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Mark Twain was known to rent cats when he traveled.

  • Mark Twain holding a cat
Mark Twain holding a cat
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Author Darren Orf

August 2, 2023

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Samuel Clemens, known to literary history as Mark Twain, once wrote that “when a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.” Those are not the words of someone for whom cats are a passing fascination. In fact, the writer likely enjoyed the company of felines over people. At one time, Twain owned 19 cats, many with inventive monikers such as Soapy Sal and Sour Mash. So deep was his ailurophilia (love of cats), Twain even rented furry felines for company when he traveled. As he wrote in his autobiography, “Many persons would like to have the society of cats during the summer vacation in the country, but they deny themselves this pleasure… These people have no ingenuity, no invention, no wisdom; or it would occur to them to do as I do: rent cats by the month for the summer, and return them to their good homes at the end of it.”

In 1906, while staying for the summer in Dublin, New Hampshire, Twain procured the companionship of three kittens from a local farmer’s wife (he got a discount if he took three) — one named Sackcloth and the other two, identical twins, both called Ashes. One of Twain’s biographers, who visited the author during his stay, recalled Twain holding open a screen door for two waiting kittens, saying, “Walk in, gentlemen. I always give precedence to royalty.” Twain’s rental payment covered expenses for the cats’ care for the rest of their lives.

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Cats are not nearly as domesticated as dogs.

Although cats and dogs are the most popular pets of choice in the U.S., cats are far less domesticated than their canine counterparts. Dogs began their journey to becoming man’s best friend in the Paleolithic era some 30,000 years ago, and today they exhibit many of the telltale signs of domestication, including decreased tooth size and docility. Cats, on the other hand? Not so much. Studies have shown that the Felis catus (the scientific name for your kitty) isn’t genetically far removed from Felis silvestris, its wild cousin. Cats likely first started fraternizing with humans when the rise of agriculture increased rat populations, creating a symbiotic relationship. But because wild cats aren’t social or hierarchical animals, they weren’t as easily integrated into human societies as wolves were, which is why house cats retain their hunting instincts while many dog breeds rely on humans to survive. Some scientists argue that cats are actually in a “semi-domesticated” state and that we are only at the beginning of the domestication process. It would certainly explain why they remain frustratingly (if adorably) aloof — always making us question whether they serve us, or we serve them.

Winston Churchill had a doctor’s note to let him drink alcohol during Prohibition.

  • Churchill in 1935
Churchill in 1935
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Author Bennett Kleinman

August 2, 2023

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From the 18th Amendment’s ratification on January 16, 1919, until its repeal in 1933, Prohibition dominated American society. Most libation lovers were forced to either give up alcohol or acquire it by illicit means, while other cunning boozehounds conceived of clever workarounds. One such individual was British statesman Winston Churchill, who capitalized on an otherwise unfortunate accident he suffered on December 13, 1931. After being struck by a vehicle while crossing Fifth Avenue in New York City, Churchill experienced great pain, for which his doctor conveniently prescribed alcohol as a treatment — though it was likely Churchill himself who requested this specific “medicine.” Otto C. Pickhardt, M.D., wrote, “Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits especially at meal times,” thus permitting the future prime minister to skirt the law during his stateside visits. Pickhardt described the dosage as “naturally indefinite,” but no less than “250 cubic centimeters” of hooch. 

Churchill’s case was far from unusual, as pharmacies often prescribed alcohol as “medicine” during Prohibition due to the lucrative payoffs. It was one of several methods Churchill used to finagle his way around Prohibition; he once visited an American speakeasy, wryly quipping that he only did so as a “Social Investigator.” Churchill’s drinking wasn’t to be impeded upon by laws or religion, as he once imbibed in the presence of Saudi King Ibn Saud. Churchill used an interpreter to explain, “[M]y religion prescribed as an absolute sacred ritual smoking cigars and drinking alcohol before, after, and if need be during, all meals and the intervals between them.”

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Maine was the first U.S. state to ban alcohol in 1851.

Long before Prohibition, local temperance movements around the U.S. sought to limit the consumption of liquor. Though several localities succeeded in doing so, Maine became the first to ban alcohol on a statewide level, thanks to the Maine Law of 1851. The law was the brainchild of Neal Dow, who served as the mayor of Portland starting in 1851, but was involved in anti-alcohol movements for many years prior. On June 2, 1851, the Maine Law passed successfully, though the backlash was significant enough that it was ultimately repealed just five years later. Maine’s temperance movement remained strong, however, and the prohibition of alcohol was later written into the state constitution in 1885. After Prohibition ended nationwide in 1933, Maine allowed its residents to imbibe again, though several other states embraced the anti-alcohol lifestyle for decades to come. Mississippi was the final holdout among them, keeping Prohibition-era laws on the books until 1966.

