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Leo Tolstoy’s wife helped him write “War and Peace.”

  • Illustration of Tolstoy
Illustration of Tolstoy
Photo credit: ilbusca/ Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine
June 2, 2023

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As the saying goes, “behind every great man is a great woman,” and that apparently includes renowned Russian novelists. To wit: Leo Tolstoy’s wife, Sofya Tolstoy, helped him write War and Peace, one of the most influential works of literature in history. (That it isn’t universally considered Tolstoy’s magnum opus is a testament to his prowess, as Anna Karenina is equally revered.) The couple married in 1862, when Leo was 34 and Sofya was 18, and began their informal collaboration on Tolstoy’s sprawling tome the following year. In addition to sitting with him as he wrote, Sofya was also the first set of eyes on the manuscript and suggested changes along the way — including the removal of a graphic scene that took place during one of the main characters’ wedding nights.

As the first typewriter had yet to be invented at the time, Tolstoy naturally wrote the book by hand — not that his penmanship was particularly easy to read. Perhaps the most important project Sofya undertook, according to biographer Rosamund Bartlett’s Tolstoy: A Russian Life, was taking her husband’s “execrable handwriting, and then preparing a legible final draft of the manuscript,” an undertaking described as “a gargantuan task.” She sometimes had to use a magnifying glass to decipher the author’s chicken scratch and rewrote the entire manuscript eight times. Leo and Sofya’s far-from-perfect relationship is dramatized in 2009’s The Last Station, starring Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren, both of whom received Academy Award nominations for their performances.

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Leo Tolstoy wasn’t a huge fan of his own book.

Tolstoy was a prolific writer throughout his 82 years, but he’s long been associated primarily with his two most epic works: Anna Karenina and War and Peace. He wasn’t especially pleased about this, however, writing,“People … love me for those trifling things like War and Peace, etc., which seem to them very important.” The sentiment has been interpreted by some as a sign that the long process of writing and publishing the novel simply took too much out of the author. He later penned an essay for the journal Russian Archive called “A Few Words About the Novel War and Peace,” in which he clarified his thoughts on the novel — including his insistence (however vague) that it was not, in fact, a novel: “What is War and Peace? It is not a novel, still less a [narrative] poem, and even less a historical chronicle. War and Peace is what the author wanted to and could express in the form in which it was expressed.”

The Welsh are said to have worn leeks on their heads in battle.

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Freshly lifted leeks
Credit: Graham Corney/ Shutterstock
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
April 8, 2024

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St. David is the patron saint of Wales, and his feast day, celebrated on March 1, is a major national celebration full of parades and eisteddfodau (a Welsh cultural festival of poetry and music). Each year, revelers pin leeks to their lapels, as the leafy vegetable has long been a national emblem of Wales. But how did the Welsh become associated with a type of onion, of all things? According to one prevailing theory, the connection began back in the seventh century, when David, then a Celtic monk, ordered soldiers to wear leeks on their heads in battle. 

As the popular story goes, David instructed soldiers to pull leeks from the ground and affix them to their helmets during a battle against Saxon invaders, so that other Welsh soldiers could easily differentiate their comrades from their enemies. (Another version of the story says the order was given by Cadwalader, king of the Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd.) However, some historians suggest the tale is just a myth, and one that got an extra boost when the Welsh scored a major military victory in a leek field at the Battle of Crécy during the Hundred Years’ War. In any case, leeks became a point of national pride for the Welsh. William Shakespeare even referenced the connection several times in his play Henry V, most notably when Pistol, an Englishman, makes a disparaging remark about the vegetable. The Welsh Captain Fluellen, wearing a leek in his cap, insists that Pistol eat one in retaliation. He retorts, “If you can mock a leek, you can eat a leek.”

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Wales used to build a chapel every week.

Wales is known for being dense with castles; it has more of them per square mile than any other country in Europe. But it’s even more lousy with chapels, with a count of more than 6,000 throughout the country. They were built as part of the Nonconformist religious movement, which resisted the doctrine of the Church of England and was particularly strong in Wales. The region saw a massive influx of chapels in the first half of the 19th century, when Welsh people were building around one chapel every eight days. By 1851, 80% of worshippers in Wales were doing so at a Nonconformist chapel as opposed to an Anglican church. Welsh devoutness peaked at the beginning of the 20th century before rapidly declining, and by the end of the century, only 1 in 10 Welsh people attended any place of worship. Some chapels are now finding new lives as homes, restaurants, venues, and offices, while others are collapsing or being demolished. The Welsh government considers 867 chapels to be historically significant.

