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The Olympics used to have medals for painting and literature.

Walter Winans in 1903
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Author Bennett Kleinman
July 25, 2023

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

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

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Winners received a silver medal at the first modern Olympics.

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

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

Romeo and Juliet, 1879
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Author Bennett Kleinman
July 24, 2023

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

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

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

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

The “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” songwriters had never seen a baseball game.

Ebbets Field, circa 1950s
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Author Nicole Villeneuve
July 24, 2023

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Along with “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Happy Birthday,” “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” is one of the most recognizable songs in American history. Written in 1908 by songwriter Jack Norworth and composer Albert Von Tilzer, the tune was one of many popular baseball songs that made waves at the time. But unlike those other onetime chart-toppers, the catchy song went on to become an intergenerational cultural fixture, traditionally played during the game’s seventh-inning stretch at stadiums across North America. You would think this legendary anthem for America’s pastime came from a diehard baseball fan, but the truth is that neither Norworth nor Von Tilzer had ever even been to a baseball game when they penned the tune.

The idea for the song came to Norworth not while he was sitting in the stands, but instead, of all places, on the New York City subway. According to legend, he was taking a trip across town in spring 1908 when he saw a subway advertisement for a New York Giants home game at Polo Grounds stadium in upper Manhattan. Inspiration struck the songwriter, and he quickly jotted some words on a scrap of paper. Von Tilzer completed the music shortly after, and on May 2, 1908, the pair registered the song with the U.S. Copyright Office. On the same day, an ad for the sheet music appeared in the entertainment trade paper the New York Clipper, and before the year was out, it was the No. 1 song on the pop charts. In 1940, Norworth finally attended a Brooklyn Dodgers game at Ebbets Field, where he was honored for his contributions to baseball. He claimed it was his first baseball game.

Despite its early success on the charts, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” doesn’t appear to have been played or performed at a Major League Game until the 1934 World Series. It was much more recently still, in 1971, when Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck caught legendary announcer Harry Caray singing the song to the entire stadium (possibly not realizing the public microphone was on nearby) that it became the essential singalong tradition that it remains today. 

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“Take Me Out to the Ball Game” has a feminist twist.

Although the chorus of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” is the best-known part of the song, the lyrics of the verses introduce protagonist Katie Casey, a young woman who is “baseball mad” and would rather be taken to a ballpark than be wined and dined by suitors. In 2013, George Boziwick of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts deduced that this outspoken, progressive character — a departure from the social norms of the time — was actually inspired by actress and suffragist Trixie Friganza. Lyricist Jack Norworth, then married to actress Louise Dresser, was believed to be having a short-lived affair with Friganza at the time; historians have also pointed out that an original edition of the sheet music featured Friganza’s picture. 

World War I helped popularize the modern bra.

Women workers during WWI
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Author Fran Hoepfner
July 24, 2023

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For nearly 400 years, women in Western Europe and North America were expected to wear corsets beneath their clothing — restrictive, binding bustiers that cinched at the waist and opened toward the chest to accentuate the natural curves of the body. This all changed around the First World War, when a shortage of metal, the dominant material in corsets, led to a redistribution of resources as well as a cultural shift. Steel went toward planes and tanks and other military equipment, and American women went to work in factories to contribute to the war effort. Hard labor, however, could not be performed in a corset — indeed almost nothing could be performed in a corset, barring sitting and standing. These women needed something breathable, loose, and functional.

Enter Caresse Crosby, a young debutant who, in lieu of wearing a corset, opted to sew together two handkerchiefs ahead of a social ball, debuting the first “modern bra” on the dance floor. She patented the first-ever “backless brassiere,” which she later sold to the Warner Brothers Corset Company. From there, the modern bra took off in a variety of styles and functionalities. In the postwar era, the bandeau bra — a cylindrical, cupless garment not unlike a modern bralette — was popular under slim-fitting 1920s dresses. Soon after, the cupped bra took shape with its infamous pointed cups and letter-based sizing. The variable styles allowed women the chance to express themselves and move their bodies freely, though the relief of taking off a bra at the end of the day is universal and timeless.

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No one knows the exact origin of cup sizing.

