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The United Nations was nearly built near Greenwich, Connecticut.

U.N. headquarters in NYC
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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 But those state laws were all repealed amid public outcry.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. 

The “Mona Lisa” once hung in Napoleon’s bedroom.

Mona Lisa at the Louvre
Eric TERRADE/ Unsplash
Author Adam Levine
July 17, 2023

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Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” has been on display at the Louvre Museum since 1804, but before that it hung in a rather less accessible location: the bedroom of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. After Leonardo died in 1519, the “Mona Lisa” eventually passed into the possession of the artist’s patron, King Francis I of France, and it remained the property of the French monarchy for more than 250 years. During the French Revolution (1789 to 1799), the painting was requisitioned by the rebelling public and officially became the property of the French Republic. However, this did not mean that the average French citizen was able to view Leonardo’s masterpiece. 

Napoleon Bonaparte, who rose to power in revolutionary France, had become enamored with the mysterious woman in the portrait — he even took to referring to her as “Madame Lisa” and the “Sphinx of the Occident.” In 1800, he ordered that the painting be transferred to his private bedchambers at Tuileries Palace in Paris. Since Napoleon was, well, Napoleon, nobody argued with him, and he enjoyed the privilege of having one of the world’s most famous works of art hanging by his bedside for four years. In 1804, the “Mona Lisa” was transferred from Napoleon’s bedroom to the Grand Gallery of the Louvre Museum, and since then no individual has had the audacity (or power) to add it to their private collection. It remains on public display to this day.

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Pablo Picasso was once arrested on suspicion of stealing the “Mona Lisa.”

One Tuesday morning in 1911, a French artist visited the Louvre Museum and noticed the “Mona Lisa” was absent from its usual spot on the gallery wall. After a thorough search of the entire museum, authorities realized that the painting had been stolen. The theft of the “Mona Lisa” caused an immediate sensation, and visitors began flocking to the Louvre just to see the empty spot on the wall where Leonardo’s masterpiece once hung. During their investigation into the theft, French authorities arrested a young artist named Pablo Picasso. Picasso had a history of purchasing stolen art from the museum, so he immediately came under suspicion. After an appearance in court, during which he made an emotional protestation of innocence, Picasso was cleared of suspicion, and two years later the painting was located in Italy, where the real thief, former Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia, was caught trying to sell it to an art dealer in Florence.

People thought trains would cause “railway madmen.”

Train at railway station
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Author Kerry Hinton
May 7, 2024

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During the Victorian era, rail travel was instrumental in England’s rapid transformation from an agrarian culture to an urban, industrialized society. It generally improved life for a large segment of society, leading to new opportunities in travel, transporting goods, business development, and the growth of towns and cities. But flaws in the fledgling railway system posed both minor and major dangers. Only first-class passengers enjoyed the luxury of windows, and third-class carriages did not have roofs until 1844. More seriously, most railway carriages were unlit and had no aisles, making passengers vulnerable to a variety of criminals, from pickpockets to con artists.

Another perceived threat to public safety was the rise of the “railway madman.” An 1864 New York Times article entitled “A Madman in a Railway Carriage” warned readers of a train passenger who seemingly had a mental breakdown once the train began moving. He accused other riders of stealing from him and eventually attempted to jump out of the moving train, requiring his fellow passengers to strap him to his seat for the rest of the journey. Even though the article mentioned that onlookers believed the man to be suffering from a “violent attack of delirium tremens,” a slew of sensational newspaper pieces from other outlets led readers to believe that England was beset by an epidemic of “railway madmen” caused by traveling at high speeds. Some physicians warned that the jolts and bumps of frequent train riding could cause brain damage, leading some to lose their minds, and medical journals discussed finding methods for identifying a latent “railway madman” before he struck. Ultimately, the phenomenon faded from the collective consciousness as inexplicably as it began. Though scattered attacks and incidents continued to be reported sporadically over the next few decades, the panic faded, and train travel became a staple of modern life.

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The first railway created an economic frenzy.

