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The Colosseum used to be a housing complex.

  • Exterior of the Colosseum
Exterior of the Colosseum
Credit: © bauhaus1000—iStock Editorial/Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine
April 30, 2026

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Gladiators haven’t fought in the Colosseum since 404 CE, when Emperor Honorius I put an end to the bloodsport for good. But the iconic structure itself didn’t go away with the battles, of course, and has had many functions in the nearly two millennia since, serving as a cemetery, place of worship, tourist attraction, and even a housing complex. 

Friars belonging to the Santa Maria Nova convent rented out the Colosseum for more than five centuries beginning in 800 CE, building stables, workshops, and sewage pipes made from terra cotta. Their tenants represented a cross-section of Roman society and included everyone from aristocrats to humble shopkeepers. Not until a massive earthquake struck Rome in 1349 CE did they abandon the historic landmark, which has since been repurposed many times over.

The era of gladiators lasted even longer, a roughly 650-year span that began in 264 BCE. Their slow decline in popularity was due to many factors, including how costly the fighters were to maintain, but a changing of the religious guard is what ultimately did the games in. The rise of Christianity heralded the end of gladiators, as religious leaders objected to the violent spectacle. Constantine I technically abolished them in 325 CE, a ruling that apparently went unheeded until Honorius I ended the games yet again.

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Not all gladiators were enslaved.

Though you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise if you learned most of what you know about gladiators from, well, Gladiator, some combatants were there of their own volition. This was rarely the case for the first several centuries that spectators filled the Colosseum to see enslaved people and prisoners of war fight each other, but by the first century CE, the life of a gladiator had a certain glamour to it. Many were the celebrities of their time and even had their own merchandise. Some were former soldiers looking to put their skills to good (i.e., profitable) use, while others were members of the upper class who wanted to test their mettle.

Cats helped win an ancient battle.

  • Cat on ancient ruins
Cat on ancient ruins
Credit: Harri Küünarpuu/ Moment via Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine
November 8, 2023

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Even the most dedicated ailurophile will admit that felines can be vicious when tested, but cats didn’t help the Persians win an ancient battle because of their sharp claws. Rather, the Persians emerged victorious against Egypt in the 525 BCE Battle of Pelusium by using cats, ibises, and other animals the Egyptians considered sacred as hostages. According to the Greek historian Polyaenus, the Egyptians dared not fire their arrows when their Persian opponents held cats aloft in front of them, allowing the latter to take the city of Pelusium with relative ease. This decisive victory led the First Persian Empire (also known as the Achaemenid Empire) to take the pharaoh’s throne for Cambyses II, beginning the 27th Dynasty of Egypt under Achaemenid rule.

Cats are hardly the only animal to grace the battlefield with their presence throughout history. Elephants and horses are perhaps the beasts of burden most famous for their wartime contributions, but camels, dogs, pigeons, oxen, and even bears have seen combat, too. There are various monuments and memorials to their service across the world, as well as the Dickin Medal, an honor first bestowed by the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) in 1943. Initially created for animals who served Britain in World War II, it has been given to 32 messenger pigeons, 38 dogs, four horses, and, yes, one very good cat.

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Cats aren’t nocturnal.

Everyone with a cat knows that felines love running around at night, especially when their humans are trying to sleep. Despite that, cats aren’t actually nocturnal — they’re crepuscular, meaning they’re most active during dusk and dawn. The reason they prefer these times of day has to do with their hunting instincts, as their eyes are well attuned to low-light conditions that allow them to see their prey while remaining hidden themselves. And because cats are descended from desert hunters, dusk and dawn are also favorable due to cooler temperatures. This doesn’t stop them from sleeping all day, of course, but they’re always ready to wake up in an instant — an adaptation that helps keep them safe from predators and alert to opportunities for tiny prey.

The Statue of Liberty’s pedestal is taller than the statue itself.

  • Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor
Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor
Credit: © bauhaus1000—iStock/Getty Images
Author Michael Nordine
April 30, 2026

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Lady Liberty stands a total of 305 feet tall, but the statue itself accounts for less than half of that — at 154 feet, the pedestal is actually slightly taller than the statue (151 feet). By more than doubling Lady Liberty’s height, the pedestal allows her to be seen from farther away as people enter New York Harbor and all it represents.

Inside the pedestal’s lower level is a plaque inscribed with “The New Colossus,” a sonnet written by the poet Emma Lazarus that includes the famous lines: “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Officially known as “Liberty Enlightening the World” and donated to the United States by France in 1884, the iconic landmark was created by French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi.

