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LBJ would prank guests at his ranch by driving his car into the lake.

Lyndon B. Johnson in his Amphicarx
Credit: Everett Collection Inc/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Michael Nordine
March 27, 2025

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Not many people were lucky enough to own an Amphicar, the only mass-produced civilian amphibious vehicle, but at least one of them put theirs to good use. Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, used his Lagoon Blue model to prank unsuspecting guests at his ranch in Stonewall, Texas, by driving it into the lake without warning. On land, the Amphicar looked like any other car; once in the water, propellers turned it into a boat.

One victim of the prank, Joseph A. Califano Jr., served as LBJ’s special assistant for domestic affairs at the time. As the car began rolling down an incline at the lake’s edge with Califano in it, he recalled the president shouting, “The brakes don’t work! The brakes won’t hold! We’re going in! We’re going under!” It took him a few moments to realize he was safe, but LBJ teased him for his reaction later: “Did you see what Joe did? He didn’t give a damn about his president. He just wanted to save his own skin and get out of the car.” Good thing Califano wasn’t in the Secret Service.

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LBJ won his Senate primary by just 87 votes.

The future president had represented Texas’ 10th congressional district for 12 years by the time he decided to take a second go at the upper chamber, having lost a 1941 election to fellow Democrat Pappy O’Daniel by 0.23%. His next Senate race was even closer. His opponent for the Democratic nomination in 1948 was Coke Stevenson, who had just finished six years as governor of the Lone Star State.  The initial tally was 477,077 votes (39.68%) for Stevenson and 405,617 (33.73%) for Johnson. Because neither candidate reached 50%, it went to a runoff. This was the real nail-biter, as Johnson emerged victorious with 494,191 votes (50.004%) to Stevenson’s 494,104 (49.996%) — a difference of just 87 ballots. The controversial bout was rife with claims of voter fraud from both camps, with LBJ earning a tongue-in-cheek nickname in the process: Landslide Lyndon. He lived up to it in the Senate general election though, winning 66% of the vote and holding the office until becoming vice president in 1961.

People in the Victorian era frequently took photos of the dead.

Postmortem portrait, early 1900s
Credit: AA Images/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bess Lovejoy
March 27, 2025

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Though it may seem shocking to us today, taking and displaying postmortem photographs was a popular practice in European and American life during the Victoria era. In a time before modern sanitation, vaccines, and antibiotics, death was commonplace, and making images of the dead was part of mourning rituals. Postmortem portraiture — in the form of drawings and paintings — had long been available to those who could afford it, but the invention of photography democratized the trend. 

While we tend to associate death with the morbid or grotesque today, many of these images were beautiful and emotional remembrances. The dead were often depicted in their beds or coffins accompanied by flowers (such as lilies and forget-me-nots) or keepsakes. If the deceased was a small child, they were held or propped up by family members. These photos were often displayed in parlors and family photo albums alongside pictures of the living, or they might be carried in lockets.

Postmortem photography reached its peak in the 1860s and 1870s, but began to fade away by the early 20th century, and had all but disappeared by the 1930s. By then, the cultural attitude toward death and mourning had changed. It was less likely that people would pass away at home and be taken care of by family members, and more likely that death was seen as a matter for hospitals and funeral homes. The mass casualties of World War I also encouraged a turn away from elaborate Victorian-era mourning customs. For one thing, families simply didn’t have time to mourn so many losses, and these wartime casualties often took place far from home. Yet today, postmortem photographs have become a treasured item for many collectors, who see great tenderness in these attempts at immortality. 

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Queen Victoria influenced the mourning customs of her time.

When Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, died in 1861, Britain’s queen entered a mourning from which she never emerged. In keeping with the etiquette of the time for widows, she rarely wore colors, and even then only the purples that were permitted in half-mourning. She avoided social outings (being out in public was seen as being in extremely bad taste for widows), kept Prince Albert’s rooms just as he had left them, and slept with a postmortem photograph of him above her head. Although she was criticized for the depths of her mourning, many other widows of the era copied her signs of grief. At the time, it was common to swathe the house in black crepe, send intricate black-bordered memorial cards, and wear all-black clothing (down to underwear and jewelry, the latter often made of jet). Widows were expected to mourn for roughly two years, and widowers for three months.