Sideburns are named after a Union general in the Civil War.

  • Ambrose Everett Burnside
Ambrose Everett Burnside
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Author Adam Levine

August 2, 2023

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While we may never know the first person to wear sideburns, we do know the origin of the word. The popular facial hair style gets its name from a single individual: Major General Ambrose Burnside (1824-1881), a Union general in the Civil War who later became governor of Rhode Island. 

By all accounts, including his own, Burnside was a terrible general. He was appointed to a post as Commander of the Army of the Potomac in spite of his own protests, and his time in the role proved disastrous. He led the Union Army to a devastating defeat in the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862, as well as a second failed Fredericksburg offensive campaign known unflatteringly as the “Mud March.” Shortly thereafter, he was relieved of command. But while his military career didn’t exactly make history, Burnside managed to earn lasting fame for his facial hair — a distinct variation on muttonchop whiskers. As early as 1866, newspapers began referring to the general’s signature facial hair as “Burnside whiskers,” and the term evolved over time into just “sideburns.” 

While the name now refers to any simple strip of hair grown down the side of the face, the original sideburns sported by General Burnside were a bit more elaborate: The look consisted of thick, bushy whiskers that joined in a luxurious mustache above a clean-shaven chin. That style eventually fell out of fashion (though perhaps some brave tastemaker will bring it back), but Burnside’s legacy lives on in the form of the more modest, trimmed sideburns that are still seen today.

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Ambrose Burnside was left at the altar by a future Confederate spy.

In 1849, when Ambrose Burnside was still a young officer recently graduated from West Point, the future general was engaged to a Virginia socialite named Charlotte “Lottie” Moon. Unfortunately for young Burnside, the couple’s romance came to an abrupt end on their wedding day. When Lottie was asked if she took Ambrose to be her husband, she reportedly shouted, “No siree, Bob!” and sprinted out of the chapel. Burnside and Moon met again years later, once more under dramatic circumstances. Since the outbreak of the Civil War, Moon had become a spy for the Confederacy. She served as a courier for the South and even spied on President Abraham Lincoln by disguising herself as a British noblewoman and feigning sleep during a carriage ride while the President discussed war strategy. She was eventually caught and placed under house arrest by none other than her jilted fiance. However, Burnside declined to charge his former betrothed with espionage (a crime which carried the death penalty), and instead agreed to let her go free as long as she never returned to Union territory.

The first words spoken on the telephone were, “Mr. Watson, come here.”

  • Telephone circa 1876
Telephone circa 1876
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Author Adam Levine

August 2, 2023

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The first phone call ever made was short, simple, and to the point. On March 10, 1876, the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, uttered the first message ever transmitted over the phone: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” Bell’s history-making call was to his assistant, the mechanic Thomas Watson, and it wasn’t exactly long-distance; Watson was sitting by a receiver just a few rooms away. But when Watson came into the room and informed Bell that he had heard each word clearly and distinctly, it proved to both men that this groundbreaking new technology was a success.

The power of his innovation was immediately apparent to Bell. In a letter to his father recounting the event, the inventor predicted that “the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid on to houses just like water or gas — and friends converse with each other without leaving home.” Bell’s vision, of course, proved remarkably prescient. His short phone call to Watson marked the beginning of a technology that quickly transformed the world. Though that first phone call was between two people in the same house, the telephone soon allowed people to speak to each other from separate homes, separate cities, and, by 1927, separate continents.

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Alexander Graham Bell’s mother and wife were deaf.

Alexander Graham Bell is famous for inventing the telephone, but much of his life was dedicated to another field entirely: the education of deaf people. Both Bell’s mother and wife were deaf, and his father was a speech therapist for deaf people. Before inventing the telephone, Bell worked as a teacher in several schools for the deaf, and later in life he dedicated a part of the fortune he had amassed from inventing the telephone to continue his advocacy for Deaf education. He became the first president of the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf and is even credited with connecting Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan. However, Bell’s approach to Deaf education prioritized oralism, a method that emphasized teaching deaf people to speak and read lips without the aid of sign language. Today, oralism is widely considered outdated and even detrimental, and Bell’s role in promoting it has made him a controversial figure in the Deaf community.

