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There used to be a 3-cent U.S. coin called the ‘trime.’

An 1853 3-cent coin
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Author Nicole Villeneuve
August 27, 2026

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One of the lesser-known coins in the history of U.S. currency is the 3-cent silver piece known as the “trime.” In 1851, Congress lowered the cost of mailing a letter from 5 cents to 3 cents to compete with private mail carriers, and simultaneously authorized the creation of the 3-cent trime to simplify postage transactions. Before that, carrying or making change with copper cents and half cents was impractical, since the coins were disproportionately heavy and large for their low value.

At the same time, the California gold rush, which peaked in 1849, had flooded the U.S. economy with gold, decreasing its value relative to silver. Coins such as the dime, quarter, and dollar were 90% silver at the time, and became worth more than their face value. They began disappearing from circulation as people started hoarding, melting down, and selling the silver coins. The trime, however, was 75% silver and 25% copper, making it the rare U.S. coin that was actually worth more in your pocket than it was melted down.

Designed by the U.S. Mint’s chief engraver James B. Longacre, the trime was one of the smallest American coins ever minted, at just 14 millimeters in diameter. Its obverse featured a six-pointed star with a shield, surrounded by the words “United States of America” and the year it was made. The reverse showed the Roman numeral “III” inside a decorative “C,” with 13 stars representing the 13 original colonies. 

At first, the tiny trime did its job — it made buying stamps easier and it circulated widely. But the coin was so small it often got lost, and its alloy tarnished easily, eventually earning it the undesirable nickname “fish scales.” Its popularity waned, and after being replaced by a nickel 3-cent coin following the Civil War coin shortage, the trime barely resurfaced in circulation. It was officially discontinued with the Coinage Act of 1873. 

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The first official U.S. coin said “Mind Your Business” on it.

In 1787, the United States was still in its infancy and was figuring out, along with many other things, its national currency. That year, Congress approved the first official U.S. coin for circulation: the Fugio cent. The copper coin, believed to have been designed by Benjamin Franklin, came with a curt piece of advice: “Mind Your Business.” It wasn’t meant as a slight: Taken together with the picture of a sundial and the Latin word Fugio, meaning “run” or “flee,” it’s been interpreted to mean “time flies, so take care of your affairs.” The reverse side of the coin featured 13 linked rings representing the 13 colonies becoming united as a nation, surrounding the motto “We Are One.” The Fugio cent was made by a private contractor for just one year; in 1792, the Coinage Act was passed and the U.S. Mint was established.

One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World might not have existed.

Depiction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon
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Author Timothy Ott
August 27, 2026

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According to the 2,000-year-old writings of Greek historians such as Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, the ancient city of Babylon (in modern-day Iraq) boasted tiered terraces of exotic plants of all types that towered several stories above onlookers from the ground. Said to have been created in the sixth century BCE by King Nebuchadnezzar II for one of his wives, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were considered an awe-inspiring sight and a triumph of engineering, and as such have been accorded a spot among the celebrated Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

However, there are a couple of glaring problems with that story. One is that there is no conclusive evidence among the ruins of Babylon that such a garden ever existed, nor the irrigation system needed to maintain it amid the desert landscape. Also, the breathtaking accounts of the foliage were all composed well after the fall of Babylon in 539 BCE; there are no contemporary descriptions of the Hanging Gardens, even though other achievements of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign were recorded at the time. As such, one popular argument holds that the legendary Hanging Gardens were merely a product of the overactive collective imagination of ancient thinkers.

There is a plausible alternative to that theory: An extensive tiered system of vegetation did exist, but was built a century earlier by the Assyrian King Sennacherib in the city of Nineveh, some 300 miles to the north. Unlike in Babylon, there is evidence of an aqueduct system through the mountainous terrain around Nineveh that delivered water to the site, while surviving relief panels from the city’s royal palace feature displays of a lavish garden. As to how the renowned Greek academics could have gotten the locale wrong, they simply may have conflated the two older kingdoms from a similar region with overlapping cultures. It’s possible that yet-to-be uncovered evidence will provide more conclusive proof of Nebuchadnezzar’s green thumb, but in the meantime, it may be more accurate to refer to this ancient wonder as the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh.