Snake oil wasn’t always a scam.

Elixirs display
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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
August 17, 2026

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In the popular lexicon, “snake oil” refers to a scam product or bogus claim, particularly related to health. That connotation originated with one of history’s most notorious American hucksters, Clark Stanley, who sold “snake oil” he claimed would cure pain and rheumatism in the late 19th century. 

Stanley would demonstrate to audiences how he would kill and boil a rattlesnake, letting its fat rise to the surface. But his Snake Oil Liniment was, to be clear, a scam. Not only were his claims about rattlesnake fat unverified, but the actual product he was selling didn’t even contain snake oil — it was a combination of capsaicin from chili peppers, mineral oil, turpentine, and tallow, probably from beef.

If Stanley’s supposed cure-all had contained a specific kind of snake oil, it might have been at least somewhat effective. Oil from Chinese water snakes has been used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine to treat arthritis and other joint pain. Railroad laborers who immigrated to the U.S. from China shared it with other workers after long, painful days, which may have contributed to the popularity of generic snake oil as a treatment.

Modern research has shown this particular Chinese snake oil may indeed have health benefits. It’s packed with more omega-3 fatty acid than salmon, and may help with improving cognitive function, reducing blood pressure, and lessening inflammation. Genuine rattlesnake oil, on the other hand, is, well, snake oil — in every sense.

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Snakes evolved three times faster than lizards.

Today, we have snakes in just about every kind of habitat, from the ocean floor to deserts to treetops, and in sizes ranging from a few inches to several yards long. On an evolutionary timeline, snakes achieved that diversity much more quickly than other species, and on a grander scale, according to research completed in 2024. More than 100 million years ago, some prehistoric species of lizard started losing their legs, and snakes became snakes practically overnight. And it wasn’t just universal snake traits such as flexible skulls that came in rapidly. Over the next 66 million years, snakes also went through what evolutionary biologists call adaptive radiation, developing traits highly specialized to their environment. (For comparison, it took hundreds of millions of years for Homo sapiens to evolve.) Some snakes were able to eat prey that lizards couldn’t, some developed infrared vision, and some became venomous. Despite their common ancestors, snakes evolved as much as three times faster than lizards.

The first zippers were wildly unpopular.

Separable fastener, 1917 patent
Credit: © Lordprice Collection/Alamy
Author Michael Nordine
August 11, 2026

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Necessity is the mother of invention, but not every new innovation actually seems necessary at first. Anyone old enough to remember the skepticism that now-ubiquitous phone cameras were initially met with will be unsurprised to learn that something else they encounter every day was wildly unpopular when it was first introduced: zippers. 

That’s partly because they went through several forms before the kind we now rely on —  more than we even realize — first appeared. The year 1851 saw the introduction of Elias Howe’s “Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure,” while Whitcomb Judson displayed his “Clasp Locker” at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. These early iterations were expensive to produce, unreliable, and, perhaps worst of all (in the eyes of folks at the time), different from the buttons and other fasteners people were used to. 

The modern zipper, meanwhile, debuted in December 1913 courtesy of Gideon Sundback, an electrical engineer at a fastener company co-founded by Judson. It was Sundback who increased the number of fastening elements (teeth), making them smaller and adding the slider that pulls them together; he also developed the machine that manufactured them, allowing the company to produce hundreds of feet of zippers every day. 

Sundback’s innovation became popular in part due to the military, which added zippers to soldiers’ uniforms and gear during World War I. They were nearly ubiquitous by the end of the 1920s and remain so a century later.

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The “zipper capital of the world” is a small town in Japan.

You’ve probably never heard of Kurobe, Japan, but you’ve almost certainly worn a pair of pants with a zipper that was made there. The small city, situated in Toyama Prefecture and boasting a modest population of 41,000, is home to the world’s largest zipper manufacturer: YKK, short for Yoshida Kōgyō Kabushiki Gaisha (Yoshida Manufacturing Company). Kurobe is thus known as the zipper capital of the world, with YKK producing about 7 billion zippers a year — about half the world’s supply. (If you check the zipper on your pants right now, there’s a good chance it says YKK on it.)

