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German chocolate cake isn’t named after Germany. 

  • German chocolate cake
German chocolate cake
Credit: © LauriPatterson—iStock/Getty Images
Author Bess Lovejoy
May 22, 2026

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When you think of German cuisine, you probably don’t think of coconuts. That’s a little clue that German chocolate cake has nothing to do with one of Europe’s largest (and very nontropical) countries. Indeed, the cake is actually an American invention — Texan, to be specific. 

The dessert is often traced back to 1957, when a recipe for “German Sweet Chocolate Cake” appeared in The Dallas Morning News. German’s Sweet Chocolate was (and is) a specific kind of chocolate manufactured by Baker’s Chocolate and named for its inventor, Samuel German. It comes with sugar already added, unlike most dark baking chocolate. 

In 1957, a homemaker identifying as “Mrs. George Clay of Dallas” submitted the recipe to the newspaper’s “Recipe of the Day” column, describing buttermilk-enriched chocolate cake layers topped with a custardy confection of coconuts and pecans. Some accounts note that a similar recipe also appeared in The Irving News Record in 1956 and had been popular with home cooks even earlier. Yet Mrs. Clay’s recipe was the one picked up by other papers, cementing its place in American dessert history, albeit with a somewhat misleading name.

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Caesar salad was created in Mexico.

Despite the imperial name, this classic dish isn’t a relic of ancient Rome. It was reportedly created in 1924 by Caesar Cardini, an Italian-born restaurateur working in Tijuana, Mexico — a hot spot for Americans during Prohibition.

According to Cardini’s own account, the salad came together out of necessity. During a busy holiday weekend, his restaurant ran low on ingredients, so he improvised with what he had: romaine lettuce, Parmesan, eggs, lemons, olive oil, croutons, and Worcestershire sauce. To make the moment memorable, he had it prepared tableside — a bit of showmanship that helped turn a simple mix into a signature dish.

At first, it was known as Caesar’s salad, named for its creator. But as the recipe spread — and especially after Cardini began marketing his bottled dressing in the 1930s — the possessive apostrophe quietly vanished. By the 1940s, Caesar salad had become a fixture on menus around the world.

The practice of tipping dates back to the Middle Ages.

  • Engraving of servant at a meal
Engraving of servant at a meal
Credit: Classic Image/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bess Lovejoy
May 31, 2026

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Though it’s often seen as a quintessentially American custom today, tipping has its roots in the feudal societies of medieval Europe. In the Middle Ages, wealthy landowners occasionally gave small sums of money to their servants or laborers for extra effort or good service. This paternalistic gesture later evolved into a more formal custom: By the Tudor era, guests at aristocratic households were expected to offer “vails” to the household staff at the end of their stay. These payments soon became obligatory — and widely resented by guests.

In the 19th century, wealthy Americans who traveled in Europe began to mimic the custom back home, bringing tipping to the U.S. just as an influx of poor European immigrants, familiar with the practice, were arriving. But many people viewed tipping as deeply un-American — a holdover from the rigid class systems of Europe. Critics called it servile, corrupting, and even a threat to democracy.

Tipping took hold in the U.S. after the Civil War, when newly freed Black Americans entered the workforce with limited options. Employers in restaurants and railroads hired them but refused to pay a living wage, requiring them to rely on tips instead. The Pullman Company, which operated luxury railcars, institutionalized the practice by hiring Black porters at meager wages, assuming passengers would make up the difference.

Though some states banned tipping in the early 20th century, the laws were eventually repealed. Then in 1938, when the Fair Labor Standards Act established a federal minimum wage, restaurant workers were excluded — effectively enshrining tipping into law.

Ironically, while Americans today are among the world’s most generous tippers, many European countries have moved away from the practice entirely. In places such as France, service charges are included by law. Meanwhile, in the U.S., tipping remains both a standard in many establishments and a source of continued debate over fairness and labor rights.

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“Tip” is not an acronym.

Despite the popular belief that “tip” stands for “To Insure Promptness” (or “Performance” or “Prompt Service”), the word is not an acronym at all. Its roots lie not in the initials of a quaint coffeehouse sign, but in the slang of 18th-century criminals. Around the early 1700s, “to tip” was used by petty thieves and hustlers to mean “to give” or “to share,” and it slipped into mainstream English from there. The earliest known example of “tip” as a verb comes from the 1707 play The Beaux’ Stratagem, which includes the line, “Then I, Sir, tips me the Verger with half a Crown.” By 1755, the word “tip” was also recorded as a noun. The acronym theory — charming though it may be — is a classic case of folk etymology. Besides, tipping often happens after service, not before, making the idea of “insuring promptness” a nonstarter.  