In 1830, the world’s first intercity passenger railway line was completed, running from Liverpool to Manchester, England. Although horse-drawn carriages enjoyed wide use for another hundred years, the new railway line was widely popular and extremely lucrative. Investors clamored to get a piece of the burgeoning industry, and the increased market value attracted even more investors before being cut short by the Panic of 1837. In the 1840s, speculation began once more, creating an economic bubble — as the stock price increased, developers and speculators overbuilt thousands of miles of railway lines. Middle-class investors as well as celebrities such as Charles Darwin and the Brontë sisters invested heavily in railroads. The bubble burst in 1845, leaving one-third of the proposed rail lines unbuilt, and many investors penniless.

Stonehenge was bought at auction in 1915.

Stonehenge circa 1930
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Author Adam Levine
July 11, 2023

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Stonehenge has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986, but back in 1915 it was privately owned by one man — a barrister named Cecil Chubb, who purchased the prehistoric monument at an auction for £6,600 (more than $1 million in modern U.S. currency). Stonehenge had been privately owned since the reign of Henry VIII, passing from one wealthy proprietor to the next. According to popular legend, Chubb purchased the monument as an unusually extravagant gift for his wife, who purportedly sent him to bid on a set of curtains and got more than she bargained for when he instead returned with one of the most famous structures in the world. 

The more likely reason for the purchase is that Chubb, hearing that an American was interested in buying and relocating the monument, wanted to ensure that the iconic landmark remained in the possession of locals. In fact, in 1918, Chubb donated Stonehenge to the British public. In recognition of this generous gift, Prime Minister David Lloyd George elevated Chubb to the level of nobility, and he became Sir Cecil Chubb, First Baronet of Stonehenge. The Neolithic monument is now owned by the British monarch and managed by English Heritage, which charges tourists a small fee to visit. Locals, as Chubb insisted over a century ago, still get in for free. 

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Stonehenge is built to align with the solstice.

While nobody knows for sure what the exact purpose of Stonehenge was — it was built around 5,000 years ago, after all — archaeologists have discovered several features of the monument that suggest it was, in part, meant to serve as a solar calendar, as the positioning of the stones aligns perfectly with the summer and winter solstices. When standing in the center of Stonehenge as the sun rises on the first day of summer, an observer will see the sun shine directly into the center of the monument, and the largest stone in the henge will cast a shadow that also extends directly into the center. There’s also strong archaeological evidence that Stonehenge once featured a structure that precisely framed the setting sun on the winter solstice, just before it dipped below the horizon. 

Antarctica had a rainforest 90 million years ago.

Cretaceous Antarctica
J. McKay/ Alfred-Wegener-Institut (CC-BY 4.0)
Author Darren Orf
July 11, 2023

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It’s difficult to comprehend within our limited, double-digit life spans, but Earth is a dynamic planet that is constantly changing. The continents have crashed together and separated a handful of times now (Pangaea is the latest supercontinent, but not the only one), and the planet’s atmosphere, oceans, and orbit are all temporary and movable. Take, for instance, Antarctica, arguably the most inhospitable place on the planet. Not long ago (geologically speaking), the icy continent wasn’t frozen at all. In fact, it was filled with temperate rainforests teeming with life. 

Some 90 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period — the tail end of the age of dinosaurs — Antarctica was home to a completely different habitat, known as the “Cretaceous hothouse.” The Earth was much warmer due to increased carbon dioxide levels (sea-surface temperatures in the tropics were at an incredible 95 degrees Fahrenheit, for example), and the world’s oceans were a staggering 558 feet higher than they are today. Estimates suggest that Cretaceous Antarctica had a climate similar to today’s Italian peninsula and was filled with plant and animal life, including dinosaurs. The southern continent’s hospitality didn’t end with the dinosaurs, either; it continued on into the Eocene Epoch around 56 million to 34 million years ago. It was then that marsupials likely migrated across Antarctica from South America into modern-day Australia before the continents separated. So while Antarctica is pretty inhospitable to humans now, it may just be a phase.