Ronald Reagan was the first U.S. president to have been divorced.

Wedding of Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman, 1940
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Author Bennett Kleinman
March 19, 2025

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Though he was married to his second wife when he took office in 1981, Ronald Reagan had previously been divorced, making him the first divorcé to serve as president of the United States. A former actor, Reagan met his first wife, actress Jane Wyman, while the two were co-starring in the 1938 movie Brother Rat. They started dating soon after and eventually married on January 26, 1940. Their union lasted nine years; the two strong personalities eventually grew apart, divorcing in 1949.

Reagan wasn’t single for long: He met Nancy Davis, the future first lady, just a few months later. Davis was an aspiring actor at the time who discovered her name was on the Hollywood blacklist — a career-killing list of actors suspected of having communist ties. She contacted the Screen Actors Guild president — Ronald Reagan — for help getting her name off the list. The pair met for dinner on November 15, 1949, and Davis was assured that it was a different actor of the same name who had been blacklisted. The two kept talking anyway, and started dating, leading to their wedding on March 4, 1952. They remained together until Reagan’s death in 2004. 

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Ronald Reagan nominated the first female justice to serve on the Supreme Court.

During his 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan promised to nominate a woman to the U.S. Supreme Court if elected. No women had served on the bench before, or even been nominated for the position. The closest anyone came was arguably Florence Allen, a popular and qualified judge who was the first woman elected to the highest levels of state court, but who was ultimately overlooked for a Supreme Court seat by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Soon after Reagan took office, Supreme Court Associate Justice Potter Stewart retired and created a vacancy. While Reagan considered several female judges, he formally nominated Sandra Day O’Connor on August 19, 1981. She was unanimously confirmed to the position on September 21, 1981, assuming the role four days later to become the first of six women (so far) to serve on the highest court in the land. O’Connor held the position until her retirement in 2006.

Shakespeare spelled his own name multiple different ways.

A deed containing the signature of William Shakespeare
Credit: © Stefan Rousseau—PA Images/Alamy
Author Nicole Villeneuve
August 12, 2026

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William Shakespeare may have helped shape the English language, contributing hundreds of words to our modern lexicon, but he was seemingly unconcerned with standardizing his own surname. The playwright spelled — or at least signed — his name several different ways during his lifetime; in fact, no surviving document shows him using the now-standard spelling of “Shakespeare.”

There are six surviving signatures believed to be the Bard’s, found on legal documents dating from the final years of his life. They include spellings such as “Willm Shakp,” “William Shakspe,” “Wm Shakspe,” and “William Shakspere.” The signatures are abbreviated and difficult to decipher, but they clearly aren’t identical. His name also appeared in print in dozens of different forms; early editions of his plays, for example, variously credited him as “Shake-speare” or “Shakespere.”

This kind of spelling disparity wasn’t unusual at the time. English spelling had not yet been standardized, and people often followed the sound of a word over a fixed written rule. Even highly educated people often wrote the same words, or their own name, differently from one document to the next. Clerks and printers were also frequently the ones to decide how to spell names, meaning individuals had little control over how their monikers appeared in various places.

The modern spelling of “Shakespeare,” for its part, was the most common spelling during the Bard’s lifetime and gradually became the accepted version after his death. It was helped along by the influential Cambridge Shakespeare, published between 1863 and 1866, which used the now-familiar spelling of the name.

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Mark Twain didn’t believe that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.

William Shakespeare has long been celebrated as one of the greatest scribes in the English language, but not everyone believes he wrote the works attributed to him. The modern authorship debate began in the 1850s, when American writer Delia Bacon argued that Shakespeare was not the true author of the plays, suggesting they were instead created by a group of educated thinkers, including philosopher Francis Bacon.

Although her theory was not widely accepted, it helped spark a debate that has lasted for generations. Over the years, the question has attracted some surprising skeptics, including Henry James, Sigmund Freud, Helen Keller, and Charlie Chaplin. Mark Twain was among the most vocal doubters. In his 1909 essay “Is Shakespeare Dead?” he questioned how someone whose life we know so little about could have created works so rife with knowledge of law, politics, languages, and the wider world.