The cardigan was a result of the Crimean War. 

  • Charge of the Light Brigade
Charge of the Light Brigade
Credit: © Chronicle/Alamy
Author Bess Lovejoy
May 22, 2026

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In the mid-19th century, a disastrous cavalry charge gave the world one of its coziest wardrobe staples. 

The cardigan sweater takes its name from James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, a British army officer who commanded the Light Brigade during the Crimean War — most famously at the Charge of the Light Brigade, a catastrophic assault brought on by muddled orders and poor communication.

The charge, launched at the Battle of Balaklava in October 1854, sent British cavalry straight into heavy Russian artillery fire. The results (heavy losses, but also the destruction of a Russian battery) became a symbol of both extraordinary bravery and military blunder. The event was immortalized in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s famous poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Cardigan himself emerged physically unscathed and, somewhat improbably, became a national celebrity.

That celebrity helped turn his preferred knitwear into a fashion trend. According to contemporary accounts, the earl was frequently seen wearing a collarless, button-front wool jacket, which was practical for the bitter Crimean cold. It’s often said he either popularized or helped develop the garment for his troops, and when Cardigan returned to Britain, the public’s fascination with the “hero” of Balaklava extended to his clothing. 

The snug sweater became known as a “cardigan,” cementing the earl’s name in everyday language — even as his reputation as a commander remained deeply controversial. 

Interestingly, the word “cardigan” has military connections that go even farther back. “Cardigan” is a place name in Wales, an Anglicization of the Welsh “Ceredigion,” which literally means “Ceredig’s land.” Ceredig was a legendary chieftain of North Britain who is said to have pushed back an Irish invasion of Wales in the fifth century CE and received the aforementioned land as a reward. In other words, every time you button up a cardigan, you’re wrapping yourself in layers of military history.

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The Crimean War also gave birth to another fashion term.

The Crimean War didn’t just give us the cardigan — it led to another fashion staple, the raglan. The term comes from FitzRoy James Henry Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan, whose ambiguous orders triggered the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade. As is the case for many figures from the conflict, Raglan’s military reputation is mixed at best; he was widely criticized for poor leadership during a campaign plagued by confusion, supply shortages, and brutal winter conditions.

Yet his name endured in a more practical context. Around the time of the war, a coat associated with Raglan featured a distinctive sleeve design that extended in one piece from underarm to collar, rather than being sewn at the shoulder. The looser cut offered greater mobility — and may have been especially useful for Raglan, who had lost an arm years earlier at the Battle of Waterloo. By the mid-1850s, the “raglan sleeve” had entered the fashion lexicon in Britain. Like the cardigan, it’s a small, wearable reminder of a war usually better known for its blunders.

Dust Bowl storms caused red snow in Boston.

  • Dust cloud, 1936
Dust cloud, 1936
Credit: RBM Vintage Images/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine
May 31, 2026

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The Dust Bowl wasn’t entirely confined to the actual Dust Bowl states. Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico were certainly the most affected by the extreme drought that ravaged the Great Plains in the 1930s, a natural disaster that followed overcultivation and proved disastrous for both the land and the people living on it. But some of the dust storms that resulted were so extreme that their clouds reached cities more than 1,500 miles away on the East Coast. Boston, Massachusetts, even saw red snow due to red clay soil becoming concentrated in the atmosphere.

One of the worst storms hit the Great Plains region on April 14, 1935, which became known as Black Sunday. What started as a sunny morning quickly turned into an oppressive haze that dropped temperatures more than 25 degrees in an hour and turned the sky black. This “black blizzard” displaced an estimated 300,000 tons of topsoil, an agricultural disaster that led to further hardship and a number of casualties. Woody Guthrie immortalized the event in his song “The Great Dust Storm” from the album Dust Bowl Ballads, which included the line, “It fell across our city like a curtain of black rolled down / We thought it was our judgment, we thought it was our doom.”

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Most “Okies” weren’t from Oklahoma.