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There’s a place in Antarctica that hasn’t seen precipitation for nearly 2 million years.

Earth wouldn’t be much without water. When you see our home from space, the entire planet seems filled with the stuff — from vast oceans to continent-spanning weather systems. But there is one place where precipitation holds no sway, and that’s Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valleys. According to scientists’ best estimates, these valleys haven’t seen rain in nearly 2 million years. The area is so parched thanks to a phenomenon called katabatic wind, also known as downslope wind, in which gravity pulls cold, moisture-filled mountain winds down and away from these valleys — blowing away all the precipitation with it. The lack of moisture and extremely low temperatures in the Dry Valleys make the place a near-perfect analog for the Martian surface, and scientists use experiments in the region to help them understand how extremely cold, dry environments work.

Ancient Olympic athletes competed naked.

Ancient Olympia
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Author Kevin McCaffrey
July 10, 2023

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Many aspects of the ancient Olympics are similar to what we see in our modern competition, but there’s at least one notable difference: Today, all Olympians wear clothes. For ancient Greek athletes, nudity functioned as something of a national uniform, an intentional contrast to their Persian rivals, who traditionally found it against decorum to appear naked. Competing in the nude (often while covered in olive oil) was also seen as a way to show off status. According to historian Donald Kyle, “In Archaic Greece, disrobing fully to become naked for sport became an assertive communication of maleness, ethnicity, status, freedom, privilege, and physical virtue.” Some athletes also considered performing naked a tribute to Zeus. In fact, the words “gymnasium” and “gymnastics” both come from the Greek word “gymnasion,” which refers to a place to train or exercise naked. 

While competing naked became a Greek tradition, it wasn’t always that way; some ancient vases from the Minoan period (which ended around 1200 BCE) depict Athenian athletes competing in loincloths. According to accounts by various scholars, the first naked competitor appeared in the 15th Olympiad in 720 BCE. Orsippus of Megara was said to have lost his loincloth during a race, and then ran on to victory. An epitaph of Orsippus, attributed to the poet Simonides of Ceos, reads, “First of the Greeks in Olympia was he crowned while naked; Before him, all contestants were girdled in the stadium.” In the modern Olympics, things have changed a little bit, and now competitors wear clothing —  though on rare occasions, some modern runners will still go without shoes.

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The prize for winning the first documented Olympics was an apple.

While the modern Olympic Games play host to an excess of 30 sports and well over 300 events, the very first competition in 776 BCE had only one event: a 630-foot race called the “stade,” won by a cook named Coroebus of Elis. (The name “stadium” derives from the stade, which was also a standard unit of measurement in ancient Greece.) Instead of a gold medal, Coroebus was awarded an apple. The apple was a sacred symbol in several Greek legends, including the legend of Atalanta and Melanion, in which Atalanta promises her hand in marriage to whichever suitor is able to beat her in a race. Her competitor, Melanion, receives apples from the goddess Aphrodite, and throws them at Atalanta to slow her down. Beginning in the seventh Olympiad, victors were given olive wreaths instead, in a tradition that continued until the event’s discontinuation in 393 CE. Gold medals as we know them did not become the standard first-place prize until the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis.

The ancient Romans celebrated a version of Mother’s Day.

Matronalia celebration
Credit: PRISMA ARCHIVO / Alamy Stock Photo
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
April 30, 2024

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Each May, American families celebrate their matriarchs with brunches, flowers, cards, and phone calls. Thousands of years before this modern Mother’s Day tradition started, the ancient Romans had a similar observance, although it focused on marriage and childbirth at least as much as mothers themselves. Celebrated each year on March 1, Matronalia commemorated the establishment of a temple to Juno Lucina, the Roman goddess of childbirth, on Rome’s Esquiline Hill. 

As on our modern Mother’s Day, husbands would give their wives gifts — but that’s about where the similarity ends. Matronalia was a pretty pious affair; after a procession of married women to the temple to make offerings to Juno Lucina, families would return home and pray for marital happiness. Enslaved women were also given a feast by their female enslavers as part of the festivities.