Prior to the letter-based cup sizing system, bras were fashioned with flexible bands and cups to fit nearly any type of chest, with sizing options in “full,” “average,” and “small.” The origin of cup sizing — A, B, C, and up — is disputed, occurring sometime in the mid-1930s. Some historians credit William and Ida Rosenthal, the founders of Maidenform, while others credit S.H. Camp and Company for popularizing the system. The Warner Brothers Corset Company also claims to have used cup sizes since 1935. Though the precise origin remains unknown, the lettered sizing system is still the industry standard going on a century later.

Around 21 human species have lived on Earth.

Human evolution skulls
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Author Darren Orf
June 12, 2023

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Each one of the billions of people living on Earth today belongs to the same species: Homo sapiens. But we weren’t always the only humans. The Smithsonian Institute estimates that some 21 different human species have roamed the Earth (though the number varies due to conflicting definitions of what is “human”). Many of those species are in the genus Homo, which has only one surviving species today (that’s us). The list of hominids also includes other species considered by most scientists to be early humans, such as the Australopithecus afarensis, a member of the genus Australopithecus.

The first humans in the same genus as Homo sapiens were Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Homo erectus, and evidence suggests they coexisted in East Africa some 1.9 million years ago. This kind of cohabitation was a familiar fixture of human evolution. When Homo sapiens first appeared around 300,000 years ago, our ancestors lived among many other now-extinct human cousins. Modern humans famously fraternized with Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other populations. Homo sapiens also shared the planet with lesser-known species such as Homo floresiensis, Homo naledi, Homo luzonensis, and the straggling survivors of Homo erectus. But because some of these groups lived in remote communities, it’s possible that modern humans never even laid eyes on them. Scientists theorize that our ancestors wiped out many of these human species (Neanderthals were the last to fall, beginning to go extinct around 40,000 years ago) by demonstrating superior strategizing and cooperation skills. Our ancestors’ social intelligence helped them rise to the top of the food chain, and the population grew exponentially. Today, modern humans stand alone in the genus Homo, but we only have ourselves to blame. 

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Homo sapiens have been on Earth for only 0.0067% of its existence.

The lifetime of a planet is long, measured in several billions of years, but many species are lucky if they even make it beyond a couple million. Homo sapiens are a relatively young group, first appearing on the scene some 300,000 years ago, which means we’ve only been around for 0.0067% of Earth’s history. Because humans have such a low genetic diversity compared to other primates, scientists estimate that Homo sapiens likely grew from only 10,000 breeding pairs — but we’ve been busy ever since. The human population reached the 1 billion mark in 1804 and 8 billion in November 2022. 

George Washington spent an entire campaign budget on booze.

George Washington in 1776
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Author Michael Nordine
July 19, 2023

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Before he was the first President of the United States, George Washington was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses from 1758 until 1775. He actually lost his first election, however, and “attributed his defeat to his failure to provide enough alcohol for the voters,” according author Daniel Okrent. At the time, it was common for candidates to woo voters by plying them with food and liquor. Washington avoided the same mistake during his second run, spending nearly the entire campaign budget on 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 34 gallons of wine, 46 gallons of beer, and two gallons of cider royal served to 391 voters — nearly a half-gallon per voter. (He also spent 3 pounds on dinner for friends, which very likely also included booze.) His campaign even rolled barrels of liquor to polling places on Election Day, a custom in Virginia at the time. The practice of winning over voters with booze was widespread despite being technically illegal, and was known as “swilling the planters with bumbo.”

Washington didn’t need to woo anyone in order to become President; quite the opposite, in fact, as he did no campaigning and had to be convinced to even accept the role, despite being unanimously elected. He also planned to retire after his first term but was persuaded to remain in office, running unopposed in the 1792 election and once again winning unanimously. Politicians today could only dream of such popularity.

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George Washington’s teeth weren’t made of wood.

You probably already knew that Washington had dentures, but you might not know what partially necessitated them in the first place: walnut shells. The founding father badly damaged his original set of chompers by using them to crack walnut shells, and he was only 24 years old the first time he had a tooth pulled. He suffered from various dental maladies for the rest of his life, and rarely smiled because he was self-conscious about his teeth — but not because they were made of wood, which they weren’t. Washington’s dentures were mostly made from human teeth, including those of his enslaved workers, as well as ivory, cow teeth, and various alloys made of lead, tin, copper, and silver. By the time he was inaugurated at the age of 57, he was down to his last natural tooth.