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Historians didn't agree on the list of the ancient wonders.

Today, it’s well accepted which historic marvels are listed among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. But the ancient historians who initially inspired this who’s who of monuments were not in unanimous agreement as to which ones belonged.  The Greek poet Antipater of Sidon was among those who celebrated the walls of Babylon, while the Roman poet Martial championed the inclusion of the Roman Colosseum. The spread of Christianity influenced later writers who waded into the debate, with the sixth-century Gallo-Roman bishop Gregory of Tours naming Noah's Ark and Solomon's Temple among his seven choices. According to the authors of The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it took another millennium before the various preferences crystallized into one cohesive group, with the great minds of the Renaissance helping to permanently establish the select seven for successive generations to marvel over.

Ancient bakers used bread stamps to prevent forgery.

Italian bread stamp
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
April 17, 2025

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In ancient Rome, most people didn’t have their own ovens. This included some bakers, which put them in a tricky spot since bread was strictly regulated. Government officials would carefully inspect the weight, size, and cost of the loaves, and nobody wanted to get punished for someone else’s substandard bread. So to distinguish their goods, bakers put their dough in the oven with a bronze brand on top, which would leave an indent on the finished product — not unlike a maker’s mark on ceramics. Some of these ancient loaves were uncovered at Pompeii, the markings perfectly preserved in the volcanic ash.

While bread stamps were in particularly wide use in ancient Rome, the Romans didn’t invent the practice. Clay bread stamps have been found in various regions of Europe dating to at least the Neolithic Period. Many stamps were decorative, particularly for religious rituals. Early pagans used stamped bread as offerings to gods or to ask for blessings. In some cases, decorative bread could stand in for a more expensive sacrifice, such as an animal.

One stamp from the Byzantine Empire was used to mark bread as kosher. Orthodox Christians also began stamping bread for the Eucharist (including Holy Communion) or for saints’ feast days. Today, bread stamps aren’t as common, but they’re still a key part of some traditional bread-baking, such as obi non in Uzbekistan. Stamped bread or wafers are also widely used for the Eucharist in Christianity, and home bakers occasionally use stamps for Instagram-worthy sourdough.

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Ancient Romans visited fast-food counters.

Ancient Romans didn’t have fine dining restaurants like we have today, but they did have businesses comparable to bars, inns, and even fast-food restaurants. Thermopolia were snack counters that served hot food to go. These establishments kept cold foods such as lentils, nuts, and meats in jars embedded in the counter, and the food was then scooped out and heated up for customers. A modern replica of a thermopolium — though without actual food service — opened to the public in Pompeii in 2021.

The first known cookbook includes recipes for flamingo.

Flamingos
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Author Bess Lovejoy
August 19, 2026

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Imagine hosting a dinner party where the menu featured flamingo in pepper sauce, wine infused with rose petals, and honey-soaked dates for dessert. To wealthy Romans, that wasn’t fantasy — it was haute cuisine. 

Those dishes appear in De Re Coquinaria (The Art of Cooking), often said to be the oldest surviving cookbook from the Western world. Compiled around the fourth or fifth century CE from much older sources, the collection preserves nearly 500 recipes from the Roman Empire, including instructions for preparing one particularly eye-catching bird: flamingo.

For centuries, the cookbook was attributed to Marcus Gavius Apicius, a legendary Roman gourmet who lived in the first century CE. Ancient writers painted him as the ultimate foodie, claiming he sailed to Libya in search of giant prawns only to turn his ship around without even going ashore when he learned they weren’t any bigger than the ones back home. 

Modern scholars, however, think the surviving cookbook was assembled long after Apicius’ lifetime with recipes gathered by many different cooks. His famous name likely became attached to it because by then “Apicius” had become synonymous with extravagant dining and was a catchall term for a gourmand.

