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Before gas stations, drivers used to buy gas in a can from the pharmacy. 

Electric-powered car, 1890s
Electric-powered car, 1890s
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
October 3, 2024

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When the automobile was first taking off, gas pumps as we know them today didn’t exist. In fact, the very first motor vehicles were powered not by gasoline, but rather by steam, electricity, or in some cases, kerosene. In the early days of oil drilling in the mid-1800s, when the first gas-powered cars were still decades away, oil companies were after kerosene for lamp fuel. Gasoline was just a byproduct of creating kerosene, and was often burned or discarded. The predecessor to the gas pump wasn’t designed for cars; the first one was installed in a grocery store in 1885 to measure and dispense kerosene for lamps.

In the 1890s, car inventors realized gasoline made great motor fuel, and what was once disposable suddenly became valuable. In the early days of gas-powered vehicles, there weren’t any gas stations to dispense the fuel, so customers bought gasoline the same way they bought kerosene: in a can at the pharmacy, blacksmith shop, or grocery store. Although its inventor, Sylvanus Freelove Bowser, didn’t anticipate it at the time, the pump originally designed for kerosene ended up being extraordinarily useful for filling cars with gasoline. In 1905, Bowser added a long hose to one of his pumps so motorists could fill up curbside. While there’s some disagreement on what the very first gas station was, the first drive-up service station is usually cited as the Gulf Refining Company pump that opened in downtown Pittsburgh in 1913.

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The first hybrid car debuted in 1900.

Hybrid cars didn’t become a practical choice for consumers until the Toyota Prius became available in the late 1990s, but the Prius wasn’t the first car to run on both gasoline and electricity. As early as 1900, both electric and gas vehicles were common, and auto engineer Ferdinand Porsche — who went on to found the eponymous sports car manufacturer — developed a novel system to use both. He used electric motors that could be refueled by a gas-powered generator, giving the car a much wider driving range than other electric vehicles at the time. A later version of the car was on the market for more than a decade, but the vehicles were prohibitively expensive and unpleasant to ride in, so they never took off.

Cucumbers used to be called “cowcumbers.”

Pickled cucumbers
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
September 22, 2023

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In Old English, cucumbers were called “eorthappel,” or “earth apples.” The word “cucumber” came from the Latin “cucumerem,” and arrived in the English language either via Old French (“cocombre”) or through a 14th-century translation of the Bible that may have pulled directly from the Latin root. Over the next few centuries, however, the name evolved to a somewhat less-elegant pronunciation: “cowcumbers.” Given that the term sounds like a bovine pun, one theory for this pronunciation is that cucumbers were not well liked and were thus regarded as only fit for livestock.

By the end of the 18th century, “cowcumber” had become a standard pronunciation, and even spread to the U.S., although some academics yearned for a return to the original form of the word. In the 19th century, the tide started to change, as more educated Brits began calling the plant a “cucumber.” Eventually, how you said the word became a class marker. Charles Dickens even used the difference as a literary device to indicate lower-class characters, and an 1890 slang dictionary listed “cowcumber” as a “vulgar… corruption of ‘cucumber.’” American author Louisa May Alcott also joked about “cowcumbers” in an 1870 letter to her sister Anna. Even after the English-speaking world came back around to the word “cucumber,” regions of the U.S. clung to the butchered pronunciation until the 1930s, and some stragglers even kept the term alive until the late 1960s. The word “cowcumber” is still in use today as a name for a specific kind of magnolia tree — not to be confused with the cucumber tree, a different kind of magnolia.

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“Cool as a cucumber” comes from an 18th-century poem.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “cool as a cucumber,” meaning “calm and composed,” but you might not know that the produce-inspired idiom is around 300 years old. Writer John Gay, best known as the author of The Beggar’s Opera, first used the phrase in his poem “A New Song of New Similes”: “Pert as a pear-monger I’d be / If Molly were but kind / Cool as a cucumber could see / The rest of womankind.” (By this point, “cool” had already taken on the meaning of “composed,” in addition to referring to temperature.) It’s a shame that “pert as a pear-monger” didn’t catch on quite as well. For the record: The inside of a cucumber is around 20 degrees cooler than the air around it.

It took 117 years for “The Star-Spangled Banner” to become the national anthem.

U.S. national anthem score
Credit: Ministries Coordinator/ Unsplash
Author Timothy Ott
October 3, 2024

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Many history buffs can explain how “The Star-Spangled Banner” was penned by Francis Scott Key after he witnessed the failed British bombardment of Baltimore’s Fort McHenry in 1814, and some may also know that the song became the U.S. national anthem in 1931. Lesser known are the details of the 117-year journey that shepherded its transformation from inspired poem to officially sanctioned emblem of American patriotism.

Originally printed under the title “Defence of Fort M’Henry” and set to the then-popular melody of “The Anacreontic Song,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” as it later became known, quickly struck a chord among the citizens of an expanding nation. Rewritten versions of the tune were created to publicize such causes as abolition, temperance, and women’s suffrage. Although it was disowned by the short-lived Confederacy, which adopted anthems such as “Farewell to the Star Spangled Banner,” Key’s song reemerged as a symbol of the enduring union in the aftermath of the Civil War. The U.S. Navy provided its imprimatur in 1889 by making “The Star-Spangled Banner” an official part of flag-raising ceremonies, and in 1904, the Army established the custom of having servicemen “stand at attention and uncover” as the song played.

Shortly after President Woodrow Wilson ordered “The Star-Spangled Banner” to be performed at all military occasions in 1916, Representative John Linthicum of Maryland began a push to establish the song as the country’s national anthem. A vocal minority opposed this designation, on grounds ranging from the ditty’s violent imagery and its roots as an alleged drinking song to its vocal complexities. However, Linthicum eventually submitted a petition of more than 5 million signatures and letters from 25 governors to support his bill. After Congress voted in favor of the legislation, President Herbert Hoover delivered his signature on March 3, 1931, formally recognizing the song that had long served as the all-but-official anthem of the United States.

