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“Sense and Sensibility” was originally credited as being written “By a Lady.”

"Sense and Sensibility"
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Author Nicole Villeneuve
October 11, 2023

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Even though Sense and Sensibility now ranks as one of the most beloved novels in English literature — and Jane Austen as one of the most famous writers of all time — the book’s first edition, released as three volumes in 1811, was originally published without the author’s name. During the time Austen lived and wrote, it was common for women to use pseudonyms or publish anonymously, and Sense and Sensibility was credited as being written simply “By a Lady” on the title page. 

Growing up in the village of Steventon in Hampshire, England, Austen took measures to hide her beloved writing hobby from society, even though her family encouraged her from a young age. Her father believed in her talent and, early on, tried — but failed — to secure a publisher for the manuscript that eventually became Pride and Prejudice. When Austen was about 19 years old, she began working on Elinor and Marianne, a novel about the lives and romantic pursuits of the Dashwood sisters. Austen eventually renamed the completed manuscript Sense and Sensibility, and in 1810, Thomas Egerton of London’s Military Library publishing house agreed to publish it.

The book was a big success, selling out its first print run in less than two years. Yet Austen’s next novel, Pride and Prejudice, was also published without her name: It was credited as “By the author of Sense and Sensibility.” Although by that point her identity had already become an open secret among those in the know, Jane Austen’s name didn’t appear on any of her books until after her death.

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Jane Austen’s first novel was almost published eight years before “Sense and Sensibility.”

Northanger Abbey was one of two Jane Austen novels published five months after the author’s death, but it was supposed to come out 14 years earlier — eight years before Austen’s debut novel, Sense and Sensibility. Austen completed the manuscript, originally titled Susan, between 1798 and 1799, when she was in her early 20s. In 1803, her brother Henry helped negotiate the £10 sale of the manuscript to London publisher Crosby and Co.; an advertisement announcing Susan’s release appeared soon after, but the book never did. In 1816, the publisher sold the manuscript back to Henry for its original price, and Austen went about making revisions to the novel, including changing the working title to Catherine. It was ultimately renamed Northanger Abbey and released in a four-volume set with the novel Persuasion shortly after Austen’s death in 1817.

Basketball was originally played with a soccer ball.

James Naismith with ball
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Author Bennett Kleinman
October 11, 2023

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Long before bright orange basketballs made their way onto NBA courts, the earliest basketball games were played using soccer balls. Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith, a physical education teacher at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, who sought to create a new indoor activity that could be played by students during the winter months. Naismith asked the school’s janitor to fetch him two 18-square-inch boxes for “goals,” but the janitor returned with two peach baskets instead. Naismith nailed those baskets to the railing of the gymnasium balcony, which happened to be 10 feet off the ground (this is why official NBA hoops measure 10 feet high today). After Naismith procured a soccer ball, as basketballs of course didn’t exist yet, the new game was ready to be played.

The original version of basketball followed a list of 13 rules regarding fouls and ball movement. Players were required to remain stationary when in possession of the ball, as continuous dribbling wasn’t instituted until 1909. The game featured nine players per side and was divided into 15-minute halves. Naismith also enlisted the help of two men to retrieve the ball from the baskets at each end, as holes weren’t cut into the bottom of the baskets until years later. The game proved extremely popular, and the first official basketball was developed by the sports equipment company Spalding in 1894. The new sport led to the creation of the National Basketball League in 1937 and the Basketball Association of America in 1946, which merged to form the National Basketball Association in 1949.

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Pedestrianism was a competitive sport in the 19th century.

Pedestrianism — a form of competitive walking — gained widespread popularity throughout the United States in the wake of the Civil War. As more people moved into cities, residents turned to the sport of pedestrianism to fill an activity void. The sport was simple but entertaining: Participants competed in six-day walking competitions in large-scale arenas, hoofing it several hundred miles over the course of the contest. The events often featured intense wagering, live bands, and food vendors. Many professional pedestrians also employed their own unique strides: Edward Payson Weston was renowned for his signature wobble, and Daniel O’Leary pumped his arms furiously while clutching corn cobs in each hand to absorb his sweat. Pedestrianism grew into such a spectacle that on September 21, 1879, 13 professional walkers gathered at the original Madison Square Garden in New York City to compete in front of 10,000 fans. Alas, public interest in pedestrianism began to wane by the 1890s as other organized sports such as baseball and football rose to prominence.