Anyone who’s read The Grapes of Wrath knows that “Okie” was a pejorative term for people fleeing the Dust Bowl — even if they weren’t from Oklahoma. The catchall insult applied equally to folks from Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas and could be found on signs such as this one outside a California diner: “Okies and dogs not allowed inside.” Most people who fled the Dust Bowl didn’t venture that far west, though, more often migrating to nearby states in the hopes of restarting their farms in unaffected areas. John Steinbeck’s novel won both the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize on its way to becoming one of the most celebrated books of the 20th century, but not everyone was pleased with it. Lyle Boren, who represented Oklahoma in Congress, described The Grapes of Wrath as “a lie, a black, infernal creation of a twisted, distorted mind.” 

Only one person was both the son and father of a president.

  • Portrait of John Scott Harrison
Portrait of John Scott Harrison
Credit: © Niday Picture Library/Alamy
Author Michael Nordine
May 22, 2026

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There have been only two father-son pairs to serve as U.S. president: John Adams and John Quincy Adams and George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. (Robert A. Taft, the son of President William Howard Taft, came somewhat close to joining their company but failed to secure his party’s nomination despite three close attempts.) 

As the only person to be the son of one president and the father of another, however, John Scott Harrison occupies an even rarer place in history. His father, William Henry Harrison, was the shortest-serving president in U.S. history, having died 31 days into his term on April 4, 1841. John Scott Harrison’s son Benjamin Harrison occupied the White House from 1889 to 1893.

John Scott Harrison was 36 when his father died, and he went on to represent Ohio’s 2nd congressional district from 1853 to 1857 — first as a Whig and then as a member of the anti-slavery Opposition Party in his second term. He declined to run for governor in 1855 and, after losing his seat in Congress, retired to Point Farm, his estate near North Bend, Ohio. He passed away in 1878 and didn’t live to see his son become president.

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John Scott Harrison helped put an end to grave robbing.

John Scott Harrison’s story didn’t end with his death at the age of 73. Grave robbers absconded with his remains just days later and brought his body to Ohio Medical College, which had a reputation for acquiring its anatomical subjects in unseemly ways. Harrison’s son Benjamin, the future president, led the efforts to recover his father’s body. He was ultimately successful, and the incident led to the passage of the Ohio Anatomy Law of 1881, which allowed medical schools to use unclaimed bodies and helped hasten the end of grave robbing. All three Harrisons (as well as several other family members) are now at rest in the same tomb in North Bend.

Ben Franklin wrote a satirical essay on farting. 

  • Benjamin Franklin writing at desk
Benjamin Franklin writing at desk
Credit: © Realy Easy Star/Alamy
Author Bess Lovejoy
May 22, 2026

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Sometime around 1781, while serving as minister to France, Benjamin Franklin set his pen to paper to address an important subject. Not liberty, diplomacy, or trade relations — passing gas. 

“It is universally well known,” the great statesman and polymath wrote, “That in digesting our common Food, there is created or produced in the Bowels of human Créatures, a great Quantity of Wind.” Because letting this “wind” escape is usually “offensive to the Company,” he continued, most well-bred people try to restrain the “Efforts of Nature,” at the risk of causing pain or even disease to themselves.

The essay was addressed to the Royal Academy of Brussels in response to its “Mathematical Prize Question,” though Franklin never actually sent it. He found the academy’s question — “given a certain geometric figure, how could one determine the greatest number of smaller figures that could be contained inside the first?” — so silly, he was moved to lampoon it. He especially took issue with the fact that the academy had advertised the question as having practical value. 

What would have far more utility, Franklin reasoned, would be figuring out a way to make farts smell better.

What if, the statesman conjectured in his essay, scientists could create some kind of “Drug wholesome & not disagreable, to be mix’d with our common Food,” that might make this gas smell as pleasant as perfume, and thus make people less likely to try to hold it in? Franklin went on to lay out examples of how food can change the smell of excreta. Administering such a drug with dinner might even become part of hosting duties, he mused: “The generous Soul, who now endeavours to find out whether the Friends he entertains like best Claret or Burgundy, Champagne or Madeira, would then enquire also whether they chose Musk or Lilly, Rose or Bergamot, and provide accordingly.”

Though Franklin never sent his essay to the academy, he did send it to friends and eventually published it in his collection of “bagatelles,” or trifles. It was far from the only time he used satire to make a point, of course: When he wasn’t making fun of math prizes, Franklin often wrote satirically to argue against subjects such as slavery, British domination, and witch hunts, and in favor of freedom and equality.