On April 18, 1930, the BBC announced, “There is no news.”

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BBC radio microphone
BBC radio microphone
Author Bennett Kleinman
July 17, 2023

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With today’s 24-hour news cycle, it feels like notable events are happening every second. But on April 18, 1930, nothing newsworthy occurred — at least according to the British Broadcasting Corporation. At the start of its regular news broadcast at 8:45 p.m., the BBC announced, “Good evening. Today is Good Friday. There is no news.” This unexpected declaration was followed by 15 minutes of piano music, before the radio station resumed its broadcast of Wagner’s opera Parsifal. Though curious listeners were likely dumbfounded by this bold assertion, there were no other national networks to contest the BBC’s claim. That’s because the BBC held a nationwide monopoly on delivering news on television until 1954, and on the radio until 1972.

In reality, April 18, 1930, was quite the notable news day, as nationalist rebels conducted a raid on British forces in India, which was then part of the British Empire. But communication lines were cut during the attack, making it impossible for the BBC to be aware of the news. Under the impression there were no major headlines that day, the network felt no need to lower its broadcast standards solely to fill time. The BBC decried sensationalist news reporting, and shied away from covering local automobile accidents and fires in favor of big-picture affairs that had global repercussions. In the end, the small news department — which consisted of just two editors and two sub-editors at the time — determined that April 18 simply had no events worth commenting on.

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The BBC once told viewers that spaghetti grows on trees.

On April Fools’ Day in 1957, the BBC informed viewers in England that there was a purported “spaghetti farm” in Switzerland where pasta grew on trees. The network aired a fabricated video featuring Swiss women harvesting spaghetti from an orchard, narrated by war correspondent Richard Dimbleby — a veteran broadcaster known for his straightforward demeanor, which only added to the prank’s believability. At the time, many Brits were unfamiliar with Italian food, and hundreds of viewers called the BBC asking how they could grow spaghetti-producing plants of their own. In response, phone operators instructed the gullible callers to “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.” The prank proved to be so believable that it even fooled some BBC staff members, including the network’s general director.

A woman was elected to Congress before women had the right to vote.

  • Women’s suffrage protest
Women's suffrage protest
Photo credit: Everett Collection/ Shutterstock
Author Darren Orf
May 31, 2023

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On August 26, 1920, U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the 19th Amendment, finally granting American women the vote after a hard-fought battle dating back to the nation’s very founding. However, perplexingly, the U.S. Capitol had already played host to its first congresswoman a few years prior: Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana. 

Like many other American liberties, women’s suffrage was slowly granted state by state before becoming a national right protected by the Constitution. Montana granted women the unrestricted right to vote in 1914. Two years later, 36-year-old Rankin, a vocal suffragist, ran for one of the state’s two House seats and won. 

The election of Rankin, the first woman ever elected to the federal government, was a bright spot in American history made dimmer by her misogynistic welcome to Washington. Rankin didn’t take her rightful seat in the chamber until April 2, 1917, due to a month-long debate about whether it was appropriate for a woman to be a U.S. representative (even though Montanans had clearly already decided the matter). The country still has a long way to go to achieve gender parity in the nation’s legislative branch, but 28% of the members in the current 118th Congress are women — the largest percentage in U.S. history. 

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New Zealand was the first self-governing nation to grant women the vote.

When the U.S. ratified the 19th Amendment in 1920 — finally fixing a centuries-long injustice and granting women the right to vote — the country was nearly 30 years behind the curve. Although some territories such as Wyoming and Utah, along with states such as Colorado and New Jersey, had independently granted women the right to vote (New Jersey back in the 18th century, no less), the U.S. government remained predominantly opposed to the idea. New Zealand’s 1893 decision was the beginning of a cascade of enfranchisement that spread throughout the world over the next century. Australia and Finland quickly followed suit, and eventually the United Kingdom joined them by 1928. Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s last holdouts, gave women the vote in 2015, and in April 2023, Pope Francis announced that women could vote in papal elections in Vatican City. 