The Statue of Liberty’s torch was damaged in an explosion during World War I.

The Statue of Liberty
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Author Darren Orf
July 17, 2023

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For nearly 140 years, the Statue of Liberty has been an inspiring symbol and a beacon of hope for those seeking a new life. But many don’t realize that the iconic landmark was also a victim of one of the largest sabotage attacks in U.S. history. In the early hours of July 30, 1916, two years into World War I, German saboteurs blew up a munitions stockpile on New Jersey’s Black Tom Island, not far from Lady Liberty in New York Harbor. The resulting explosion was the equivalent of a 5.5 magnitude earthquake, and tossed shrapnel far and wide. Although most of the statue survived the attack, Lady Liberty’s torch wasn’t so lucky. Before that destructive night, tourists could actually go inside the torch, but after the structural damage caused by the explosion, authorities permanently closed the torch to visitors (and replaced it entirely in 1985). 

It might seem strange for the U.S. to be the target of an attack many months before even entering World War I, which it joined in April 1917. But since the beginning of the war, America had funneled food, supplies, and weapons to Allied powers, including Britain, Italy, and Russia. Hoping to curtail the United States’ support, Germany inflicted an estimated $500 million in damages (in today’s dollars) with the attack, while causing little loss of life. Unlike the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Black Tom explosion didn’t drive the U.S. to join the First World War right away. It wasn’t until British operatives intercepted the Zimmermann Telegram, a German message to Mexico offering it U.S. territory in exchange for its support in the war, that America finally joined the fight. 

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Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s license plate displayed the date of Armistice Day.

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand — heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire — was assassinated while driving around Sarajevo in his open-topped touring car. The event was one of the first dominoes to fall in a complicated geopolitical web of alliances that eventually culminated in the Great War. In a striking coincidence, on the day the archduke was assassinated, the license plate number on his car displayed “A III 118.” Many have since pointed out that the number could be read as “Armistice 11/11/18,” a reference to Armistice Day, the day World War I came to an end in Western Europe. Even though the German word for “armistice” starts with a “w” (“waffenstillstand”) and the three characters on the license plate are actually the letter “I” rather than the number “1,” the plate has long been seen as a prophetic message foreshadowing the war.

Europeans feared tomatoes for centuries, believing they were poisonous.

Queen Margherita
ilbusca/ DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine
July 17, 2023

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There’s a reason why the humble tomato used to be known by the far more sinister moniker of “poison apple”: Europeans feared tomatoes for centuries and believed they were poisonous. As recently as the 18th century, it was thought that aristocrats were falling ill and even dying after eating tomatoes — a misconception stemming from the use of pewter plates, which contained high lead content. The fruit, which is highly acidic, would leach that lead and then poison the unlucky eater. The fear of tomatoes was just as prevalent across the pond, where some American farmers believed that the green tomato worm was “poisonous as a rattlesnake” (in the words of one New York farmer). An entomologist named Benjamin Dann Walsh eventually set the record straight, writing that the insect in question was “merely an ugly-looking worm which eats some of the leaves of the tomato,” and by the late 1800s, more people began to appreciate tomatoes for the nutritious treat they are.

That change of heart was thanks in part to the increasing popularity of pizza, of which Italy’s Queen Margherita (sound familiar?) was known to partake. It’s believed by some that Raffaele Esposito, a baker from Naples often credited with inventing the modern pizza, used the Italian flag’s three colors as inspiration: red tomatoes, white mozzarella, and green basil. If anything explains an entire continent overcoming its irrational fear of tomatoes, it makes sense that it would be pizza.

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Tomatoes have been grown in space.

A little more than 600 people have been to space. So have tomatoes. Seeds for Red Robin dwarf tomatoes were delivered to members of the International Space Station in November 2022 as part of NASA’s Pick-and-Eat Salad-Crop Productivity, Nutritional Value, and Acceptability to Supplement the ISS Food System (try saying that five times fast) initiative, essentially a program meant to give astronauts more food options while in orbit. The seeds, which were delivered in specialized grow bags called “plant pillows,” require a controlled-release fertilizer to grow in zero gravity and take longer to sprout than they would on Earth. Good things are worth waiting for, especially in orbit.