Pablo Picasso’s full name was more than 100 letters long.

Portrait of Pablo Picasso
Credit: Sanford Roth/ Photo Researchers via Getty Images
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
March 13, 2025

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Pablo Picasso is one of the most recognizable names in art history, but if the painter had opted to go by his full name, it’d be a lot harder to remember. He was baptized with one first name, two last names, and 12 middle names, for a grand total of 112 letters: Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispín Crispiniano María de los Remedios de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz Picasso. (The exact order and spelling vary by source.)

It’s common in Spanish-speaking cultures to have two last names, one for each parent. In Picasso’s case, Ruiz was his paternal surname, Picasso was his maternal surname, and he was given his first name, Pablo, in honor of a paternal uncle who died a few years before his birth. His many middle names each had their own meaning, too.

Some are family names: He was given Diego for both his paternal grandfather and oldest uncle, Francisco de Paula for his maternal grandfather, Juan Nepomuceno for his godfather, and María de los Remedios for his godmother. Others are religious. Santísima Trinidad means Holy Trinity, while Crispín and Crispiniano come from St. Crispín and St. Crispinian, whose feast day, October 25, is also Picasso’s birthday.

Some of the artist’s earlier works are signed P. Ruiz, P. Ruiz Picasso, or P.R. Picasso — but eventually, he settled on the name known by millions today, choosing just “Picasso” for his signature.

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A composer was named for an entire 36-member orchestra.

Louis-Antoine Jullien was a musical celebrity in the mid-19th century, and made a name for himself in the United States and Europe as a conductor and composer with stunning showmanship. One could argue he was fated for musical greatness: His father, Antoine, a small-town French violinist, was playing with a local philharmonic society when he was urged to baptize then-newborn Louis. Each of his 36 bandmates wanted to be the child’s godfather, so Antoine bestowed the honor on all of them and gave young Louis dozens of middle names (including more than one Thomas). 

There’s a clock in Bolivia that runs counterclockwise.

Bolivia's Congress clock tower, La Paz, Bolivia
Credit: © John Coletti—Jon Arnold Images Ltd/Alamy
Author Michael Nordine
August 4, 2026

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As a general rule, clocks run clockwise — it’s right there in the name. After all, time moves forward, not backward, and it tends to be helpful for timepieces to operate the way we expect them to. A notable exception is the “Clock of the South” in La Paz, which can be found on the facade of the building housing Bolivia’s congress. 

The clock was changed to counterclockwise in 2014, with the country’s foreign minister David Choquehuanca waxing philosophical as he urged people to think outside the box. “Who says that the clock always has to turn one way? Why do we always have to obey? Why can’t we be creative?” he asked when making the announcement. Why indeed, David. Why indeed.

The numbers on the Clock of the South are flipped, meaning it still tells accurate time while making a statement on decolonization. “We don’t have to complicate matters,” Choquehuanca said. “We just have to be conscious that we live in the south, not in the north.” This remark was, of course, a reference to the fact that clocks evolved from the sundial, the shadows of which run clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.

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The highest capital city and highest major city in the world are both in Bolivia.

At an elevation of 11,975 feet above sea level, La Paz is the highest capital city in the world (though it’s worth noting that Sucre is the other half of Bolivia’s unique dual-capital system). La Paz isn’t even the highest city in Bolivia, however — that would be El Alto, which is more than 13,000 feet above sea level. With a population of roughly 950,000 and a name meaning “The High One,” El Alto is also the highest major city in the world. This has proved to be an advantage for the national soccer team, whose opponents often have difficulty playing in such thin air.

Oklahoma has a panhandle because of the Missouri Compromise.

Henry Clay introduces the Compromise of 1850
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Author Bennett Kleinman
March 6, 2025

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The Oklahoma Panhandle is an unusual boundary that exists due to a law passed 87 years before Oklahoma even became a state: the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The law admitted Missouri to the union as a slave state and Maine as a free state to maintain the existing balance, and prohibited slavery above the 36 degrees 30 minutes north parallel in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase. The panhandle was formed after the Republic of Texas was admitted to the union in 1845 as a slave state south of this line, but with a little sliver of land jutting above the boundary. Rather than separate Texas into two portions, Congress passed the Compromise of 1850, in which Texas ceded the land. The region became known as the Public Land Strip, or colloquially as “No Man’s Land.”