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Francis Scott Key wrote another poem set to the melody of "The Anacreontic Song."

The music for "The Anacreontic Song," which provided the backing for "The Star-Spangled Banner," was written by composer John Stafford Smith for England's Anacreontic Society gentleman's club in the mid-1770s. Despite being composed as a showcase for the club's trained singers, the melody became familiar to American ears of the late 18th century after it was repackaged for songs such as "Adams and Liberty," John Adams' reelection campaign song of 1800. Clearly, Key was a big fan of this musical arrangement: Well before he dashed off "The Star-Spangled Banner," he set his 1805 poem "When the Warrior Returns" to the same tune, with phrases such as "star-spangled flag" and "brows of the brave" foreshadowing his more famous work to come.

There’s an ancient mosaic in Pompeii that says “Cave Canem,” or “Beware of the dog.”

Cave Canem reproduction
Underawesternsky/ Shutterstock
Author Michael Nordine
September 28, 2023

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Most cities are spoken of in the present tense, but then most cities aren’t synonymous with disaster. And while few details about Pompeii and its destruction following Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 CE are anything less than tragic, there are exceptions — such as the fact that a mosaic reading “Cave Canem,” or “Beware of the dog,” was uncovered in the ancient city. In addition to the text, the mosaic features a very well-preserved engraving of the guard pup in question. The warning was found at what’s now called the House of the Tragic Poet, also known as both the Iliadic House and the Homeric House, which is famous for the detailed portrayals of Greek mythology found on its frescoes and floors.

Despite the dwelling’s name, no one knows who lived there; the moniker is a reference to one of the mythological scenes depicted on its walls. The house was discovered by archaeologist Antonio Bonucci in 1824 and, due to its fanciful artwork, has become one of the excavated city’s most sought-after destinations for visitors and historians alike. Mount Vesuvius has erupted many times throughout its destructive history, but no eruption has stayed in the collective imagination quite like the fateful one that destroyed Pompeii — it’s not often that an entire city and the surrounding area are buried and preserved in volcanic ash.

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Pompeii wasn’t the only city destroyed by the eruption.

There was also the nearby town of Herculaneum, named for the mythical hero Hercules, which was smaller and wealthier than its more famous counterpart. It was discovered decades earlier: Herculaneum was found by accident in 1709 when a worker drilled into the ground to build a well, whereas Pompeii wasn’t discovered until 1748 and was identified in 1763. Herculaneum, which had a population roughly half the size of Pompeii’s, has proved more difficult to excavate. As a result, only a fraction of it has actually been uncovered, and efforts are focused on preserving what's been found rather than uncovering the rest of it.

Zachary Taylor never voted until his own presidential election.

President Zachary Taylor
traveler1116/ DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images
Author Bennett Kleinman
September 22, 2023

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In the 1848 U.S. presidential election, Major General Zachary Taylor — a political newcomer representing the Whig Party — faced off against Democratic Senator Lewis Cass. Taylor was so new to the world of politics that he had never even voted before his own presidential election. A lifelong military man and hero of the Mexican-American War, he was unexpectedly drafted as the Whig Party candidate in 1848 — a move that came as a surprise even to Taylor himself. He wasn’t present at the Whig National Convention, and didn’t find out about his nomination until weeks later, as he initially refused to pay postage on a letter sent his way alerting him of the news. After accepting the nomination, Taylor refused to actively campaign in the race, so supporters hit the trail on his behalf instead. 

On Election Day, Taylor defeated Cass as well as former president and third-party candidate Martin Van Buren, earning the votes of 1,360,099 Americans en route to the presidency. Taylor’s time in office was brief, however; he served only 16 months before his untimely death in July 1850. His presidency was largely unmemorable, though he was a vocal supporter of California statehood, which became a reality two months after his death. Despite this minimal impact on the world of politics, Taylor holds the distinction of being the last person elected to the presidency who was unaffiliated with either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. His successor, Millard Fillmore, was also a member of the Whig Party, but Fillmore never actually won a presidential election.

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Zachary Taylor was awarded a record three Congressional Gold Medals.

The Congressional Gold Medal is Congress’ highest expression of national appreciation, first awarded to George Washington in 1776. The honor was later granted a record three times to Zachary Taylor for his valorous service as a major general during the Mexican-American War. The first medal was awarded on July 16, 1846, for Taylor’s “fortitude, skill, enterprise, and courage,” and the second was given to Taylor on March 2, 1847, for similar reasons. On May 9, 1848, Taylor was granted an unprecedented third medal by a House vote of 181-1, for “defeating a Mexican army under the command of General Santa Anna.” Only two other individuals have ever received multiple Congressional Gold Medals: General Winfield Scott and Admiral Hyman George Rickover, each with two of their own. Taylor was one of just eight U.S. presidents to earn the distinction, along with George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Ulysses S. Grant, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan.

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

10-hour decimal clock
Michael Wheatley/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bennett Kleinman
October 11, 2023

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

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

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

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September 1752 was only 19 days long in Britain.

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

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

Hurrian hymn tablet
Album/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Darren Orf
September 20, 2023

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

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

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

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

Bootleggers wore cow shoes to cover their tracks during Prohibition.

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

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

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

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Mississippi continued to ban alcohol until 1966.

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

The Senate picked the vice president once in history.

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

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

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

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

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

James Joyce used crayons when writing his novels.

James Joyce portrait
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Author Michael Nordine
September 20, 2023

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

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

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

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

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