Attila the Hun’s Bizarre Death

  • Attila the Hun in battle
Attila the Hun in battle
Photo credit: Christine_Kohler/ iStock
Author Michael Nordine
June 9, 2023

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Almost everything about Attila the Hun’s life was remarkable, including his death. Though some details of the story remain unknowable — this was the year 453 CE, after all — we do know that the leader of the Hunnic Empire married a beautiful young woman named Ildico just as he was preparing his latest attack on the Eastern Roman Empire, then ruled by Marcian. The celebration lasted all night, with Attila leading the way by drinking and feasting to his heart’s content. But his guards became nervous when he didn’t wake at the normal time the following morning. Breaking down the door to the bridal chamber, they found their leader dead and his new wife sobbing at his side.

Attila had no visible wounds; according to an account from Byzantine historian Priscus (a diplomat who had dined with Attila), the Hunnic leader had choked to death on his own blood after suffering a drunken nosebleed. Though some later theories suspected Ildico of foul play, and others thought Marcian was somehow behind it, no proof has ever emerged for either theory. Attila is far from the only world leader to depart this mortal coil under strange circumstances, of course. King Adolf Frederick of Sweden ate himself to death after consuming everything from lobster and caviar to champagne and a sweet roll called “semla.” Greece’s King Alexander I, meanwhile, was done in by an infected monkey bite, and Greek philosopher Chrysippus is thought to have died of laughter after seeing a donkey eat his figs.

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Attila killed his own brother to become sole leader.

Attila and his brother Bleda became joint leaders of the Hunnic Empire in 434 CE upon the deaths of their uncles Octar and Rugila, an arrangement that initially suited Attila fine. Historian and author Michael Lee Lanning wrote that the siblings “valued agreements little and peace even less” and “resumed the Hun offensive against Rome and anyone else who stood in their way” as soon as they assumed their shared throne. Though the specifics of what changed aren’t entirely known, according to Priscus, “Bleda, king of the Huns, was assassinated as a result of the plots of his brother Attila.” Attila reigned for more than a decade on his own until his strange, untimely end.

A brown bear became an army corporal during WWII.

  • Wojtek the bear
Wojtek the bear
David Kilpatrick/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Rachel Gresh
December 19, 2023

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Standing in the shadow of Scotland’s Edinburgh Castle is a statue of a man and a bear. The placard next to them reveals they are Polish soldiers and World War II heroes — yes, even the bear. Named “Wojtek,” the Syrian brown bear spent years in the Polish army before his journey ended in Edinburgh, where his statue’s nose now gleams gold from friendly pats. But that journey began thousands of miles away in Iran, in 1942.

Wojtek arrived at the 22nd Artillery Supply Company of the Polish II Corps by happenstance, when a young Iranian shepard traded the orphaned bear for a Swiss army knife, some chocolate, and canned beef. The Polish soldiers received a tiny cub in a burlap sack, who was placed under the care of a soldier named Peter Prendys. To everyone’s delight, the animal quickly assimilated, and in 1944 he became Private Wojtek, meaning “joyful warrior” in Polish. He was fed double rations, often washing it down with a beer. 

Wojtek’s antics provided much-needed entertainment, but he was more than just a pet. The bear proved his worth on the battlefield when his company was reassigned to Italy. Eyewitness reports from May 1944, during the Battle of Monte Cassino, purport that Wojtek bravely carried artillery shells and ammo crates across the battlefield. After the battle, the company changed its insignia to a bear holding an artillery shell, and Wojtek was promoted to corporal. When the war ended, Wojtek said goodbye to his compeers and retired to the Edinburgh Zoo, where he lived from 1947 until his death in 1963, and where a statue now honors his extraordinary life of adventure and achievement.

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The British Empire established an Imperial Camel Corps during WWI.

The scorching deserts of the Middle East and Africa are no places for horses, so during World War I, the British military looked to a more self-sufficient desert dweller: the camel. Thanks to camels’ unique ability to conserve water, they can last up to a week without water in extreme conditions. Having been domesticated for thousands of years, these dromedaries were a natural choice to serve as a reliable mode of transportation for soldiers during World War I — without depleting valuable water supplies. The camel brigade was established in 1916, and proved so valuable that by the war’s end it grew to four battalions (mainly of British, Australian, and New Zealand troops). Well trained and agile in desert terrain, the camels were indispensable during regional engagements, including the culminating battle of the Sinai and Palestine campaign — the 1918 Battle of Megiddo — which ended in an Allied victory against German and Ottoman forces.

There’s an old Irish festival that crowns a goat king each year.