Some aspects of the cookbook itself feel surprisingly familiar. Like a modern cookbook, it’s divided into sections for vegetables, legumes, seafood, meats, and poultry. But the ingredients can be startling. Alongside chicken, goose, and duck are recipes for peacock, crane, parrot, ostrich, and the aforementioned flamingo. One recipe instructs the cook to parboil the bird with dill, vinegar, leeks, and coriander before serving it with a rich sauce of pepper, cumin, mint, dates, vinegar, and the bird’s own cooking juices.

The instructions are sparse; most recipes don’t include measurements or cooking times. In this way, De Re Coquinaria functions less like a usual cookbook than a professional chef’s notebook — preserving not only Roman flavors but also a remarkable glimpse into how the empire’s wealthiest diners filled their tables.

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Only two copies saved the cookbook from disappearing forever.

No original copy of De Re Coquinaria survives from the classical period. Instead, the cookbook is known from just two ninth-century manuscripts copied hundreds of years after the recipes were first compiled, from a source that’s now lost. One manuscript ended up in the Vatican Library, while the other eventually became part of the New York Academy of Medicine’s collection. Fortunately, Renaissance scholars took an interest in the text, printing it in Milan in 1498 and preserving one of the world’s oldest collections of recipes for future generations.

The Pony Express lasted only a year and a half.

Pony Express rider, 1861
Credit: World History Archive/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Timothy Ott
April 9, 2025

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On April 3, 1860, a pair of riders took off from their respective starting points of St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, with the goal of delivering a backpack of mail to the other city within 10 days. The route stretched across the Midwestern plains and Western deserts and mountains, the riders stopping for fresh horses every 10 to 15 miles before handing off to another rider after a few stops. 

The mailbags reached their destinations on April 14, just past the 10-day goal but fast enough to demonstrate that the Central Overland California & Pikes Peak Express Company, aka the Pony Express, could deliver mail at a speed that bested existing services by weeks.

The Pony Express was founded by businessmen William Russell, William Waddell, and Alexander Majors, who hoped to secure an exclusive mail contract from the federal government with their new service. For a while they succeeded, despite expensive rates and the disruption caused by various conflicts between Indigenous peoples and settlers. 

California grew accustomed to faster communication with Eastern cities, while riders came to be treated like celebrities. The high point for the service came in November 1860, when the Pony Express relayed the news of Abraham Lincoln’s presidential election from Fort Kearny, Nebraska, to Fort Churchill, Nevada, in a whopping five days.

But for all the hoopla surrounding the enterprise, the Pony Express had a short shelf life. The telegraph already stretched from the East Coast to the Mississippi River by the time the first two riders galloped off, and by June of 1860, Congress had authorized the subsidization of a coast-to-coast telegraph system. 

Meanwhile, Russell, Waddell, and Majors faced mounting operating losses that forced them to cede control of the service’s western division by the spring of 1861. The completion of the transcontinental telegraph line that October marked the official demise of the Pony Express, ending the service that blazed in and out of existence yet left an indelible imprint as an emblem of the Old West.

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Buffalo Bill falsely claimed to be a Pony Express rider.

Already famous by way of the dime novels that glorified life on the American frontier, William "Buffalo Bill" Cody published an 1879 autobiography that boasted about his two years of service in the Pony Express, highlighted by one particularly impressive 322-mile run. A few years later, he dramatized his life experiences for the famed "Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show," which featured a reenactment of the Pony Express as part of its thrilling opening act.  Of course, Cody was never shy about embellishing stories for the sake of entertainment, and it seems his tenure with the Pony Express was a distortion of the truth. Although he did work as a deliveryman in an earlier enterprise, a teenaged Cody was attending school in Leavenworth, Kansas, during the time the Pony Express was operating. Nevertheless, the deception worked out well for both entities: Buffalo Bill could claim a connection to the celebrated mail service, while his long-running show ensured the legend of the Pony Express, and other touchpoints of frontier life, would endure for generations to come.

George Washington refused to shake hands.