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Franklin’s fart idea eventually received an official response.

Franklin’s essay didn’t just linger as an 18th-century joke: It eventually earned a real, if playful, scientific reply. More than 240 years later, the modern successor to the Royal Academy of Brussels — the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts — was asked whether it might respond to the founding father’s infamous challenge.

The academy took the question seriously enough to consult microbiome experts, including Belgian researcher Sarah Lebeer and British professor Glenn Gibson. Their answer? Franklin’s idea of a “wholesome” additive to make gas more pleasant wasn’t entirely off base. The smell of flatulence, they explained, largely comes from gases such as hydrogen sulfide produced by gut bacteria; in theory, altering the microbiome through probiotics or diet could reduce those odors.

In the 1800s, some Americans lived inside massive tree stumps.

  • Cedar stump house, Edgecomb, Washington
Cedar stump house, Edgecomb, Washington
Credit: Historic Collection/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
March 27, 2025

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Before the logging industry wiped out millions of wooded acres across the United States, the trees in old-growth forests were hundreds of feet tall, with gnarled bases and trunks that could measure more than 20 feet across. To fell the trees, loggers would build platforms 10 to 12 feet off the ground where the tree’s shape was smoother. So when settlers moved into the cleared forestland, they had a lot of giant stumps to contend with. Some stumps were removed, sometimes using perilous methods such as fire or dynamite. But others, particularly the larger ones, were repurposed.

The bases of these massive trees had soft wood interiors and sometimes even hollow areas, so it was relatively easy to carve out the center of a stump and turn it into a building, such as a barn, post office, or even the occasional home. The most famous of these stump houses was the Lennstrom Stump House in Edgecomb, Washington, crafted from a cedar stump 22 feet in diameter. Three adults and three children lived in the stump until they could build a larger house on their property. Unfortunately, the Lennstrom home was severely damaged in 1946. But in Arlington, Washington, just a few miles from Edgecomb, an extant 18-foot stump house is on display outside the Stillaguamish Valley Pioneer Museum.

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A 17th-century treehouse is still standing in England.

The centerpiece of the Pitchford Estate, a historic thousand-acre farm in rural Shropshire county, England, is an Elizabethan mansion decked out in ornate half-timbering. But there’s a much smaller house that’s equally of note: a treehouse, complete with matching half-timbering, that dates back to at least 1692. The timbering is a later edition — the treehouse was originally built to look like a stone building. When it was first built, the cottage was entirely supported by the lime tree beneath it, but some adjustments have been necessary as both have aged. Now, the structure is held aloft by metal struts, but it’s stable enough that visitors can explore it on tours.

Gibraltar forgot it was a city for 180 years.  

  • Pinpointing location of Gibraltar
Pinpointing location of Gibraltar
Credit: Ben Gingell/ Shutterstock
Author Michael Nordine
October 10, 2024

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As both a city and a British overseas territory, Gibraltar has held a unique status since Queen Victoria granted it cityhood in 1842. It seems no one wrote that down in 1842, however, because the territory bid to become a city in advance of the queen’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022 — leading some to remark that Gibraltar itself simply forgot it was a city. After the bid, researchers realized that Gibraltar had already held that vaunted status for 180 years, but due to a technicality with the paperwork, its cityhood was overlooked by future officials and largely forgotten. 

Only four other locations outside the United Kingdom have received similar recognition as British cities: Hamilton, Bermuda; Jamestown, St. Helena; Douglas, Isle of Man; and Stanley, Falkland Islands. It’s up to the monarch to make the final decision on such matters, though they do so on the advice of ministers who consider such factors as population and whether a would-be city has a cathedral or university. In the case of Gibraltar, one can only assume that having a very large rock proved advantageous as well. 

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There are wild monkeys in Gibraltar.

If you want to see wild monkeys in Europe, look no further than Gibraltar. Barbary macaques roam the city — including the Rock, where there are thought to be some 230 of them — and are among its most popular attractions. They’re the only wild monkeys on the European continent; they’re also endangered. Direct interaction with the macaques is thus strongly discouraged, not that tourists — or the monkeys themselves — always listen. 

A full-scale replica of the Parthenon was built in the U.S.