Nine cities have served as America’s capital.

U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
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Author Bennett Kleinman
November 7, 2024

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From 1776 to 1800, the United States capital bounced around between nine different cities. This frequent relocation was due to a mix of safety concerns amid the American Revolutionary War and a lack of a bureaucratic infrastructure in one centralized place. Philadelphia served as the nation’s first capital (at the time, the capital was considered to be the city where Congress met and enacted legislation) after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. But due to safety concerns regarding a potential British attack on the city, Congress relocated to Baltimore, Maryland, on December 20, 1776, and the seat of government remained there for just over two months. 

Congress returned to Philadelphia in March 1777, but fled once again due to the British occupation of the city that September. Delegates retreated further into Pennsylvania, settling in Lancaster for a single day on September 27, 1777, and then moving to York. After the British army departed Philadelphia in June 1778, the capital returned to the city for roughly five years. But during the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783 (an uprising of soldiers over unpaid wages), Congress vacated Philly in June and headed to Princeton, New Jersey. Future relocations took Congress into the Maryland State House in Annapolis, then to Trenton, New Jersey, followed by New York City. In July 1790, the Residence Act was signed into law, establishing Washington, D.C., as the nation’s official capital. It also reestablished Philadelphia as a temporary capital until the city of D.C. was further developed and the proposed Capitol building was complete. Congress returned to its original home for 10 years until November 1800, when the capital was finally moved to Washington, D.C., where it remains.

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The first presidential inauguration took place in New York City.

When George Washington was elected president in 1789, Washington, D.C., was just a nascent concept, and the U.S. capital was still in New York City. So, on April 30 of that year, Washington traveled to Federal Hall in downtown Manhattan to deliver the first-ever presidential oath of office. After a brief ceremonial processional, Washington arrived at what was then the Capitol building and took the presidential oath around 2 p.m. on a balcony in front of hundreds of onlookers. Afterward, he attended a service at nearby St. Paul’s Chapel, enjoyed dinner alone, and then watched an evening fireworks show to cap off the festivities. On his way home, the streets were so full of people, the president left his carriage and decided to walk instead, since it was quicker. Though Federal Hall was demolished in 1812, the stone balcony that Washington stood on that day was salvaged, and is on exhibit at the Federal Hall National Memorial.

“Computers” used to be people.

Computers at Harvard
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
November 7, 2024

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In today’s English lexicon, the word “computer” almost exclusively refers to electronic devices — but it used to be a human job. For centuries, “computer” meant “one who computes,” particularly in an astronomical observatory or as a surveyor. This definition dates all the way back to the early 1600s, long before even the most primitive digital computing machines existed.

The role of computers was, more often than not, filled by women. Although the work required a great deal of skill and made major contributions to the field of astronomy, computing was considered clerical work. In the 1870s, the Harvard College Observatory hired several dozen women as computers, who compared photographic plates of the night sky and painstakingly measured the differences in stars’ positions. Among them were Williamina Fleming, who pioneered classifying stars by temperature; Annie Jump Cannon, who created the letter stellar classification system that scientists still use today; and Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who discovered around half of all variable stars (meaning their brightness changes when viewed from Earth) known at the time.

Perhaps the best-known human computers were those employed by NASA to make calculations by hand during critical space missions. Katherine Johnson, one of the three African American NASA computers featured in the book and film Hidden Figures (along with Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson), performed calculations for the Mercury and Apollo missions, including the first moon landing.

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The first mechanical computer was designed in the 19th century.

In 1833, British inventor Charles Babbage had a groundbreaking idea. Having just worked on a giant calculating machine, he realized that machines could be more than just basic calculators; they could also be programmed using algorithms to solve far more complex calculations automatically. Babbage planned for his Analytical Engine, as the programmable computer was known, to run on steam, receive data via punched cards, and output results through an automatic printer. Mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer program while studying it — although, since the machine was never completed, she never got to actually try it out. The Analytical Engine was left unfinished upon Babbage’s death in 1871. The concept was wildly ambitious, and technology didn’t actually catch up until the 1940s with the completion of the first electronic programmable computer, the ENIAC. 

First ladies haven’t always been married to the president.