George Washington portrait
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
May 1, 2025

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George Washington had many challenges as the first president of the United States, and one of them was a lack of social mores around the presidency. The office was brand-new, so there was no established etiquette — including how constituents were supposed to greet the commander in chief.

Knowing he had to interact with the public, Washington held weekly one-hour receptions, called “levees,” which were very buttoned-up and formal. He received his guests wearing a black velvet suit and carrying a ceremonial sword — and he refused to shake anyone’s hand, which applied to his closest friends as well as the general public. He even held a hat to discourage anyone from trying. Instead, he and his guests would bow stiffly at one another at the beginning and end of the reception.

Washington was attempting to strike a balance between commanding respect and remaining accessible to the public, but his penchant for pomp was a little too close to the British royal court for some Americans. This included Washington’s longtime frenemy Thomas Jefferson, who preferred a more informal style. The presidential salons and customary bowing continued through John Adams’ presidency, but Jefferson abolished the levees and started shaking hands after he took office in 1801.

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George Washington disapproved of the Boston Tea Party.

The Boston Tea Party, the seminal protest in which a group of angry American colonists dumped 342 chests of tea from the British East India Company into Boston Harbor, helped rally colonists toward the cause of independence. But some of the Founding Fathers weren’t happy about it, including George Washington. While he was sympathetic to the cause, he said he disapproved of the participants’ conduct. Benjamin Franklin went a step further and asked that the British East India Company be paid back for the tea. John Adams, on the other hand, cheered the protest, declaring it “so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible.”

It rained heavily on Earth for a million years.

Dinosaurs in the Triassic Period
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Author Michael Nordine
April 9, 2025

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If you think Seattle in November is rainy, try living through the Carnian Pluvial Episode. Taking place some 232 million years ago, during the Triassic Period, it was a time of intense rainfall that lasted between 1 million and 2 million years. The prolonged, world-altering event was first discovered by geologists in the 1970s and ’80s. While studying ancient carbonate rocks in such far-flung locations as the Eastern Alps and the United Kingdom, they came across evidence of a deposit known as siliciclastic sedimentation that suggested unusually wet conditions. When it rains, it pours.

This period was preceded by an era of arid weather and coincided with the rise of the dinosaurs; the lush conditions that resulted helped the dinos thrive for another 150 million years or so. The Carnian Pluvial Episode wasn’t without its downsides, however. It appears to have been triggered by a series of massive volcanic eruptions that led to acid rain and an influx in greenhouse gases, which eventually brought about rapid climate change and mass extinctions.

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The rainiest place in the world is in India.

With an average of 39.4 inches of precipitation each year, Seattle isn’t actually that rainy in the grand scheme of things, despite its reputation. It doesn’t even crack the top 10 nationwide, because although it’s frequently damp, the city doesn’t see the heavy rains found in more humid areas or places where hurricanes are common. On a global scale, it’s even drier. Consider the wettest place on Earth for comparison: Mawsynram, India, which receives an incredible 467 inches of rainfall per year. Much of this comes during the monsoon season between July and September, which contributes to how lush and verdant the area is. Nearly as rainy is nearby Cherrapunji, also in the state of Meghalaya, as well as Tutunendo, Colombia.

The ‘sacred chickens’ of ancient Rome made predictions about the future.

Roman politician with a sacred chicken
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
April 9, 2025

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One of the oldest religious practices in ancient Rome was augury, or reading signs from the gods through the behavior of birds, the idea being that the birds were deliberate divine messengers. Augurs, or bird divination experts, would sometimes draw diagrams on the ground to help them interpret behavior from owls, woodpeckers, crows, and other wild birds. 

These avian messages, called auspices, were taken extremely seriously, but wild birds weren’t always around to deliver them — so eventually, ancient Roman priests started keeping “sacred chickens” that they could call upon at any time. These fortunetelling chickens were especially prized for military decisions, and would be consulted before any major moves to make sure the gods approved.

When their services were required, the chickens would be released from their cages and fed so that augurs could interpret their eating patterns. Broadly, a chicken refusing to eat was a very bad sign, while a chicken gobbling up its food while stomping its feet was a very good one.