Some WWII brides made their wedding dresses out of parachutes.

  • WWII wedding photo
WWII wedding photo
Credit: ZUMA Press Inc/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd

June 6, 2024

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In the years during and immediately following World War II, it was not uncommon for brides to wear wedding dresses crafted from repurposed parachutes. While a lot of wartime ingenuity was a result of limited resources and rationing, in many cases, the reason behind parachute dresses was more sentimental. One 1947 wedding dress that’s now in the Smithsonian’s collection was made from a nylon parachute that aided one Major Claude Hensinger in his escape from a bomber plane that caught fire; the parachute not only deposited him safely on the ground, but also served as a pillow and blanket while he waited for rescue. When he returned to the U.S., he proposed to his girlfriend Ruth, suggesting she use the parachute that had saved his life to make her gown. The elegant dress was modeled after the one in the 1939 film Gone With the Wind; Ruth hired a seamstress to make the bodice, then ruched the strings of the parachute to make a gathered skirt and train.

Another dress acquired by the San Diego Air and Space Museum has a similar backstory: The parachute used to make it saved the life of groom Chuck Martin during a training flight on a bomber at the end of the war. His bride, Carolyn, altered it herself using the skills she learned in an eighth grade sewing class. A more elaborate dress in storage at the National Museum of the United States Air Force was made from strips of nine different parachutes used in combat. Of course, sometimes the parachute fabric (usually nylon) was simply what was available — but it still made for a good story. When two Holocaust survivors got married in 1946 at a displaced persons camp run by Allied forces in Celle, Germany, groom Ludwig Friedman purchased a parachute for fabric, and bride Lilly Lax hired a seamstress using her cigarette rations. The dress was worn by two more brides in similar camps afterward, and is now among the artifacts at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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Cheetos were made from surplus war rations.

During World War II, the U.S. military was looking for any way to cut down on shipping costs for war rations. In 1943, a USDA scientist did what was previously thought impossible: dehydrating natural, fatty cheese, making it easier to send across the ocean. After the war, the military was left with a bunch of leftover dried food, which it offloaded to private companies. One of the corporations to take advantage of the processed food fire sale was Frito, now Frito-Lay. In 1948 it rolled out one of the most famous uses of dried cheese to date: Cheetos.

The president never had a red telephone during the Cold War.

  • Teletype machine
Teletype machine
Credit: BTEU/TEKNISKA/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine

June 4, 2024

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Despite being an enduring symbol of the conflict between the United States and Soviet Union, there was never a red telephone on the U.S. president’s desk during the Cold War. While it’s true that a Moscow–Washington hotline was established in 1963 to, as the White House put it, “help reduce the risk of war occurring by accident or miscalculation,” it has never been red or even a phone. Instead, it was originally Teletype, which allowed encrypted messages to be sent between the two countries within minutes rather than hours. The system changed to fax machines (remember those?) in 1986 and has been a computer link for secure emails since 2008. 

All of this came about as a result of the Cuban missile crisis, a 13-day conflict widely considered the closest America and the Soviet Union ever came to starting a nuclear war — in part because of simple miscommunication. In order to reduce the risk of such a thing happening again, negotiators representing the two nations wrote a memo titled “Regarding the Establishment of a Direct Communications Link,” and signed it on June 20, 1963. As for how the image of a red phone entered our collective imagination in the first place, you can thank pop culture in general and Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb in particular. The red phone has appeared in many a spy novel, as well as a crucial scene in Kubrick’s Cold War satire.

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George Orwell coined the term “Cold War.”

Though it had been used before in other contexts, the term “Cold War” was first used in relation to the post-World War II nuclear threat by writer George Orwell. The 1984 and Animal Farm author wrote his essay “You and the Atom Bomb” in October 1945, just months after the United States dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, warning of a world “which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of ‘cold war’ with its neighbors.” As tended to be the case with Orwell, this prediction proved especially prescient. The term was further popularized by Walter Lippmann’s 1947 book The Cold War, and has been common parlance ever since. 

Napoleon was attacked (and defeated) by a horde of rabbits.