  • Parthenon in Nashville
Parthenon in Nashville
Credit: vincentwalkerphotos/ Shutterstock
Author Bennett Kleinman
December 7, 2023

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The Parthenon — an ancient Greek temple built in Athens, Greece, between 447 and 432 BCE — is one of the most famous landmarks in the world. But many people don’t realize that a full-scale replica was built far across the world in Nashville, Tennessee, to celebrate the state’s Centennial Exposition in 1897. Nashville had earned the nickname “the Athens of the South” due to its commitment to culture and higher education, and opted to honor the moniker by recreating one of ancient Greece’s most famous landmarks.

At the time, the Parthenon in Greece had fallen into disrepair, and organizers in Tennessee aimed to replicate the building as it looked in its heyday. Crews laid the first stone in 1895, and worked for two years to construct the many pillars and other features of the 65-foot-tall temple. While the exterior of the final product was an exact replica, the building’s interior featured a different layout than its Greek counterpart, and was used to display the many paintings and sculptures that were acquired for the exposition.

Initially, Nashville’s Parthenon was built using temporary materials and the plan was for it to be destroyed after the event. However, it was beloved by locals, so the city decided to rebuild the landmark with permanent materials. The structure reopened in 1931, though it still lacked an important original feature: the 42-foot-tall statue of the goddess Athena, for whom the original Parthenon was dedicated. Nashville commissioned work on the statue in 1982 and it was unveiled in 1990. In 2002, the statue was gilded and painted, adding the final touches to the replica.

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There’s a quarter-scale replica of the Statue of Liberty in France.

On July 4, 1884, the Statue of Liberty was gifted to the United States by France. Five years later, France was given a Lady Liberty of its own, albeit a much smaller one. The quarter-scale replica was a gift from American communities living in Paris to honor the centennial of the French Revolution.

Oddly, Americans chose to unveil the gift on July 4, a day that lacks any notable meaning in France. The statue was initially placed on Pont de Grenelle (a bridge on the River Seine) and inaugurated during a ceremony attended by Statue of Liberty sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi. Bartholdi insisted the replica be oriented toward New York City, though it wasn't until the 1960s that his wish was granted, when the bridge was rebuilt and the replica was relocated to Île aux Cygnes, an artificial island on the Seine.

In 1923 a jockey died mid-race — and still won.

  • Horses racing at Belmont Park
Horses racing at Belmont Park
Credit: © PF-(bygone1)/Alamy
Author Michael Nordine
May 20, 2026

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There’s nothing in the horse racing rulebook that says a dead person can’t win a race — which is exactly what happened to one Frank Hayes about a century ago. The 22-year-old, who had just made the jump from stable hand to jockey, had the misfortune of suffering a fatal heart attack while atop his faithful steed, Sweet Kiss, and the good fortune of finishing — and, because he didn’t fall off, winning — the race anyway. 

The steeplechase (a race involving obstacles for the horses to jump over) took place on June 4, 1923, at the Belmont Park racetrack in Elmont, New York, and was the only race Hayes ever won. Given that Sweet Kiss had 20-1 odds, the victory would have been an impressive feat even if the ill-fated Hayes had been alive to enjoy it. 

There are competing theories behind the cause of Hayes’ heart attack, with one newspaper suggesting he had overexerted himself trying to lose enough weight to qualify for the race. “He was confronted with the task of taking off nearly 10 pounds in 24 hours,” the Buffalo Morning Express wrote at the time. “This morning he spent several hours on the road, jogging off surplus weight. He strove and sweated and denied himself water and when he climbed into the saddle at post time he was weak and tired.” Others believe the thrill of the race was simply too much for the inexperienced rider to handle. 

Though unconfirmed, it’s believed that Sweet Kiss never raced again — and earned the nickname “Sweet Kiss of Death.”

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Every horse in the Kentucky Derby has to carry the same amount of weight.

It’s no coincidence that jockeys are so diminutive; averaging between 4 feet, 10 inches and 5 feet, 6 inches tall and around 110 pounds, they strive to put as little additional strain on their horses as possible. In races such as the Kentucky Derby, there are even weight limits — every male horse has to be carrying exactly 126 pounds, and every female carries 121 pounds. In addition to protecting the equines themselves, this ensures an even playing field. That number includes not only the jockeys but also their saddle and other equipment. If the number comes out to less than 126 pounds for a colt or under 121 pounds on a filly, dead weight is added. The numbers are the same at the Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes, the other two Triple Crown races.

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