The Statue of Liberty weighs in at 440,000 pounds, including 176,000 pounds of copper, and was itself copper-colored until it gradually turned green due to exposure to the elements over the course of several decades. The idea for the statue came from Édouard René de Laboulaye, a historian and abolitionist who wanted to commemorate the end of slavery. He first conceived of the monument in 1865, meaning it took more than 20 years for his idea to be funded, built, shipped, and reassembled in America; Laboulaye himself died in 1883, shortly before its completion. 

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The Statue of Liberty’s pedestal was crowdfunded.

Though the statue itself was paid for by the fine people of France, the pedestal was America’s responsibility. It cost about $250,000 (around $8.5 million today), and no one could agree on where that princely sum should come from. Grover Cleveland, then governor of New York, wouldn’t allow state funds to cover the cost, and Congress failed to pass a funding package. This being nearly a century and a half before the likes of Kickstarter, Americans had to get creative in the crowdfunding campaign that followed. Emma Lazarus wrote “The New Colossus” as part of the effort, and Joseph Pulitzer decided to print the name of every single donor — of which there were more than 160,000 — in his newspaper The New York World. Had the effort failed, Lady Liberty might have ended up in Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, or Baltimore, all of which offered to pay for the pedestal in exchange for the statue being relocated to their fair city.

John Tyler was the first U.S. president who wasn’t elected.

  • John Tyler receiving news
John Tyler receiving news
Everett Collection/ Shutterstock
Author Bennett Kleinman
November 8, 2023

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John Tyler became president on April 4, 1841, upon the death of William Henry Harrison, earning him the unflattering nickname “His Accidency.” He was the first of eight vice presidents who have been elevated to the nation’s highest office due to a presidential death, as per an interpretation of the vague wording of Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the U.S. Constitution. Given the fact that this act of succession had never been tested before Tyler took office, several Whig Party members referred to the new POTUS as “acting president.” Tyler, however, insisted that his new role as president was full and unqualified, and refused to open any mail that was addressed to the more temporary title.

Some members of Congress disagreed with Tyler, including former President John Quincy Adams, who argued that Tyler’s ascension to the office of president was “in direct violation both of the grammar and context of the Constitution.” On May 31, 1841, Congress held a special session to resolve the issue. A joint resolution was proposed in order to affirm Tyler’s role as president of the United States without any conditions, and both the House and the Senate approved the measure the next day. The vice presidency remained vacant throughout Tyler’s term, until he was succeeded by James K. Polk in 1845. Though the Tyler administration was the first of several to leave the VP office vacant, that changed with ratification of the 25th Amendment in 1967, which created a constitutional process for replacing the vice president and clarified the rules of presidential succession, establishing what’s now known as the “Tyler Precedent.” 

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The Harrison-Tyler ticket featured the first official campaign slogan.

“Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” the first official presidential campaign slogan, was used by William Henry Harrison and running mate John Tyler during the 1840 election. Harrison had earned the nickname “Old Tippecanoe” for his victory during the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. Whig Party strategists turned the nickname into a catchy rhyme to attract voters, and even commissioned a song based on the slogan. Ohioan jeweler Alexander Coffman Ross wrote the lyrics to the song, titled “Tip and Ty,” which included the line “We’ll beat little Van” — a reference to opponent Martin Van Buren. The incumbent president fought back with a campaign song of his own, set to the tune of “Rock-a-bye Baby” and featuring the lyrics, “Rock-a-bye Baby, Daddy’s a Whig / When he comes home, hard cider he’ll swig.” In the end, Harrison’s campaign won the hearts of voters, as Old Tippecanoe and Tyler, too, were elected.

The dishwasher’s inventor said clumsy servants inspired her idea.

  • Josephine Cochrane’s dishwasher, 1908
Josephine Cochrane's dishwasher, 1908
Credit: © Science History Images/Alamy
Author Bess Lovejoy
April 23, 2026

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Josephine Garis Cochran, born in Ohio around 1841, was good at many things. She designed, patented, manufactured, and sold the first modern dishwasher, turning wire baskets and hot water jets into a labor-saving device that has helped countless people. Yet Cochran (who added an “e” to her last name later in life) also had a knack for public relations. She told the press she’d gotten the idea for her “Dish Washing Machine” after she got tired of servants chipping her expensive china — an anecdote that stuck around for more than a century.