Matronalia wasn’t the only ancient Roman holiday relating to mothers, however. In fact, it was pretty tame in comparison to the annual celebration of the Great Mother of the Gods, also known as Magna Mater or Cybele, who entered the Roman pantheon around the third century BCE. Her festival, called Megalensia, took place over several days in March or April, and included games, theatrical performances, and other rituals.

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The creator of Mother’s Day later tried to abolish it.

Ann Reeves Jarvis, who brought mothers together through child care classes and social gatherings in the years surrounding the American Civil War, dreamed of a holiday celebrating mothers’ work. After her death in 1905, her daughter Anna Jarvis decided to make that dream come true, leading to Mother’s Day becoming a national holiday by 1914. Card companies, florists, candymakers, and other gift-giving industries seized the opportunity, and, much to Jarvis’ dismay, Mother’s Day became a heavily commercialized event. Jarvis spent the last years of her life trying to abolish the holiday, calling the profiteers “charlatans, bandits, pirates, racketeers, kidnappers, and termites that would undermine with their greed one of the finest, noblest, and truest movements and celebrations.”

Popcorn used to be banned in movie theaters.

Liberty Theater in 1935
The New York Public Library/ Unsplash
Author Michael Nordine
July 10, 2023

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Few things go together like movies and popcorn, but that wasn’t always the case. In fact, popcorn used to be banned in movie theaters. As the nickelodeons of the early 20th century were replaced by comparatively luxe venues that wanted to emulate the sophisticated vibe of traditional theaters in the 1920s and ’30s, cinema owners decided to ban the now-ubiquitous snack — it was loud, messy, and didn’t exactly evoke seeing Madama Butterfly at the Met. “Movie theaters wanted nothing to do with popcorn,” according to Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn author Andrew Smith, “because they were trying to duplicate what was done in real theaters. They had beautiful carpets and rugs and didn’t want popcorn being ground into it.”

That’s a reasonable objection, but it was eventually trumped by how much money those same owners stood to make during the Great Depression. Movies were a much-needed (and inexpensive) escape during that historic downturn, and selling popcorn in-house for 5 to 10 cents a bag helped keep countless theaters afloat at a time when many popcorn-less venues were going under. By 1945, more than half the popcorn consumed in the U.S. was sold in movie theaters, and in the nearly 80 years since, that association has only grown stronger.

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Popcorn used to be eaten with milk as breakfast cereal.

Long before Lucky Charms and Cinnamon Toast Crunch hit shelves, Americans in the 19th century used to eat popcorn for breakfast; they added milk or cream and ate it like cereal. Popcorn itself is thousands of years old and was popular in South America before making its way to the United States. According to Smith, “North American whalers went to Chile, found varieties of popcorn, picked them up and thought that they were cute, and brought them back to New England in the early 19th century.” Among the more high-profile proponents of popcorn as a breakfast food was Ella Kellogg, whose husband John Harvey Kellogg invented corn flakes in the early 1900s. Though the combo is rarely eaten these days, some think it should be.

Pan Am created a waitlist for moon travel in the 1960s.

Surface of the moon
Photo credit: NASA/ Unsplash
Author Darren Orf
June 2, 2023

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In 1964, an Austrian journalist asked a travel agent in Vienna to book him on a flight to the moon, and it gave the folks at Pan Am an idea. Within weeks, the popular airline created a waitlist for would-be space travelers eager to reserve a spot on the first lunar flight. It was an advance reservation to be sure: The airline predicted that the first commercial flight to the moon would depart in the year 2000. 

Though Apollo 11 would not make its historic journey to the lunar surface for another five years, Pan Am was already busy working out the messy details of spaceflight service (chief among them being the inevitable discomfort of rocket launches). As the airline advertised its lunar list on radio and TV, the waitlist only grew. By the time Neil Armstrong took his “one small step for man” in July 1969, some 25,000 people were waiting for their ticket beyond Earth’s gravitational embrace. Pan Am even set up a “First Moon Flights” Club, issuing club cards to around 93,000 certified members between 1968 and 1971.