Martha Jefferson Randolph
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Author Bennett Kleinman
November 7, 2024

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While the role of first lady is traditionally filled by the president’s spouse, other family members have stepped in several times in U.S. history. Though there’s no constitutional requirement to have a first lady, it’s always been the tradition, and in cases where the president has been widowed or unmarried, someone else has always filled the role. The first instance was Martha Jefferson Randolph, the eldest daughter of Thomas Jefferson. When Jefferson took office in 1801, he had been a widower for about 20 years, so Martha took on the first lady duties, which at the time largely entailed hosting social events. Future First Lady Dolley Madison also lent an unofficial hand during the Jefferson administration while her husband, James, was serving as secretary of state.

Another unique case was the presidency of Andrew Jackson, whose wife, Rachel Donelson Jackson, died just months before his 1829 inauguration. Jackson asked his niece Emily Donelson to be first lady, though she was later replaced by his daughter-in-law Sarah Yorke Jackson. This began a tradition of daughters-in-law acting as first ladies to widowed presidents, including Angelica Van Buren (to Martin Van Buren), Jane Harrison (to William Henry Harrison), and Priscilla Cooper Tyler (to John Tyler).

Later, from 1857 to 1861, Harriet Lane acted as first lady to her uncle James Buchanan, who was a lifelong bachelor. Widower Chester Arthur and then-bachelor Grover Cleveland, meanwhile, enlisted the help of their sisters Mary Arthur McElroy and Rose Cleveland, respectively. In the two most recent examples, presidents’ daughters filled the role for their widowed fathers. Mary McKee was first lady to Benjamin Harrison from 1892 to 1893, and Margaret Wilson served as Woodrow Wilson’s first lady from 1914 to 1915. Since then, the role has been exclusively held by the president’s spouse.

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A pair of panda bears were gifted to Pat Nixon.

During a historic visit to China in February 1972 with her husband, Richard Nixon, First Lady Pat Nixon sat next to Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai at a dinner. During their conversation, Mrs. Nixon talked about going to the Peking Zoo to see pandas, and remarked about a cute cigarette box featuring panda iconography. After listening to her express adoration for these creatures, Zhou responded, “I’ll give you some,” and gifted two giant pandas to Mrs. Nixon and the American people. In April, the pandas — Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing — arrived at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C., marking a symbolic moment in the easing of relations between the two countries. In return, the U.S. sent two musk oxen to China as a goodwill gesture. On April 20, Pat Nixon attended the dedication ceremony, and spoke about the “panda-monium” that was running wild. The two pandas lived long lives into the 1990s, attracting hundreds of visitors daily.

Count Dracula was inspired by Vlad the Impaler of Transylvania.

Vlad the Impaler
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Author Michael Nordine
October 11, 2023

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Neither Dracula nor vampires are, strictly speaking, real — at least so far as we know — but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their basis in reality. While writing his endlessly influential novel Dracula, author Bram Stoker was inspired by Central European folklore in general and Vlad III in particular, whom history often remembers by a more colorful name: Vlad the Impaler. The son of Vlad Dracul, he’s believed to have been born in Transylvania, eventually became voivode (ruler) of Wallachia (a region of Romania south of Transylvania), and more than earned his nickname by impaling his enemies. Vlad Dracul took his name when he joined the Order of the Dragon, a secret cabal of Christian knights; “dracul” is Romanian for “dragon.” As fate would have it, “Dracula” means “son of Dracul.”

Stoker called Transylvania “one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe” in the book’s first chapter, an evocative description based on his research into the area and 19th-century travel literature (though the author never actually visited Romania’s spookiest region). Before falling in battle in 1476, Vlad III earned a reputation for brutality. Impalement was his favorite means of torturing and dispatching his enemies, but he was also known to decapitate, disembowel, and skin them; some claim he even dipped his bread in his victims’ blood while using their impaled bodies as morbid dinner guests. Whether such gory details are true may never be known, but it’s easy to see how he inspired one of the world’s most fearsome fictional characters.

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Sunlight isn’t fatal to Dracula in the novel.

Although sunlight does weaken Dracula and drain him of his powers, it doesn’t kill him — nor was it fatal to any other vampire for a full 25 years after Dracula was published. The trope was actually invented in the 1922 German movie Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, director F.W. Murnau’s unofficial adaptation of Stoker’s novel. Widely considered one of the best, most influential horror films ever made, the German expressionist masterwork almost passed out of existence immediately after its release. Stoker’s estate sued over the film in Germany, reportedly leading to a court ordering that all copies be destroyed. Fortunately, enough prints survived for Nosferatu to eventually achieve its current reputation as a vampiric classic almost on the same level as Dracula itself. 