That said, historical research has shown that Cochran probably didn’t have that many servants and perhaps wasn’t quite as wealthy as she had portrayed herself. In the 1880 census, around the time she invented her machine, her residence lists only one servant, while previous censuses list none. Cochran also let the press believe she was descended from steamboat inventor John Fitch, even though she knew that wasn’t true.

Press exaggerations aside, Cochran’s life and inventions are still impressive. After her husband died in 1883 leaving her with significant debts, Cochran set out to build a machine that could do what earlier dishwashers could not. Previous designs relied on scrubbers that often damaged dishes; Cochran’s key insight was to use water pressure instead. 

Working with a mechanic named George Butters, she developed a system of wire racks inside a copper tub, where jets of hot water blasted dishes clean. In 1886, she received a patent for the machine, despite having no formal training in engineering — and despite resistance from the men she hired to help manufacture it. “They knew I knew nothing, academically, about mechanics,” she later recalled, “and they insisted on having their own way.” Yet ultimately, her own design proved superior.

Cochran didn’t just invent the machine — she built a business around it. She opened her own factory and began selling dishwashers in both home and commercial models under the Garis-Cochran name. Because the machines were expensive and required large amounts of hot water, her earliest customers were hotels and restaurants. The breakthrough moment came at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, where her dishwasher won honors and impressed judges with its speed and efficiency.

By the time she died in 1913, Cochran held multiple patents and had established the foundation of a new industry. Her company was later absorbed into what became KitchenAid, now owned by Whirlpool, and her water-pressure design remains the basis of modern dishwashers.

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A woman invented a machine that changed shopping bags forever.

Margaret E. Knight transformed a simple but essential object: the paper bag. An inventor since her teens, she was working at the Columbia Paper Bag Company in Springfield, Massachusetts, around 1867 when she designed a machine that could cut, fold, and glue paper into flat-bottomed bags — the familiar style still used today. Prior to her invention, paper bags were V-shaped cones that functioned more like envelopes and were a lot less ideal for grocery runs. Before she could patent her invention, however, a machinist named Charles Annan stole her design and filed his own claim. Knight fought back in court, producing detailed drawings and notes to prove the invention was hers. She won the case in 1871, despite Annan’s argument that a woman couldn’t possibly understand such a complex machine. Knight’s machine made it possible to mass-produce sturdy paper bags, transforming retail and everyday life. She went on to secure more than 25 patents — but her most famous invention remains one people still carry every day.

The Dutch and English ‘fought’ a 335-year war without any battles.

  • Map of the Isles of Scilly
Map of the Isles of Scilly
Credit: Sateda/ istock
Author Sarah Anne Lloyd
September 4, 2024

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The Isles of Scilly, a quiet archipelago off the coast of Cornwall in southwest England, is the unlikely site of one of the longest wars in history — although the 335-year conflict between the Dutch and the English was because of a clerical error rather than lingering animosity. There were no battles or bloodshed, and everybody involved forgot they were at war after just a few months.

Starting in the 1640s, the British Isles were mired in a civil war between the Royalists, who supported the monarchy of Charles I and II, and Parliamentarians, who supported Parliament. The Dutch were longtime allies of the Royalists, but they predicted — rightly — that the Parliamentarians would be the victors. Wanting to be in England’s good graces after the likely change in leadership, they threw their support behind the Parliamentarians. The Royalists were, predictably, unhappy about this, and started raiding along Dutch shipping routes in the English Channel. 

By 1651, the Royalist navy had been forced out of Cornwall and pushed back into the Isles of Scilly. The Netherlands saw an opportunity to confront its former allies about the damage to its trade ships, and sent 12 warships to demand reparations. When they didn’t get what they wanted, Dutch Admiral Maarten Tromp declared war on the Isles of Scilly, and therefore the Royalists, on March 30. The Dutch forces were still there when the Parliamentarians took the Isles of Scilly from the Royalists that June. Since the region was no longer under Royalist control, the Dutch sailed home, leaving a major loose end: their declaration of war.

For more than three centuries, life went on in the Isles of Scilly as if the war had ended when the Dutch left. But in 1986, a local Scillian historian named Roy Duncan wrote to the Dutch Embassy in London inquiring about the conflict. Sure enough, the embassy found documentation that the war had never technically ended, although it’s unclear whether Admiral Tromp had the authority to declare war in the first place. Duncan invited Dutch Ambassador Rein Huydecoper to come to the Isles of Scilly to sign a peace treaty, thus officially ending the war on April 17, 1986.

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A pig was the only casualty of a border dispute between the U.S. and Britain.