From 1850 to 1890, this narrow, rectangular tract of land, roughly 167 miles long and 35 miles wide, existed as a separate entity from any state or territorial government, making it an attractive destination for homesteaders and outlaws. The land was bordered by Texas to the south, the New Mexico Territory to the west, and unorganized territories to the north and east. The Organic Act of 1890 finally brought an end to this unusual situation, as the Public Land Strip was assigned to the new Oklahoma Territory. The panhandle remained a part of Oklahoma when it became the 46th U.S. state on November 16, 1907, giving the Sooner State its unique shape.

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The world’s first parking meters were installed in Oklahoma City.

In 1930, there were an estimated 500,000 vehicles in Oklahoma, mainly throughout its namesake capital city. This created a lot of unwanted congestion, as people who worked downtown would occupy all available parking spaces for the entire day, forcing potential customers to park far away from the retail district. Though the city tried to solve this issue with parking enforcement, those efforts fell short, so in 1932, inventor, lawyer, and newspaper publisher Carl C. Magee was hired to come up with a solution. 

Magee conceived of a mechanical device that could not only track how long a car was parked, but also collect money for the right to park. It took three years to design and manufacture the newfangled machines, but 175 parking meters were finally installed around Oklahoma City on July 16, 1935, to test the concept. The “Park-O-Meters,” as they were known, were highly successful at both limiting congestion and generating revenue, inspiring other cities to follow suit.

Queen Victoria survived at least seven assassination attempts.

Attempted assassination of Queen Victoria, 1840
Credit: © Photo12—Ann Ronan Picture Library/Alamy
Author Michael Nordine
August 3, 2026

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If you come for the queen, you best not miss. No fewer than seven would-be assassins learned that lesson the hard way when they tried — and, in every case, failed — to take the life of England’s Queen Victoria. 

The first incident occurred during a ride through London’s Hyde Park in June 1840, at which point the monarch was newly married and four months pregnant. Edward Oxford, described by Prince Albert as “a little mean-looking man,” shot at her with a dueling pistol and missed. He never provided a motive for his attempt on the monarch’s life and was declared insane. 

Next was John Francis, whose gun likewise misfired on his first attempt on May 29, 1842, and missed entirely on the second attempt the following day. He was sentenced to death, but Queen Victoria had him sent to Australia instead. (Albert, who apparently could have been an insult comic, deemed Francis a “little, swarthy, ill-looking rascal.”)

John William Bean (whose attempt took place on July 3, 1842) and William Hamilton (June 29, 1849) were similarly bad shots. Bean, who suffered from a spinal deformity, loaded his pistol with tobacco, and Hamilton loaded his with gunpowder, neither of which proved especially effective. Robert Pate came closest, but he was armed with only a cane. He managed to bonk the queen on the head with it outside Cambridge House on June 27, 1850, leaving her with a scar and a bruise. As punishment, Pate was sent to Tasmania, which was a penal colony at the time.

Arthur O’Connor infiltrated Buckingham Palace on February 29, 1872, but this was more of a stunt than a true assassination attempt — his pistol was unloaded and broken. Then there was 28-year-old Roderick Maclean, who shot at Victoria (and, as you’ll have guessed by now, missed) outside Windsor Station on March 2, 1882. “I then realised that it was a shot, which must have been meant for me,” the queen later said of the incident. He, too, was declared insane and spent the rest of his life committed to various asylums.

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Victoria wasn’t her first name.

The future monarch and “grandmother of Europe” was born Alexandrina Victoria on May 24, 1819, named in honor of her godfather, Tsar Alexander I of Russia. She never went by her first name, however, with everyone calling her either Victoria or Drina. The public was nevertheless uncertain what her regnal name would be until June 20, 1837, the day of her accession, when she officially became Queen Victoria. Her son styled himself similarly: Born Albert Edward in 1841, he ruled as Edward VII from 1901 until his death in 1910.

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