The most notable cautionary tale about not heeding the fowls’ warnings came in 249 BCE. According to the ancient scholar Cicero, one Roman consul commanding a fleet of ships dismissed some bad omens before going into battle. When he was told the chickens wouldn’t eat, he ordered them thrown overboard, commenting, “Let them drink.” He was soundly defeated, and later recalled by the Roman Senate.

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A 17th-century naturalist thought swallows migrated to the moon.

For millennia, people in cooler climates have noted that birds disappeared during the winter, but it took them a lot longer to understand migration patterns. Aristotle, for example, thought that some birds must hibernate in tree trunks. One of the wackier theories came along in the 17th century, when Charles Morton, an otherwise well-regarded naturalist, wrote that swallows fly to the moon during the offseason. Citing both the established science of the time and Christian Scripture, Morton reasoned that birds return “from above,” and “whither should these creatures go, unless it were to the moon?”

Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was the U.S. capital for one day.

Lancaster street sign
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Author Michael Nordine
August 20, 2026

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Washington, D.C., was officially established as the U.S. capital on July 16, 1790, when the Residence Act moved it from Philadelphia. The capital had moved a few other times during the Revolutionary War: Among the country’s lesser-known  seats of government are Baltimore from December 1776 to February 1777, Princeton from June 1783 to November 1783, and, strangest of all, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for a single day. 

The date in question was September 27, 1777, just a few weeks after British troops seized the then-capital of Philadelphia. The Continental Congress fled the City of Brotherly Love, first crossing the Delaware River en route to New Jersey before arriving in Lancaster. The Declaration of Independence was brought along for safekeeping, as was the Liberty Bell; the latter had to be left in a church in Allentown after the wagon carrying it broke down, however. 

Not much actually took place legislatively in Lancaster — the Continental Congress mostly just rested for a day before traveling another 25 miles to York, which became the de facto capital until June of the following year — but Lancaster secured its place in the history books nevertheless.

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A president is buried in Lancaster.

James Buchanan’s presidency isn’t recalled fondly, what with him failing to prevent the Civil War, but Pennsylvanians have plenty of reasons to consider him a proud son of the Keystone State. Buchanan represented Lancaster County in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1814 to 1816, the third and fourth districts in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1821 to 1831, and served as one of the state’s two senators from 1834 to 1845 before assuming the presidency. He also moved to Lancaster after college and is buried there, at Woodward Hill Cemetery.

The British once sent a spy to China to steal secrets about tea.

Botanist Robert Fortune
Credit: Heritage Images/ Hulton Archive via Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine
April 6, 2025

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What one historian called the “greatest single act of corporate espionage in history” wasn’t in search of stock market tips or a coveted algorithm. It was about tea, which by 1800 was the most popular drink among the British — something of a problem for the empire, as all tea was produced in China at the time. And so the English did something at once sinister and cunning: They sent a botanist to steal tea seeds and bring them to India, a British colony at the time. The thief in question was Robert Fortune, who was recruited by the East India Trading Company for the job.

This leafy skulduggery inspired the aforementioned historian Sarah Rose to write For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History. The book details how Fortune not only came into possession of precious seeds but also learned the tools of the trade: how tea leaves were cultivated, dried, processed, and manufactured. The plan succeeded, with India overtaking China as the world’s largest tea producer within Fortune’s lifetime. China eventually reclaimed that title, but it took more than a century, and India remains the second-largest today.

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Neither China nor England drinks the most tea per capita.

Though both countries are synonymous with tea — China for growing it, England for consuming it — neither drinks the most tea per capita. An astonishing 1.6 billion pounds are drunk in China each year, the most overall, but on a per capita basis, that isn’t even enough to crack the top 15. Far ahead of either country is Turkey, which drinks 6.9 pounds of tea per person every year — a full 2 pounds more than No. 2 on the list, Ireland (4.8 pounds). The United Kingdom comes in third at 4.2 pounds, with Russia (3.05 pounds) and Morocco (2.6 pounds) rounding out the top five.

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