The first environmental law was passed in 1306.

Coal-burning bottle works
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
November 7, 2024

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Unhealthy air can feel like a modern problem — or at least a postindustrial one — but humans have been breathing dirty air for a long time, and protesting it just as long. In ancient Rome, courts considered civil claims against people and businesses that released too much smoke in the air, and Byzantine Emperor Justinian declared clean air to be a human right. Then in 1306, King Edward I of England passed what’s often considered the first environmental law, when he made a proclamation banning coal burning.

Until the mid-13th century, British people burned wood to stay warm. But as cities such as London expanded and populations boomed, wood became scarce — demand for firewood and timber increased, and forestland was cleared for agricultural uses. So those who couldn’t afford the rising price of firewood turned to something readily available: sea-coal, now simply known as coal. (At the time, “coal” referred to charcoal.) It’s unclear exactly why it was called sea-coal, but it may have had something to do with how Brits could gather it from beaches along the North Sea.

Not only did sea-coal produce thick smoke and an awful smell, but it also was woefully inefficient, so furnaces needed more coal to produce the same amount of heat as wood, leading to even more smoke. In Britain’s notoriously foggy weather, all that smoke created smog that could hang in the air for days at a time. The pollution was so bad in London that in 1285, commissions were appointed to figure out a way to be rid of it. Still, the air got even worse, and in 1306, Edward I banned the burning of sea-coal. Although the king threatened steep fines and smashed furnaces as a punishment, the ban didn’t have a lasting effect on the use of coal in Britain.

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The first major smog in L.A. was mistaken for an enemy attack.

If there’s one city besides London that’s notorious for smog, it’s Los Angeles — but when L.A. saw its first major case of smog, it was mistaken for something else entirely. It was July 26, 1943, right at the height of World War II, so when a thick cloud descended smelling like bleach, making eyes burn, and cutting visibility down to just a couple of blocks, some people thought it was chemical warfare. In reality, the major drivers of that smog were factories, personal automobiles, and a bowl-like topography that trapped the fumes inside.

Betsy Ross probably didn’t make the first American flag.

Betsy Ross with U.S. flag
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Author Adam Levine
October 11, 2023

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In 1777, Congress passed a resolution dictating that the official flag of the newly founded United States would consist of 13 white stars against a blue background, and 13 alternating red and white stripes. According to popular myth, the first American flag was subsequently created by Philadelphia resident Elizabeth “Betsy” Ross. There’s just one problem with this common narrative: There’s no evidence that it’s actually true. 

The claim that Betsy Ross made the first American flag didn’t surface until 1870 — nearly a century after the nation’s founding — in a speech Ross’ grandson William Canby delivered to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Canby said that his grandmother would often recount a story of the time she received a visit from George Washington, who presented her with a proposed design of 13 stripes and 13 six-pointed stars, and asked if she could create a flag based on the sketch. According to Canby, Ross agreed, and even came up with the idea to give the stars five points instead of six, and to arrange them in a circle. 

Canby’s story was compelling, and the speech was widely circulated in popular newspapers. Before long, it became accepted as fact that Ross created the first American flag. However, although Canby produced affidavits from Ross’ daughter and granddaughter corroborating the tale, he never offered any concrete evidence — including, crucially, the flag itself. (In fact, there’s no evidence of any American flag that can be traced back to Ross.) Over the years, historians have called Canby’s account into question, and while it’s been established that Ross did sew flags for the Pennsylvania Navy, some historians suggest the original Stars and Stripes was actually created by Francis Hopkinson, a New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress. They cite a bill that Hopkinson sent to the Congress in 1780, asking for payment for designing “the flag of the United States of America.” But this theory also remains unconfirmed, as the Congress refused to pay Hopkinson for his services, claiming he “was not the only one consulted.” To date, the true origin of the American flag remains a mystery.

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The flag that “The Star-Spangled Banner” is based on can still be seen today.

