Social Essentials

A Victorian woman’s purse was carefully curated to support the social rituals that governed daily life. Calling cards were among the most important items. These small printed cards, bearing a woman’s name, were exchanged during visits or left behind when making a formal call to a home, and they were collected to keep track of one’s social calendar. Indeed, forgetting one could be a major social misstep.

Money was another necessity, though usually in modest amounts. Coins were needed for small purchases, carriage or streetcar fares, tips, and charitable donations. To keep them secure — and prevent awkward rummaging — many women carried a tiny coin purse inside their reticule.

Writing materials were also common. A short pencil, sometimes paired with a small notebook or loose slips of paper, allowed women to jot down appointments, write brief notes, or leave messages. Even these practical tools were often decorative, reflecting the importance of maintaining an elegant appearance.

Hygiene and Grooming Tools

Victorian life, especially in crowded cities, came with sensory challenges. Handkerchiefs were indispensable and nearly universal. Often embroidered and lightly scented, they served hygienic purposes while also functioning as an accessory. A lady might carry more than one.

Vinaigrettes — small silver or metal containers that held aromatics known as smelling salts — were another frequent inclusion. Crowded rooms, poor ventilation, and restrictive clothing made faintness a frequent concern at the time. Fragrant substances offered quick relief and helped minimize unpleasant odors encountered on the street or in public spaces.

Folding fans were also commonly tucked into a purse. These delicate items served multiple purposes: creating a breeze in overheated rooms, offering a discreet way to shield the face, and even aiding in the unspoken language of flirtation and social signaling. Personal grooming items, meanwhile, reflected the era’s emphasis on self-control and presentation. A mirror, small comb, lip salve, and face powder might be carried for discreet touch-ups. These items were meant to be used privately and sparingly, reinforcing the idea that a respectable woman appeared effortlessly composed.

Practical Necessities

Some purse contents addressed the literal constraints of Victorian fashion. For instance, gloves were considered essential attire for public outings, but they were often removed indoors, so women needed to be able to carry them neatly. Button-hooks were also especially useful later in the 19th century, when gloves and boots fastened tightly at the wrist or ankle. These slender tools made dressing and undressing possible without assistance, giving women greater autonomy in public spaces.

Sewing items were also carried. A needle, some thread, and a small pair of scissors allowed women to mend a loose button or torn hem on the spot. While household managers sometimes wore chatelaines  — decorative belts with dangling tools — many women tucked these necessities into their purses instead, keeping them close at hand.

Personal Comforts

Not everything in a Victorian purse was strictly functional. Many women carried small sentimental keepsakes such as pressed flowers, miniature photographs, or love notes. These private items offered emotional comfort while remaining hidden from public view.

Prayer cards or religious tokens provided reassurance during travel or illness, reflecting the era’s deep spirituality. And perfume bottles and scented sachets also served both practical and emotional purposes, masking odors while offering a familiar, comforting scent.

Today, surviving Victorian purses — some preserved in museum collections with their original contents intact — offer intimate glimpses into the daily lives of women in centuries past. Though modest in size, these “indispensables” held the tools a lady needed to meet social expectations, care for her body, manage practical challenges, and preserve a sense of self in a tightly regulated world.

The Julian Calendar: Leap Years and a New Start of the Year

Due to this imperfect system, the Roman calendar had drifted about three months ahead of the solar calendar by the first century BCE. To further standardize the calendar and sync it with the solar year, Julius Caesar implemented the Julian calendar in 46 BCE. Designed by the Alexandrian astronomer and mathematician Sosigenes, the timekeeping system was based on the Egyptian solar calendar, which was the first known calendar to use 365 days.

The Julian calendar largely resembles the calendar we still use today — it had 365 days and 12 months, all of which had 30 or 31 days except for February, which had 28 days. Because the Julian calendar took the solar year as having 365 1/4 days, it also instituted leap years — which, unlike the month of Mercedonius, were regular and predictable — to prevent the calendar and solar years diverging over time. 

The Gregorian Calendar: Easter Reset and 10 Missing Days

Though the Julian calendar brought the calendar year much more in line with the solar year, it still wasn’t perfect. Due to a difference of about 11 minutes between the Julian calendar, which averaged 365.25 days per year with leap days) and the true time it takes for Earth to orbit the sun (365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 45.25 seconds), the Julian calendar became out of sync with the seasons by about one day per century.