Ultimately, Pan Am was unable to deliver on its lofty lunar promises; high operational costs combined with an economic slowdown led to the airline’s financial decline in the 1970s and eventual bankruptcy in 1991. The dream of space tourism, however, lives on. In 2021, Virgin Galactic’s space travel waitlist (at $250,000 per ticket) had some 600 names on it, including Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Lady Gaga. The spaceflight company Axiom Space, meanwhile, is busy curating 10-day visits to the International Space Station for a cool $55 million and launched its first private mission in April 2022. Still, though humans have clearly long been hungry for ways to leave our home planet, the surface of the moon remains an exclusive destination for professional astronauts — for now.

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A Pan Am plane was the first commercial aircraft to fly around the world.

December 7, 1941, is etched in history as “a date which will live in infamy,” but for the crew of Pan Am’s flying boat the Pacific Clipper, the date also represents the beginning of an incredible adventure. After attacking Pearl Harbor, Japanese troops also struck Pan Am facilities in Manila, Hong Kong, and Wake Island, leaving the Pacific Clipper stranded from its home port in San Francisco. The plane’s captain, Robert Ford, received orders to return the long way around. The flying boat (meaning it could land on water) took to the skies on December 16 and puttered westward, avoiding Japanese patrols and often refueling on automobile gasoline. After 209 total flight hours, 31,500 miles, and more than a few close calls, Ford and his crew landed at New York City’s marine terminal on January 6, 1942. Including its original scheduled flight from San Francisco to Auckland, the Pacific Clipper completed the first circumnavigation of the globe by a commercial aircraft — in a way no one ever expected.

Genghis Khan established a postal system.

Statue of Genghis Khan
Photo credit: DavorLovincic/ iStock
Author Michael Nordine
June 12, 2023

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Genghis Khan is rightfully known as one of history’s greatest conquerors, but there’s more to establishing the largest contiguous land empire the world has ever known than winning battles. Born Temüjin in 1162, Genghis Khan adopted the name by which he’s known today when he was anointed the Mongols’ sole leader in 1206, and he eventually became one of the most influential figures in history. One of his more surprising accomplishments was establishing a postal system known as the “Yam,” also called the “Örtöö,” which was expanded across the empire by his son Ögedei. Stations were placed 20 to 30 miles from one another, each featuring food, lodging, and horses; riders could either rest up or hand off their message to the next rider. Not everyone could use it, however — merchants and travelers were originally afforded the privilege (alongside foreign dignitaries and traveling officials), but they lost it after they “abused the system” somehow.

To be sure, the Mongols were brutal — Genghis Khan particularly so. But he was also pragmatic, with the Yam being just one example of the stability brought about by his reign. His subjects were free to practice their own religion and largely left alone after the Mongols had subjugated the city and moved on. (However, the Mongols were still known to massacre people even if they provided little or no resistance.) It’s believed that at least some of the khan’s mixed reputation is attributable to the fact that most historical accounts of the Mongols were not written from the Mongol perspective (with one notable exception). Whether he’s a hero or a villain depends on who you ask, but there’s no denying his historical significance.

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No one knows what Genghis Khan looked like.

Much about Genghis Khan’s life remains unknown, including exactly how it ended and where he’s buried. Even more strange, perhaps, is the fact that no one knows what he looked like. He died six centuries before the invention of photography and led an empire that wasn’t exactly known for its portraiture, meaning that most accounts of Genghis’ appearance are unreliable and/or contradictory. Juzjanī, a North Indian official, wrote in the 1250s that Genghis was “a man of tall stature, of vigorous build, robust in body, the hair on his face scanty and turned white, with cats’ eyes, possessed of great energy, discernment, genius, and understanding, awe-striking, a butcher, just, resolute, an overthrower of enemies, intrepid, sanguinary, and cruel.” Though most agree he had long, flowing hair and a beard, 14th-century Persian historian Rashīd al-Dīn claimed that the khan had red hair and green eyes.

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