  • Goat at Puck Fair
Goat at Puck Fair
Credit: Trinity Mirror/ Mirrorpix / Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine
March 26, 2024

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Plenty of small towns have animal mayors, but what about animal monarchs? Killorglin, Ireland, has one: a goat king it crowns in a festival every year. The Puck Fair has been held since at least the 1600s, and many believe it’s considerably older. It’s thought to have originated with the legend of a goat alerting the townsfolk of English raiders led by Oliver Cromwell one fateful day, thereby giving the noble residents of Killorgin enough time to fortify their defenses and save their home from the encroaching Englishmen. (Others believe it’s merely related to pagan symbols and rituals, a rather less fanciful theory.)

The festival is held from August 10 to 12 each year and attracts visitors from near and far hoping to take part in the royal caprine festivities. On day one, known as “the Gathering,” a wild male goat found in the nearby wilderness is crowned for the duration of the festivities by Queen Puck, a young girl from the town. Fair Day follows on day two, with a cattle fair held while King Puck observes from his regal scaffold. It comes to an end, as all good things must, with “the Scattering” on day three, when King Puck is returned to the wilderness and presumably tells his fellow goats the strangest story they’ve ever heard.

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There’s an evolutionary reason for goats’ horizontal pupils.

If you’ve ever been weirded out by the fact that goats have horizontal pupils, you aren’t alone. There’s a good reason for the unnerving shape, though: The long pupils give goats a panoramic view of their surroundings and take in more light, allowing them to more easily see predators hoping to make a meal of them. A 2015 study examining the reasons behind animals’ different pupil shapes also found that grazing animals continue rotating their eyes even when lowering their heads to eat, essentially keeping their heads on a swivel at their most vulnerable to ensure they aren’t ambushed. As goats are social herd animals and are happiest when in the company of fellow goats, they also rely on safety in numbers. 

Andrew Jackson’s parrot was kicked out of his funeral for swearing.

  • Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson
Photo credit: Library of Congress/ Unsplash
Author Michael Nordine
June 9, 2023

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Before cats and dogs became the go-to, a number of U.S. Presidents had unusual pets. Thomas Jefferson had bear cubs, Calvin Coolidge kept a raccoon in the White House, and Theodore Roosevelt counted guinea pigs, a bear, and a hyena among his dozens of animals. That makes the fact that Andrew Jackson had an African grey parrot named Poll less odd, but what is strange is that the bird was kicked out of Jackson’s funeral for swearing. This knowledge comes to us courtesy of Samuel G. Heiskell’s book Andrew Jackson and Early Tennessee History, which quotes Reverend William Menefee Norment as observing: “Before the sermon and while the crowd was gathering, a wicked parrot that was a household pet got excited and commenced swearing so loud and long as to disturb the people and had to be carried from the house.”

Sadly, the good reverend didn’t detail the specifics of Poll’s outburst beyond saying that it was “excited by the multitude and… let loose perfect gusts of ‘cuss words,’” causing some to be “horrified and awed at the bird’s lack of reverence.” What became of Poll following the funeral is unknown, but it isn’t uncommon for African greys to outlive their owners — they’ve been known to live up to 60 years in captivity.

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Andrew Jackson may have been in over 100 duels.

Andrew Jackson was known to be as thin-skinned as he was quick-tempered, leading him to challenge many a foe to a duel — around 100, by some counts. Most of these confrontations involved little more than the combatants firing their guns into the air as a show of courage for not rejecting the initial challenge, but at least one turned deadly. It began when fellow horse breeder and longtime rival Charles Dickinson leveled a series of insults at Jackson (a dispute over a horse bet, among other things), and ended with Dickinson’s death on May 30, 1806. Jackson barely escaped with his own life, as Dickinson fired upon him and hit the future President near the heart. The bullet was never removed, and Jackson carried it with him for the rest of his life. 

Victorian-era women ate arsenic as a beauty treatment.

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Arsenic on periodic table
Credit: magnetix/ Shutterstock
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
March 27, 2024

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In the United States and Europe, a ghostly pallor was the height of fashion among Victorian-era women. Pale skin signaled high class, both because it meant that you never had to work in the sun and because wasting away from consumption, what we now know as tuberculosis, had become associated with beauty in certain affluent circles. In the late 18th century, wealthy women started romanticizing the extreme thinness, near-translucent skin, and rosy cheeks of those who suffered from the disease, an attitude that came to a peak in the mid-19th century. Tuberculosis, while devastating, brought out features that some already considered attractive, and beautiful women were, falsely, even thought to have been particularly vulnerable to the illness. Women chasing the fashion wore tight corsets and full skirts to show off their tiny waists and made their faces as pale as possible. And if they didn’t already have a ghostly complexion, they could get the look in other ways — such as through long-term arsenic exposure.