This was addressed in 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII instituted the Gregorian calendar, developed by the Italian scientist Aloysius Lilius — the calendar most of the world still uses today. Lilius realized that leap years every four years made the calendar slightly too long, and so devised a system that adds leap days in years divisible by four, unless the year is also divisible by 100 (on years also divisible by 400, a leap day is added regardless). Though this system works admirably well, it is still off by 26 seconds — so by the year 4909, the Gregorian calendar will be one day ahead of the solar year.

Pope Gregory’s calendar also had a religious motivation: to reset the date of Easter, which over the centuries had drifted from the spring equinox when it was supposed to take place. To remedy this and “reset” the date of Easter, the Gregorian calendar skipped 10 days in 1582, when October 4 was followed the next day by October 15.

The modern calendar may seem like a strange system nowadays, but many of its quirks are the result of continual refinement and improvement throughout history. And though some have proposed alternative systems for keeping track of time, none has stuck. Looks like we’ll be reminding ourselves “30 days has September, April, June, and November” for the foreseeable future.

The British once sent a spy to China to steal secrets about tea.

In 1800, tea was the most popular drink among Brits — something of a problem for the British Empire, as all tea was produced in China at the time. And so the English did something at once sinister and cunning: They sent a botanist to steal tea seeds and bring them to India, a British colony at the time. One historian called it the “greatest single act of corporate espionage in history.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower’s road trip inspired the interstate highway system.

In 1919, Dwight D. Eisenhower, then a lieutenant colonel in the Tank Corps, learned of the U.S. Army’s plan to test the capabilities of its transport vehicles by moving 80 military vehicles across the country. After joining the expedition, he dutifully submitted a report analyzing the quality of the roads encountered along the way. Decades later, Ike made the development of America’s highways a centerpiece of his domestic agenda upon being elected U.S. president in 1952. His vision became the Interstate Highway System that crisscrosses the nation today.

“Teenagers” didn’t exist until the 20th century.

For most of human history, you were either a child or an adult. The word “teenager” first entered the lexicon in 1913, appropriately enough, but it wasn’t until decades later that it took on its current significance. Three developments in the mid-20th century had a major influence on the creation of the modern teenager: the move toward compulsory education, which got adolescents out of farms and factories and into high school; the economic boom that followed World War II; and the widespread adoption of cars among American families.

Ancient Romans used concrete more durable than modern concrete.

The ancient Romans are known for many innovations that were ahead of their time, and some that seem ahead of even our time. Case in point: Concrete used in some ancient Roman construction is much stronger than most modern concrete, surviving for millennia and getting stronger, not weaker, over time. The secret ingredient? The sea. Builders mixed this ancient mortar with a combination of volcanic ash, lime, and seawater, creating a material that essentially reinforced itself over time, especially in marine environments.

The U.S. had a “president” before George Washington.

Though George Washington is indisputably the first president of the United States, he technically wasn’t the first person in the federal government with the title of “president.” Washington was elected under the government formed by the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788, but the Constitution wasn’t the only government-forming document in the nation’s history. Ratified in 1781, the Articles of Confederation — the United States’ first constitution — formed what’s known as the Confederation Congress. This early governing body was led by a president who held a one-year term, the first of whom was Samuel Huntington of Connecticut. 

Victorian doctors prescribed beards for healthy throats.

The well-coiffed men of the Victorian era often had some truly impressive beards. The look was partially driven by the desire to appear manly and rugged, but beards were also seen as a way to ward off disease. At the time, many doctors endorsed the miasma theory of disease, which (incorrectly) held that illnesses such as cholera were caused by bad air. Facial hair, it was believed, could provide a natural filter against breathing in so-called “miasms.”

People hated shopping carts when they were invented in 1937.

When grocery owner Sylvan N. Goldman rolled out the first shopping carts in 1937, he expected a runaway hit. But the reaction wasn’t exactly enthusiastic. Women, already used to pushing strollers, weren’t eager to push another one at the store. Men, on the other hand, preferred not to push something stroller-like at all. Goldman even hired store greeters to hand shoppers a cart, and paid actors to walk around shopping with them until the idea finally caught on.

The world’s oldest bread is more than 8,000 years old.

The earliest loaf of bread ever discovered is a whopping 8,600 years old, unearthed at Çatalhöyük, a Neolithic settlement in what is now southern Turkey. While excavating the site, archaeologists found the remains of a large oven, and nearby, a round, organic, spongy residue among some barley, wheat, and pea seeds. After biologists scanned the substance with an electron microscope, they revealed that it was a very small loaf of uncooked bread. 

The Pilgrims settled at Plymouth partly because they were running low on beer.

When the Mayflower passengers finally reached the shores of the New World, they spent a few weeks scouring the region for a spot to bunker down for the winter. As one passenger wrote in their journal, “[W]e could not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent, especially our beer.” The Pilgrims promptly began building what became Plymouth Colony, with a brew house unsurprisingly among the first structures to be raised.