  • Emperor Napoleon I
Emperor Napoleon I
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Author Michael Nordine

July 25, 2023

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Napoleon Bonaparte is revered as one of the greatest military commanders of all time, but even he was helpless against the most fearsome foe of all: fluffy little bunnies. In one of history’s most shocking upsets, the emperor of the French was attacked — and defeated — by a horde of rabbits. The coup took place in July of 1807 as Napoleon and his coterie celebrated the Treaties of Tilsit, which brought a victorious end to the war between France and Russia, with a traditional rabbit hunt. Louis-Alexandre Berthier, Napoleon’s chief of staff, arranged the festivities with anywhere from a few hundred to 3,000 rabbits and expected them to behave as normal when they were uncaged on a field. Rather than run away, however, the bunnies began swarming Napoleon and his men. Though amusing at first, the situation quickly overwhelmed some of Europe’s foremost military strategists.

Reader, it was chaos. According to General Paul Charles François Adrien Henri Dieudonné Thiébault, “the intrepid rabbits turned the Emperor’s flank, attacked him frantically in the rear, refused to quit their hold, piled themselves up between his legs till they made him stagger, and forced the conqueror of conquerors, fairly exhausted, to retreat and leave them in possession of the field.” Having ceded this crucial territory, Napoleon retreated to his coach and thought the bunnies would show mercy. They did not. With what historian David Chandler has described as “a finer understanding of Napoleonic strategy than most of his generals,” they continued their siege until the coach fled the scene. The reason for the creatures’ aggression? Berthier bought tame rabbits from a farmer rather than trap wild ones and, because they hadn’t been fed that day, the hungry bunnies swarmed the men they assumed were there to feed them.

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Australia fought a “war” against emus — and lost.

Rabbits aren’t the only animals that have brought the leaders of a powerful nation to their knees. In 1932, Australia found itself in crisis when some 20,000 emus moved inland during their breeding season and disrupted farmers’ crops. After having their classification downgraded from “native species” to “vermin,” the ostrich-like birds became public enemy number one. The government sent in World War I veterans to assist the beleaguered farmers, and though they were outfitted with machine guns, they soon found themselves overwhelmed by their flightless foes.  “The machine-gunners’ dreams of point-blank fire into serried masses of Emus were soon dissipated,” observed D.L. Serventy, an Australian ornithologist. “The Emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month.” The birds were simply too much trouble to get rid of, and though they suffered heavy casualties, they emerged victorious and still thrive Down Under.

The ancient Egyptians had accurate pregnancy tests.

  • Bags of wheat
Bags of wheat
Credit: greg801/ iStock
Author Nicole Villeneuve

May 29, 2024

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For all of the advancements made in women’s reproductive health throughout history, the nature of pregnancy tests has remained rather primitive. The ancient Egyptians used a urine sample to test for pregnancy, much like our modern methods — only their tests also relied on barley and wheat seeds.

Details of the method were found on a papyrus scroll dating to around 1350 BCE. Potential mothers were advised to urinate on bags containing wheat and barley, and according to the theory, if the grains sprouted shortly after, it indicated pregnancy. A 1963 study reproduced the test and found it successfully diagnosed pregnancy in about 70% of expectant mothers. While the ancient Egyptians believed the test worked because of the life-generating power of childbearing, it’s more likely that the heightened levels of estrogen in urine during pregnancy helped stimulate the seeds’ growth. 

The seed method endured for an impressively lengthy period. Variations of the test were found in Greek and Roman medicine, Middle Eastern practices during the Middle Ages, and as recently as 1699 in a book of German folklore. The ancient pregnancy test also observed which type of grain grew first. “If the barley grows, she will get a boy child,” the text of the papyrus stated, according to one translation. “If the emmer [wheat] grows, she will get a girl child.” This prediction, however, did not hold up to modern tests for accuracy. 

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Live frogs were used for pregnancy tests in the mid-20th century.

Expectant mothers have relied on some rather unconventional pregnancy testing methods throughout history. One test involved the Xenopus laevis, or African clawed frog, and it was used more recently than you might expect. In the late 1920s, British scientist Lancelot Hogben began experimenting with injecting female species of the frog with urine. If injected with a pregnant woman's urine, the amphibian produced eggs within about 12 hours as a result of a human hormone now known as human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) — the same hormone that detects pregnancy in modern tests. Similar tests had previously been done on animals such as rabbits and mice, but the frog test, known as the Hogben test, was favored for its humanity to the animal. (Because the frog secreted its eggs on the outside, it did not have to be dissected during tests.) From 1930 up until the 1960s, thousands of African clawed frogs were exported for pregnancy testing throughout the world, before the method was replaced by immunochemical test kits in 1968.

The Olympics used to have medals for painting and literature.