The year 46 BCE was the longest year in history, at 445 days.

Julius Caesar
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Author Darren Orf
July 17, 2023

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In the first century BCE, Rome’s calendar was a mess. The timekeeping system was first instituted around 700 BCE (back when Rome had kings), and from the start, the calendar had some issues. The year was 355 days long with an extra month added at the discretion of the pontifices, high-ranking priests who were in charge of the calendar. As the system was imprecise and subject to mismanagement, over time the calendar became misaligned with the seasons. What’s more, pontifices often abused their power by lengthening the terms of their allies and curtailing them for adversaries. 

When Julius Caesar became dictator of Rome in 49 BCE, he decided a change was in order, both to limit the pontifices’ power and to create a more effective calendar for administering a growing empire. With the help of Greek astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria, Caesar instituted the eponymous Julian calendar on January 1, 45 BCE. But to make the switch to the new calendar, Romans had to withstand what’s now known as the “last year of confusion.” At this point, Rome’s calendar was roughly three months out of whack with the seasonal harvest festivals, so Caesar inserted three extra months into the year 46 BCE, known as “intercalary months,” to get his 365-day calendar realigned with the solar year. For those living within Rome’s borders, 46 BCE — at 445 days long — became the longest year in history. 

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The year 1752 was the shortest year in American history.

The Julian calendar was a major mathematical improvement over its predecessor, but it was still 11 minutes and 14 seconds behind the solar year. This small error grew bigger with each passing year, and the calendar was a full 10 days behind by the 16th century. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII, with the aid of Italian astronomer Aloysius Lilius, instituted the modern Gregorian calendar to correct this. But because of religious differences between Catholic Rome and Protestant Britain, the British Empire — which included the American colonies at the time — didn’t make the switch until the mid-18th century, mostly at the insistence of British astronomers. At that point, the year 1752 jumped from September 2 to September 14, making it only 355 days long and the shortest year in U.S. history. Although the empire lost 11 days, the change brought about the modern calendar that is still in use today.

The United Nations was nearly built near Greenwich, Connecticut.

U.N. headquarters in NYC
Credit: blurAZ/ iStock
Author Bennett Kleinman
May 15, 2024

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The United Nations has called New York City its home since the 1950s, but the global peacekeeping organization once considered developing its headquarters in nearby Connecticut. In June 1945, a committee formed to determine where to build the offices of the newly chartered U.N., and the group conceived of a 100-square-mile campus located in parts of North Greenwich and Stamford, Connecticut, as well as North Castle, New York. This proposed community was dubbed “UNOville,” for United Nations Organization, and it would have involved the construction of skyscrapers, highways, railroads, and airports. The discussions, however, were largely conducted in secret without consulting locals, and when a scoop was finally published in Greenwich Time, it led to widespread opposition.

In January 1946, Greenwich town official and future U.S. Senator Prescott Bush — the father of George H.W. Bush — informed reporters about the UNOville proposal. Upon learning that 500 to 1,000 residents would be displaced by this international mega-campus, members of the community fought back to preserve their sense of regional identity. This led to a public referendum on February 23, which shot down the proposal by a vote of 5,505 to 2,019. With Greenwich no longer a viable option, cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco vied to become the new home of the U.N. But in December 1946, John D. Rockefeller Jr. purchased land along the East River in Manhattan and gifted it to the United Nations. Construction on the U.N. headquarters began in 1949, and employees moved into the building the following year.

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Connecticut and Rhode Island were the only two states to reject the 18th Amendment.

Ratified in 1919, the 18th Amendment established a national ban on the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol. Only Connecticut and Rhode Island voted against the amendment. Both states had actually tried and failed to ban booze decades earlier amid the temperance movement; Rhode Island enacted statewide bans from 1852 to 1863 and from 1886 to 1893, while Connecticut embraced prohibition from 1855 to 1857. But those state laws were all repealed amid public outcry. By the time the 18th Amendment rolled around, Connecticut and Rhode Island had seemingly learned how futile alcohol bans were, and also expressed concern about federal law infringing on state’s rights. 

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