The San Juan Islands are a quiet archipelago in the northwest corner of Washington state, just a whisper away from what’s now Canadian territory. The 1846 Oregon Treaty separated the American and British portions of the Pacific Northwest along the 49th parallel, but due to ambiguous language, the United States and Britain were both convinced that the treaty granted them the San Juan Islands. American settlers established farms on the islands alongside British farms, and both considered the others to be squatters. Long-simmering tensions hit their boiling point in June 1859, when an American farmer shot and killed a pig that belonged to the British and had been rooting around in his tuber crops. British authorities threatened to evict all Americans from the islands, and things escalated quickly from there. The U.S. sent in a 66-man infantry unit. British authorities sent three warships. The U.S. sent in 400 more soldiers. The British warships started conducting live drills. American soldiers started turning naval cannons into field cannons. It took six months for news of the brewing conflict to reach Washington, D.C., after which President James Buchanan, appalled at how the situation had escalated, sent aging war hero General Winfield Scott to contain the crisis. The two sides agreed to a joint military occupation while diplomacy played out, and after 12 years of negotiations, the San Juan Islands went to the United States.

Lyndon B. Johnson liked to conduct meetings in the bathroom.

  • LBJ’s childhood bathroom
LBJ's childhood bathroom
Credit: Dave G. Houser/ Alamy Stock Photo
Author Bennett Kleinman
November 29, 2023

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Lyndon B. Johnson led the nation in an untraditional manner at times, going so far as to conduct meetings with his advisers while seated on the toilet. The 36th U.S. president was known for a method of persuasion called the “Johnson treatment,” in which he won political victories either through flattery or bullying. One of LBJ’s most common tactics was inviting people into the bathroom and continuing the conversation, often leaving the door wide open and creating an awkward environment.

While some advisers would turn away in order to give the president privacy, Johnson would invite them to come closer so he could hear them better. One such instance saw national security adviser McGeorge Bundy nearly stumble and fall onto LBJ’s lap while he was seated on the toilet. Johnson treated other private facilities as meeting rooms as well — he was known to have aides stand just outside the shower, and he kept the conversation going while drying himself off afterward. Johnson even had telephones installed throughout various White House bathrooms, to ensure he’d never miss an important call. The president’s eccentricities weren’t limited to just the toilet, either. LBJ once completely stripped down while conducting an interview with reporters aboard Air Force One, continuing the conversation as normal. He also began many mornings by inviting aides into the White House bedroom to discuss official business while he was still in bed with his wife, Lady Bird Johnson.

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The first flushable toilet was invented by Queen Elizabeth I’s godson.

While rudimentary toilets have existed for millennia, it wasn’t until the late 16th century that someone invented the first modern flushable toilet. That man was John Harington, godson of Queen Elizabeth I. Harington built himself a house that included a flushable toilet nicknamed “Ajax” — a play on the slang term “jakes” used to refer to toilets at the time. The invention consisted of a 2-foot-deep bowl and a flushing mechanism controlled by a series of handles and levels. Each flush used 7.5 gallons of water; the tank emptied into the street and was refilled by an upstairs cistern. When Queen Elizabeth visited Harington’s home in 1592, she was impressed by the creation and even requested one for herself. The first patent for a flushable toilet was later issued in 1775 to Alexander Cumming, who incorporated a now-common S-shaped pipe into the flushing mechanism.

President Nixon’s daughter married President Eisenhower’s grandson.

  • Wedding of Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower
Wedding of Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower
Credit: © Everett Collection Historical/Alamy
Author Michael Nordine
April 23, 2026

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More than 70 years after they entered the White House together, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s and Richard Nixon’s families remain close — so close, in fact, that Nixon’s daughter is married to Eisenhower’s grandson. Julie Nixon and David Eisenhower were married in 1968 and have three children together: Jennie (born 1978), Alexander (1980), and Melanie (1984). The couple met as children at the 1956 Republican National Convention, which renominated the elder Eisenhower and Nixon as president and vice president, respectively, and began dating a decade later when they attended separate colleges in Amherst, Massachusetts. Julie and David were wed on December 22, 1968 — after President Nixon was elected but before he took office.

Eisenhower selected Nixon as his running mate in 1952, and the two cruised to victory in that year’s election by winning 442 electoral votes; they did even better four years later with 457. (People really did like Ike.) Adlai Stevenson II was the Democratic nominee in both elections. And though Nixon’s presidency isn’t remembered fondly, what with him resigning in disgrace, he was an Electoral College juggernaut in his own right. Nixon won a respectable 301 electoral votes in 1968 and 520 in 1972, carrying every state but Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.

