavily laden with large knapsacks,” she wrote in her journal. “The whole sight gave one a real idea of what the life and appearance of the men, on service out there, must have been.” After that, beards became the common fashion throughout Victorian-era England.

Emperor Hirohito was buried wearing a Mickey Mouse watch.

  • Japanese Emperor Hirohito, 1989
Japanese Emperor Hirohito, 1989
Credit: colaimages/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine
September 19, 2024

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You might be a Disney adult, but if you’re not planning to be buried with a Mickey Mouse accessory, it would appear you’re less of a fan than Japanese Emperor Hirohito, who was interred wearing his Mickey watch. The monarch, who reigned over Japan from 1926 to 1989, first visited the “Happiest Place on Earth” in 1975 after being a fan of Disney cartoons for decades. It was then that he was gifted the watch, which he was apparently quite taken by.

The emperor’s love of the timepiece was noted several times before his passing, including in a 1984 Washington Post article marking his 83rd birthday. “Hirohito expressed his approval of America not in words but with a gesture,” the Post reported. “For years afterward, he wore a Mickey Mouse watch that he picked up at Disneyland.” Anyone who wears the same shirt every time they visit the “Happiest Place on Earth” can surely relate.

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Hirohito was the longest-reigning emperor in Japanese history.

Japan’s hereditary imperial line has been unbroken for more than a thousand years (according to Japan’s official record, which includes several early mythological emperors), and Hirohito became the country’s 124th emperor on Christmas Day in 1926. He served in that role until his death on January 7, 1989, a 62-year reign that stands as the longest in Japanese history. Next on the list is the transformational Emperor Meiji, whose restoration modernized the country and opened it to the West. Hirohito’s successor, his first son, Akihito, ruled until 2019 — a reign that ended not with his death but with his abdication, making him the first Japanese emperor to relinquish the throne since Emperor Kōkaku in 1817.

The oldest recorded customer complaint is from 1750 BCE.

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Reading customer reviews
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Author Bennett Kleinman
September 20, 2023

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Customer dissatisfaction is far from a modern phenomenon; in fact, the oldest recorded complaint dates back 3,773 years. The grievance was etched into a tablet that was rediscovered during excavations of the Sumerian city-state Ur in the early 20th century. Dating back to 1750 BCE, this tablet was written by Nanni, a dissatisfied customer whose ire was directed toward a copper merchant named Ea-nasir. In the complaint, Nanni expressed dismay over the quality of copper they received, accusing the trader of poor treatment and demanding money back. The translated text includes exasperated statements such as, “Who am I that you are treating me… with such contempt?” Nanni also wasn’t the only customer who felt slighted by this Ea-nasir — there’s archaeological evidence of other Sumerian individuals who expressed frustration over the quality of copper from the same merchant.

The complaint tablet was one of several fascinating discoveries uncovered during British archaeologist Leonard Woolley’s excavations of Ur between 1922 and 1934. Woolley and his team dug out 1,800 burial sites, including the spectacular tomb of Queen Puabi, one of the few female rulers in ancient Mesopotamia. Much like the Egyptian tomb of King Tut, Puabi’s tomb was largely intact and included a headdress worn by the queen, made of lapis lazuli (a blue gemstone), ribbons, and gold. Woolley also uncovered layers of water-laid clay, which likely formed during a great flood. Some theories suggest that this ancient flood may have influenced writings about the deluge of water described in the Bible’s Book of Genesis, though these theories are difficult to confirm.

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The ancient Sumerians invented the basis for our modern timekeeping system.

While modern mathematics largely relies on a base-10 numeral system, the way we measure time and angles is directly influenced by an entirely different system developed by the ancient Sumerians. Sumer’s sexagesimal (base-60) system was created around 3100 BCE. Though this numerical system lacked any concept of zero — which Indian mathematicians later remedied — the base-60 system proved to be a valuable tool nonetheless, and it’s the reason our seconds and minutes are counted in groups of 60. It also provided an easy way to measure angles, which had a direct influence on how modern geographic coordinates (longitude and latitude) are measured. The ancient Babylonians adopted Sumer’s base-60 numeral system and parts of it were passed down to future generations — all the way through until today. 

Cotton candy was invented by a dentist.

  • Spinning candy floss
Spinning candy floss
Tobias Titz/ fStop via Getty Images
Author Nicole Villeneuve
September 20, 2023

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Cotton candy consists of just two simple ingredients: air and sugar. The supersweet indulgence seems like the last thing a dental health professional would promote, but it was invented by a dentist from Tennessee in 1897.

Born in Nashville in 1860, William James Morrison was quite successful by his early 30s, having graduated from dental school and been made president of the Tennessee State Dental Association in 1894. As accomplished as he was in his professional life, Morrison also racked up a number of impressive inventions: He patented a device to extract oils from cottonseed and turn them into a lard substitute, as well as a process that chemically purified Nashville’s drinking water. In 1897, Morrison turned to John C. Wharton, a local candymaker, for his next invention. Together, they worked on building what they called the “electric candy machine,” a device that melted sugar, then used air to force it through a mesh screen and into a spinning chamber. The result was the cloudlike confection we now know as cotton candy — then called, appropriately whimsically, “Fairy Floss.” 

Morrison and Wharton introduced their invention at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. They sold the Fairy Floss in small boxes for 25 cents each — half the price of admission. Despite its high price tag, Fairy Floss was a hit, selling 68,655 boxes and grossing $17,163.75 (that’s over $500,000 today) during the fair’s seven-month run. In the 1920s, Fairy Floss got its more commonly known current name when a man named Josef Lascaux started dabbling in his own confectionery. He called the treat “cotton candy,” and he sold it from his — believe it or not — Louisiana dentist office.

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Scientists use cotton candy to make artificial human blood vessels.

Cotton candy may not be the healthiest snack choice available, but, in an ironic twist, it just might help to save lives. Scientists have been using the candy floss’s delicate structure to create artificial human blood vessels — it turns out that the sweet strands are similar in size. Researchers at Vanderbilt University spin the cotton candy (or cotton candylike) fibers, pour a gelatinous mixture over the strands, and, once it’s hardened, dissolve the sugar with an enzyme solution. What’s left is an intricate mold that’s very similar to the human capillary system. The cotton candy creativity is helping to solve a long-running problem when it comes to making artificial tissues and organs — they don’t have a proper capillary system. If the artificial capillaries are successful, it’ll be a major advancement in tissue and organ generation.

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