“The Star-Spangled Banner,” the United States national anthem, is based on a specific American flag made in 1813 by Mary Pickersgill, a Baltimore designer and seamstress. Her flag became immortalized when Baltimore’s Fort McHenry was attacked by the British navy in September 1814, during the (misleadingly named) War of 1812. After several days of fighting, the United States finally emerged victorious, and as the British fleet retreated, the large American flag that Pickersgill had made was raised above the fort. At 30 by 42 feet, the flag was so massive, it could be seen for miles around the fort, including by American Francis Scott Key, who was on board a British ship 8 miles away negotiating the release of a prisoner. The sight inspired Key to write the poem “Defence of Fort M'Henry,” whose words became the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Pickersgill’s flag, with its unusual arrangement of 15 stars and 15 stripes, can still be seen today (though it’s missing one of its stars) on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

The first traffic light was illuminated with gas lamps.

Old traffic light
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
October 12, 2023

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Traffic accidents were a problem long before motor vehicles dominated the road — pedestrians, horses, and carts all competed for the right of way, sometimes with fatal results. In fact, the first traffic signal in Britain predated cars: Railroad engineer John Peake Knight helped design signaling systems for trains, including semaphore signals, which employed a movable arm to indicate whether a train operator should stop. Knight proposed that these signals could work on city streets, too, with gas lamps for nighttime visibility.

After the plan received government approval, the first gas traffic light was installed in London on December 9, 1868, just outside the Houses of Parliament. This being Victorian England, it was ornately decorated, with a hollow cast-iron column adorned with gilding and acanthus leaves. Above the signal arms, an octagonal box with a pineapple finial contained red and green gas lamps. Automated lights were still several decades away, so the signal had to be manually operated by a police officer 24 hours a day. The light was successful at first, and drivers, for the most part, actually paid attention to it. But the very next month, a leaky pipe filled the hollow tower with gas and caused an explosion that severely injured the officer operating it. London didn’t get traffic lights again until electric lights were installed in 1929.

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The first three-way traffic signal was invented in 1923.

The first electric traffic lights typically went straight from red to green and green to red with no warning signal indicating how soon the light was going to change. A Detroit police officer introduced yellow lights to one intersection in 1920, but they were far from widespread. Two years later, another three-way traffic signal was invented by Garrett Morgan, a pioneering Black inventor from Cleveland, Ohio. Morgan had already created a lifesaving precursor to the gas mask and an improved sewing machine when he witnessed a carriage accident at a problematic intersection in Cleveland. Troubled by the incident, he created a T-shaped illuminated traffic signal that had a third setting that instructed traffic in all directions to stop, which served as a warning for drivers to fully clear the intersection and also gave pedestrians a chance to cross safely. The signal was influential and widely used, and Morgan made $40,000 from it, around $700,000 in today’s dollars, when he sold the patent to General Electric.

Vikings didn’t actually wear horned helmets.

Viking ship, 1888
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
October 31, 2024

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When you think about Vikings, you may picture horned helmets — and vice versa. The horns are a staple of Viking imagery in comics, sports mascots, and Halloween costumes, but there’s actually no evidence that they were widely used.

Horned helmets first entered the Viking mythos in 1876, when artist Carl Emil Doepler included them in his iconic costume designs for German composer Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, also known as the Ring Cycle, an epic tale of Norse mythology told over the course of four different operas. (Even if you’re not familiar with the work, you’ve probably heard “Ride of the Valkyries,” which opens up the last act of the second opera, Die Walküre, or The Valkyries.) Wagner’s opera was so wildly influential on popular culture that the helmets became associated with Vikings in the popular consciousness. 

Then, in 1942, two workers were harvesting peat from a bog near Veksø, Denmark, when they uncovered a pair of horned helmets, which were originally attributed to Vikings, supposedly adding a little scientific backup to the popular lore. Alas, 80 years later, new analysis showed that the helmets dated back to around 900 BCE, some 1,700 years before the first Vikings. Without those artifacts, there isn’t any strong archaeological evidence that indicates Vikings ever wore horned helmets.

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Not all Vikings were Scandinavian.

Being a Viking was a way of life (the word itself comes from the Old Norse víkingr, meaning “pirate” or “raider”), not a particular race, and not all Vikings hailed from modern-day Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, and Denmark). A six-year study of the remains of 442 people who lived in Europe and Greenland during the Viking Age (roughly 800 to 1050 CE) found that while inland communities tended to be of Scandinavian descent, coastal Vikings had genetic heritage from Asia and southern Europe, too. The Vikings weren’t one single civilization, either: The same study found that smaller groups tended to stick together.

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