Baby Ruth bars weren’t officially named after the baseball player.

It’s easy to assume that Baby Ruth candy bars were named for the famed baseball player George Herman “Babe” Ruth Jr. Indeed, even the Great Bambino assumed as much at the time. After all, the nougaty confection debuted in 1921, after the ballplayer became a household name. But according to the official, legal explanation of the moniker, Baby Ruth bars were named after a different Ruth altogether: “Baby” Ruth Cleveland, the daughter of former U.S. President Grover Cleveland. 

Medieval people sometimes slept in two shifts.

For the thousand or so years that encompassed the Middle Ages, people in Western Europe sometimes slept in two shifts: once for a few hours usually beginning between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. and again from roughly 1 a.m. until dawn. The hours in between were a surprisingly productive time known as “the watch.” People would complete tasks and chores, check on any farm animals they were responsible for, and take time to socialize.

Birthdays weren’t always celebrated because few people even knew their birth date.

For most of human history, a birthday was just another day, and many people didn’t even know when theirs was. Ancient societies sometimes recorded births within noble or wealthy families, but systematic recordkeeping was rare. It wasn’t until the 1530s in England that churches were mandated to document baptisms. Similar practices appeared in colonial America, but birth registration didn't become widespread until the early 1900s. 

During the Dust Bowl, some dust clouds reached as far as Boston, causing red snow.

The Dust Bowl wasn’t entirely confined to the Great Plains. Some of the dust storms that resulted from the natural disaster were so extreme that their clouds reached cities more than 1,500 miles away on the East Coast. Boston, Massachusetts, even saw red snow due to red clay soil becoming concentrated in the atmosphere. 

September was originally the seventh month of the year.

As you may expect, “sept” is a prefix with Latin roots that means “seven.” And indeed, the month of September was originally the seventh month in the Roman republican calendar. That calendar was used in ancient Rome for hundreds of years before the debut of the Julian calendar in 46 BCE. January and February joined the Julian calendar as the first and last month of the year, respectively, but nobody changed September’s name.

The oldest recording of a president is the voice of Benjamin Harrison.

We’ll never definitively know what presidents such as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln sounded like, since there are no audio recordings of their voices. The oldest existing recording of a U.S. president is the voice of Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd commander in chief, giving remarks at a diplomatic event. Harrison served from 1889 to 1893, and the audio recording dates to around his first year in office. His voice was captured on a wax cylinder phonograph, a recording device developed by Thomas Edison in the late 1880s. 

Synchronized swimming dates back to ancient Rome.

When you think of synchronized swimming, you may picture the glittering “aquamusicals” of the 1940s and ’50s. But the idea of choreographed aquatic performance actually dates back nearly two millennia — to the watery amphitheaters of ancient Rome. Roman rulers were obsessed with turning water into spectacle, even flooding the Colosseum to do so. The Roman poet Martial described a performance in which women portraying Nereids, or sea nymphs, dove and swam in formation across the Colosseum’s waters.

When rugs were too expensive, colonial Americans made sand art on their floors.

If you were a well-to-do family in colonial America, you may have draped your floor in richly painted oilcloth, or even imported carpets across the Atlantic. Most people, however, settled for simpler floor coverings, such as straw matting or sand. The latter came with a bonus feature: You could turn it into decor if you were feeling creative, drawing fun designs in the sand as a temporary decoration. 

Edinburgh Castle is built on an extinct volcano.

Edinburgh Castle sits atop an imposing rock outcropping called Castle Rock. Ancient people started using the outcropping in the Bronze Age, and flattened its top around 900 BCE. But what they didn’t know is that hundreds of millions of years prior, that rock was the inside of a volcano. The volcano went dormant (and eventually extinct) roughly 340 million years ago, and the magma inside solidified, creating a rock formation that’s exceptionally sturdy and erosion-resistant — the perfect location for a stronghold. 

The richest shipwreck ever holds around $18 billion in treasure.

When the San José first set sail in 1698, it probably wasn’t expecting to be making headlines three centuries later. The Spanish navy ship met its watery end off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia, with 200 tons of gold and emeralds aboard. Now known as the “holy grail” of shipwrecks, it’s presumed to be worth as much as $18 billion, which explains why several different entities have laid claim to the wreck since its discovery in the 1980s.

The practice of tipping dates back to the Middle Ages.