In 1851, a Swiss physician published a report in a medical journal about the “toxicophagi,” a group of people in modern-day Austria who routinely consumed arsenic; they knew it was poison, but thought they could develop an immunity to it by starting with small doses and gradually increasing the intake. The report’s author claimed that arsenic gave them great energy, sparkling eyes, and wonderful complexions, but noted that after long-term use, unsurprisingly, “most arsenic eaters end with an inevitable infirmity of the body.”

After the article was published, beauty writers told stories of women in Bohemia (modern-day Czechia) who bathed in “arsenic springs” as skin care. It became a popular treatment for women chasing a naturally wan look — as opposed to the “painted ladies” of the day, who used heavy makeup to appear pale. Arsenic-based “complexion wafers” started hitting store shelves; Dr. James P. Campbell’s Safe Arsenic Complexion Wafers promised relief from blemishes and “a deliciously clear complexion,” and were sold well into the 20th century. These wafers reportedly had a very low dose of the toxin, but because there is no such thing as “safe” arsenic, the wafers were still fatal for some consumers. Legitimate doctors warned against their use, and at least one physician in San Francisco worried that arsenic poisoning was going undiagnosed because women neglected to tell their doctors they were taking it. 

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Victorian women also rubbed mercury on their skin as a beauty treatment.

Arsenic wasn’t the only dangerous beauty compound to have widespread usage in the 19th century; lead-based white makeup was popular among women in the Victorian era, and ammonia factored into many skin care routines. Another popular trend was using mercury on your skin. Vermillion, a red pigment that’s a form of mercury, was used to tint lips and flush cheeks. A widely used skin cream that launched in the 1880s contained mercury until the 1930s. In the 1870s, a beauty writer with Harper’s Bazaar even recommended rubbing a compound that included mercury on your eyelids to encourage eyelash growth. At the time, mercury was found in many everyday items, and scientists had only identified mercury poisoning as a risk a decade earlier.

Limping was a fad in Victorian England.

  • Queen Alexandra
Queen Alexandra
Credit: Alpha Stock/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
March 13, 2024

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In Victorian-era Britain, few fashion icons were as influential as Alexandra of Denmark, aka Alexandra, Princess of Wales, who became Queen Alexandra in 1901 when her husband took the throne after the death of Queen Victoria. Alexandra married Prince Albert, later King Edward VII, in 1863, joining the royal family just as photography rose to prominence, and her style spread through Britain like wildfire. When she started wearing broad, elaborate, choker-style necklaces — supposedly to cover up a scar on her neck from childhood — they caught on, and stayed in fashion for the next several decades.

After the birth of her third child in 1867, the princess developed a severe case of rheumatic fever that left her with a stiff knee and a pronounced limp, and she sometimes used mobility aids such as walking sticks to get around. It was far from a style choice, but high-society ladies were so eager to imitate her that they even adopted her gait in a trend known as the “Alexandra limp.” At first, Alexandra’s able-bodied imitators wore mismatched shoes to get the walk, but eventually retailers took notice. Shops started stocking pairs of shoes with two different heel heights to capitalize on the limping craze. Sometimes a walking stick completed the look. Even at the time, the trend was considered in poor taste. “There must be a line at which even fashionable folly may be expected to stop short… at the caricaturing of human infirmity,” read a column published in the Scottish newspaper Courier and Argus. Ultimately, the Alexandra limp didn’t have the same longevity as thick chokers, and the trend passed quickly.

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Victorian dresses were sometimes decorated with real beetle wings.

Jewel beetles are treasured for their colorful, iridescent wings, which have been used to decorate textiles for centuries in South Asia and Southeast Asia. Beetle wing embroidery spread to Europe via trade routes in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and by the 1860s, beetle wings were being imported to Britain in the tens of thousands. One of the most famous dresses embellished with jewel beetle wings was created for the role of Lady Macbeth in an 1888 production of Macbeth at the Lyceum Theatre in London; the gown had wings embroidered all over the bodice, skirt, and sleeves, which shimmered under stage lights. Jewel beetle wings are still used in textiles today, and are harvested ethically after the insects complete their natural life cycle.

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