  • Walter Winans in 1903
Walter Winans in 1903
The Print Collector / Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bennett Kleinman

July 25, 2023

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At the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, the perfect brushstroke was just as likely to win a medal as the quickest sprint. That year, Pierre de Coubertin — co-founder of the International Olympic Committee — introduced a series of Olympic events in the fields of painting, literature, music, architecture, and sculpture, with the rule that all creations must be sports-themed. Though many of the newly eligible competitors lacked the physical prowess of traditional Olympians, some excelled at both the athletic and the artistic. American marksman Walter Winans not only won a silver medal for sharpshooting at the 1912 Games, but he also took home gold for his 20-inch-tall sculpture of a horse-drawn chariot, titled “An American Trotter.”

In future Olympiads, the artistic events focused on even more niche disciplines. By the 1928 Amsterdam Games, architecture was subcategorized into design and town planning, while literature was divided into lyrical, dramatic, and epic works. After a hiatus during World War II, the arts returned as official Olympic events one final time at the 1948 London Games. It was there that 73-year-old John Copley won a silver medal for his engraving titled “Polo Players,” becoming the oldest Olympic medalist in history. Unfortunately for these more right-brained Olympians, new IOC president Avery Brundage led a campaign to remove the creative events from the official Olympic program, relegating the arts to exhibition status by the 1952 Games. All 151 artistic Olympic medals that had been awarded between 1912 and 1948 were stricken from the official record books.

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Winners received a silver medal at the first modern Olympics.

Gold medals have become synonymous with victory, but the inaugural modern Olympics honored champions with silver. At the 1896 Athens Games, winners received a silver medal, an olive branch, and a diploma, while runners-up were awarded a medal made of bronze and copper. Those early medals depicted Zeus on their obverse side and the Acropolis on the back. It wasn’t until the 1904 St. Louis Games that the medals broke down into gold, silver, and bronze as we know them today. However, referring to first-place medals as “gold” might be misleading even now: In terms of chemical composition, Olympic “gold” medals are actually 92.5% silver and contain only about 6 grams of gold. Second-place medals, however, are almost entirely silver, whereas bronze medals are composed of 95% copper and 5% zinc.

The letter “J” wasn’t added to the alphabet until after Shakespeare.

  • Romeo and Juliet, 1879
Romeo and Juliet, 1879
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Author Bennett Kleinman

July 24, 2023

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It wasn’t until after the life of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) that the modern English alphabet welcomed “J” as its 26th and final letter. In fact, first-edition copies of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet from 1597 were titled Romeo and Iuliet, as the letter “I” was often used as a written substitute for words with a “J” sound in English. In order to fully understand the letter’s origins, however, we need to go all the way back to ancient Roman times. 

In Roman numerals, a swash was sometimes used to denote the end of sequences — for instance, the number 13 often visually appeared in handwritten text as “XIIJ” instead of “XIII.” In classical Latin and in various European languages through the medieval era, the letter “I” was used as both a vowel and as a consonant, and the constant version of “I” morphed over the years and eventually began appearing as a “J” shape. In the late 15th century and early 16th century, a few scholars wrote treatises on grammar in which they suggested using “J” as the constant version of “I.”  In English, this change took hold in the early 17th century. A good illustration of this is the King James Bible, one of the first modern English texts to print “J” as a unique letter. The 1611 edition uses the consonant “I” in words such as “Iesus” and “Ioseph,” while the 1629 edition uses the letter “J,” paving the way for the eventual widespread inclusion of “J” in the English alphabet.

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Benjamin Franklin created a new alphabet without the letters C, J, Q, W, X, or Y.

Benjamin Franklin was one of America’s greatest inventors, and he even went so far as to develop an entirely new alphabet. He initially conceived of the concept in 1768, and eliminated six letters — C, J, Q, W, X, and Y — that he deemed redundant given the presence of other letters with similar sounds, such as “K” and “S.” In turn, Franklin concocted six entirely new letters to fill the gap, including one with a soft “O” sound and another that sounded like “sh.” While Franklin earned the support of lexicographer Noah Webster, the idea was ultimately abandoned. However, in 1906, another American statesman tried to revolutionize the alphabet. That person was Theodore Roosevelt. As President, Roosevelt attempted to establish a new American language that removed linguistic associations with British English. For example, words like “although” were shortened to “altho.” In the end, Roosevelt’s efforts were voted down by the House of Representatives, putting the idea to rest.

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