Though it’s often seen as a quintessentially American custom today, tipping has its roots in the feudal societies of medieval Europe. In the Middle Ages, wealthy landowners occasionally gave small sums of money to their servants or laborers for extra effort or good service. The gesture later evolved into a more formal custom: By England’s Tudor era, guests at aristocratic households were expected to offer “vails” to the household staff at the end of their stay. 

China’s terra-cotta army was originally painted with vibrant colors.

The terra-cotta army in China is a collection of more than 7,000 life-size clay soldiers created in the third century BCE, each made with remarkable unique detail. But there used to be yet another layer of detail: Originally, these figures were painted in various vibrant colors. After the statues were sculpted, fired, and assembled, artisans applied lacquer (derived from a lacquer tree), followed by layers of paint made from cinnabar, malachite, azurite, bone, and other materials mixed with egg.

Handkerchiefs were once considered a status symbol.

Among the European aristocracy in the 16th and 17th centuries, especially in France and England, handkerchiefs were meant for display, whether in a pocket, a hand, or as part of an elaborate social ritual. These were no ordinary hankies; they were made with intricate lacework and fine embroidery. Wealthy Europeans posed for portraits with their hankies, bequeathed them in wills, and included them in dowries.

A volcanic eruption indirectly led to the invention of the bicycle.

In 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted with extraordinary force. The fallout dimmed the sun worldwide, lowering temperatures and devastating harvests. As a result, food prices soared, and horses were slaughtered for meat or starved for lack of feed. This sudden scarcity of transport led to an innovation. In 1817, German inventor Baron Karl von Drais unveiled his Laufmaschine, or “running machine” — a simple two-wheeled wooden frame that riders straddled and propelled by pushing their feet along the ground. Like modern bicycles, it could travel far faster than walking, even on muddy post-rain roads.

The Wood of the Cross

Another explanation for knocking on wood situates the custom within Christian belief. Because the cross on which Jesus was crucified was made of wood, some have suggested that touching or knocking on wood invokes his protection. The gesture would thus serve as a small, everyday reminder of divine safeguarding — a miniature act of faith disguised as habit.

As comforting as this story sounds, folklorists note that it, too, rests on speculation. If the practice had genuinely Christian origins, it would likely appear in medieval writings or sermons, but no such references exist. Instead, the first recorded mention of “touch wood” appears in 1805. That’s long after both the supposed age of tree spirits and the early Christian church.

Playground Games

The relatively late appearance of the first reference to tradition provides an important clue. According to folklorists Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud, the earliest known use of touching wood as a superstition comes from a children’s chasing game mentioned in R. Anderson’s Ballads in the Cumberland Dialect (1805). In games such as “tiggy touchwood,” players were safe from being tagged as long as they touched something wooden — a door, a fence, a tree. It was, quite literally, a gesture of protection.

Roud believes the link between this playground rule and the later superstition is more than coincidence. In his book The Lore of the Playground, he writes: “Given that the game was concerned with ‘protection,’ and was well known to adults as well as children, it is almost certainly the origin of our modern superstitious practice of saying, ‘Touch wood.’ The claim that the latter goes back to when we believed in tree spirits is complete nonsense.”

Oxford’s Dictionary of English Folklore agrees. Its editors found no trace of the custom before the 19th century, dismissing the tree spirit and Christian cross theories as romantic inventions. They note that the expression seems to have evolved alongside similar protective phrases such as “touch iron” or “cold iron,” which date back slightly earlier. In these games and sayings, touching a material — whether wood or metal — created a temporary zone of safety. Over time, the action detached from the game and entered everyday speech.

A Popular Idiom

By the late 19th century, “touch wood” had become a widespread English idiom, often used by people who didn’t actually carry out the gesture. The American form, “knock on wood,” followed soon after, perhaps adapting the phrase to a more physical action. Today, the superstition has spread around the globe. In Turkey, people knock twice on wood and tug one earlobe to fend off bad luck; in Italy, the equivalent phrase is “touch iron.” Even those who claim not to be superstitious often find their hand reaching for the nearest table, doorframe, or desk after making a hopeful remark.

The endurance of the habit may say less about ancient religion and more about human psychology. Whether we imagine spirits in trees or not, it feels good to do something — however small — to protect a fragile piece of luck. Knocking on wood offers a tiny illusion of control in a world full of chance.

The Sound of Safety

In the end, “knock on wood” likely has less to do with druidic groves or sacred crosses than with a game of tag played two centuries ago. What began as a child’s rule of protection — touch wood and you’re safe — grew into a ritual for adults offering a comforting gesture that bridges hope and superstition. Even if its ancient roots are more imagined than real, the impulse behind it endures: to shield ourselves, however briefly, from the whims of fate.