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Eisenhower never served in active combat.

Despite serving in the military for a 35-year period that spanned both world wars, Dwight D. Eisenhower never saw active combat. After he graduated from West Point in 1915, he was stationed at Camp Colt near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, as well as various other U.S. bases during World War I. He was eventually scheduled to deploy to France on November 18, 1918 — exactly one week after the Armistice was signed, ending both the war and any chance of the future president seeing combat in it.

During World War II, he served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force and was hailed for leading the successful Allied campaign in Europe. He didn’t see combat in that conflict, either, serving in a high-level command role rather than fighting in the field.

The Easter Island ‘heads’ have bodies buried in the ground.

  • Moai head on Easter Island
Moai head on Easter Island
Credit: Thomas Griggs/ Unsplash
Author Anne T. Donahue
December 14, 2023

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Adding to the rich legacy of Easter Island, archaeologists have uncovered full bodies underneath each structure. (But breathe easy: The bodies, like the heads, are made out of stone.) Known as moai, the figures were built by the Indigenous Rapa Nui people between 1100 and 1600 CE, but as time took its toll, the statues’ lower halves became increasingly hidden by sediment and rock. 

Located in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, Easter Island is one of the most isolated places in the world, and managed to escape colonization until the first European explorer arrived in 1722. The island itself was formed by three extinct volcanoes, which explains why the moai are carved from volcanic stone. The statues were built to temporarily contain the spirits of Rapa Nui chiefs, who were believed to become divine after death. The structures also sit on stone platforms called ahu, and some moai are adorned with circular red stones (pukao) that sit on their heads and represent topknots of hair. Excavationists have also found cremated and buried human remains at some ahu, suggesting they were a place of Rapa Nui death rituals.

The moai bodies were initially discovered by archaeologists in 1914, and in 2010, the Easter Island Statue Project began excavating two of the bodies. Since Easter Island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the moai are protected from humans, though the monoliths still battle erosion, rising sea levels, and the effects of forest fires. 

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A new moai was discovered on Easter Island as recently as 2023.

For archaeologists, Easter Island is a gift that keeps giving. In February 2023, the dry lake of Rano Raraku (a volcanic crater) revealed a new moai — one smaller than most. The figure was uncovered by three Chilean scientific volunteers, who were working to restore the crater’s marshland. Experts estimate that the statue, which was found on its side gazing up at the sky, is at least 200 to 300 years old. The discovery is exciting for both historians and the Rapa Nui people, as it suggests there are even more moai to be found.

People protested the Statue of Liberty.

  • Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty
Guilherme Bustamante/ Unsplash
Author Nicole Villeneuve
November 15, 2023

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Upon its unveiling on October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty became one of the most recognizable figures in the world. But at the same time that “Lady Liberty” became an enduring symbol of freedom, the statue also stirred controversy, as early women’s rights activists decried the irony of using a female figure to represent liberty at a time when American women did not yet have the right to vote.

Members of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association were denied tickets to the statue’s unveiling on Bedloe’s Island, now known as Liberty Island, on the grounds that they were “unaccompanied women.” So, instead, around 200 women who were involved in the fight for women’s rights chartered a boat, joining the nearly 1 million onlookers who had gathered on the harbor to celebrate. Protesters, led by pioneering suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage, held up signs and banners; “American women have no liberty,” one sign read. Gage called the statue a “gigantic lie, a travesty, a mockery,” and “the greatest sarcasm of the 19th century.” As the suffragists sailed around the periphery of Liberty Island, the official unveiling was attended by between 2,000 to 2,500 men — and, it’s believed, just two women, who were there with their husbands or fathers.

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Before pantsuits, women’s rights activists popularized pantaloons.

Before trailblazing politicians started wearing pants on the Senate floor, and Hillary Clinton popularized the pantsuit, women’s rights activists in the mid-19th century started their own forward-thinking fashion trend, “pantaloons.” As the women’s rights movement gained momentum, women began to advocate for dress reform as a way to challenge traditional gender norms. Elizabeth Smith Miller of New York, an advocate and financial supporter of the women’s rights movement, introduced a new look in the 1850s that gained a lot of traction: a knee-length skirt and billowy Turkish-style pants gathered at the ankle. Activist Amelia Jenks Bloomer, in her women’s newspaper The Lily, helped popularize the look, which also became known as “bloomers.” Although the look spread across the country, it was also ridiculed as masculine, and the trend eventually faded away.

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