“Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush”

As is the case with many nursery rhymes, the origins of this playground favorite are disputed. But according to historian R.S. Duncan, the song was invented by female prisoners at England’s Wakefield Prison around two centuries ago. Duncan — a former governor of Wakefield Prison — explained how the inmates used to walk their visiting children around a mulberry tree planted in the prison’s courtyard, where the women were allowed to exercise. They invented the rhyme to help pass the time and keep their children occupied. Adding credence to this origin theory is the fact that a mulberry tree has stood at the prison since at least the 19th century. 

“Ring Around the Rosie”

“Ring Around the Rosie” (or “Ring a Ring o’ Roses”) has perhaps the most widely repeated and infamous origin story of any nursery rhyme. According to popular belief, the rhyme refers to the Great Plague of London in 1665 or possibly earlier outbreaks of the bubonic plague in England, with “rosie” representing the rash, “posies” being the flowers carried to mask the smell of death, and “all fall down” symbolizing the widespread fatalities. 

This origin story, however, is actually a modern invention and one now largely debunked. The rhyme’s association with plagues didn’t emerge until the mid-1900s, and there’s little to no evidence, beyond simple speculation, to connect it with the plague — which makes folklorists and scholars highly skeptical of the theory. The rhyme most likely originated as a simple children’s party game, in which children hold hands in a circle and follow fun actions (“We all fall down!”). According to folklorist Philip Hiscock, games such as these may have been invented to skirt Protestant bans on dancing in both Britain and North America in the 19th century.

“Goosey Goosey Gander”

Whichever way you look at it, “Goosey Goosey Gander” is a strange rhyme, one that somewhat cryptically involves a goose and an old man getting thrown down some stairs. The earliest recorded version of the rhyme dates back to 1784, and as with other nursery rhymes, its origin is open to debate. 

One of the most compelling theories involves the religious persecution of Roman Catholics during the reign of England’s King Henry VIII, when wealthy Catholic families often had priest holes in which to hide members of the clergy. If a priest was discovered, he would be forcibly taken from the house (“thrown down the stairs”) and possibly put to death. An alternative theory links the rhyme to the closing of brothels in London during Henry VIII’s reign. Prostitutes were often known as “geese” at the time, and when the brothels were shut down, they were forced to work elsewhere, possibly explaining the significance of “Whither shall I wander … in my lady’s chamber.” 

“Mary Had a Little Lamb”

“Mary Had a Little Lamb” is a bit of an outlier in the world of nursery rhymes. Not only are its origins well documented, but it’s also a refreshingly innocent rhyme that’s actually appropriate for children, with no disturbing backstory. The poem was written by American writer Sarah Josepha Hale — who, incidentally, was the force behind the creation of the national Thanksgiving holiday — and published in 1830. It is now generally accepted that the nursery rhyme was based on a real incident at a small school in Newport, New Hampshire. 

One day, a student brought her pet lamb to the school at her brother’s urging. The lamb proved too distracting in class and had to wait outside, but it stayed nearby until school was dismissed, then ran to Mary for attention. This heartwarming event inspired the poem, which later became one of the most popular nursery rhymes in the English-speaking world. It gained even greater fame when Thomas Edison recorded it in 1877 as the first song ever captured on his phonograph. 

Salvador and Gala Dalí, 1930s

The avant-garde artists known as the surrealists were entranced when the Photomaton arrived in Paris in 1928. Several had pictures taken with their eyes closed, and artist Salvador Dalí was among the lineup featured in this fashion in an issue of La Révolution Surréaliste magazine the following year. Although Dalí was on the outs with the surrealists by the mid-1930s, he commandeered the photo booth for his own amusement and expression, as demonstrated here in a sitdown with his wife and muse, Gala Dalí. The famously eccentric artist was quite taken with the medium of photography, once referring to his paintings as “instantaneous color photography done by hand.”

World War II Servicemen, circa 1943

Some of the most iconic photos of the 20th century stemmed from World War II, from Joe Rosenthal’s shot of U.S. Marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima to Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photograph of a sailor planting an impromptu kiss on a woman to celebrate V-J Day. Here, we see the more casual side of the war era: three servicemen crammed into a booth circa 1943. The number of photo booths in the United States reached a peak of 30,000 during the war, as enlisted personnel and their loved ones commonly exchanged these little portraits to serve as mementos during periods of separation. 

John and Jacqueline Kennedy, 1953

In 1953, John and Jacqueline Kennedy were not yet the United States president and first lady, but they were still well-known public figures. JFK was a young U.S. senator and scion of a Massachusetts political family, and Jackie was the daughter of wealthy New Yorkers and the “Inquiring Camera Girl” for the Washington Times-Herald. As such, the two relished the chance for a quiet moment together in a photo booth shortly after their high-profile wedding in Newport, Rhode Island, on September 12, 1953. Exactly where and when this photo was snapped is an open question; the newlyweds were said to have spent their honeymoon in Acapulco, Mexico, but they also reportedly stopped in the Southern California locales of Beverly Hills and Santa Barbara, and may have bunkered down at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.

Waylon Jennings and Buddy Holly, 1959

As told in Waylon: An Autobiography, up-and-coming musician Waylon Jennings arrived in New York City in January 1959 to crash at the Greenwich Village apartment of Buddy Holly before the pair headed to the Midwest for the Winter Dance Party tour. Sometime during that week, the two native Texans stopped by a photo booth at Grand Central Terminal, with Holly bumming a cigarette off his good friend for the occasion despite his attempts to quit. Less than a month later, Holly and musicians Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper (but not Jennings) were on the ill-fated plane that crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa, a tragedy memorialized in Don McLean’s hit song “American Pie” as “the day the music died.”

Unknown Photographer, 1980s

Who’s photographing whom? By the 1980s, the public had far more options for snapshot keepsakes than they did when the photo booth debuted in 1925. Many professionals and serious hobbyists enjoyed the sharp images produced by one of the 35 mm single-lens reflex cameras on the market, while amateurs could appreciate the gratification provided by the instant Polaroid camera. It was another decade before the big industry sea change came with the arrival of digital photography in the mid-1990s, and with it, photo booth manufacturers largely began abandoning the old analog process and overhauled their technology to prepare for the 21st century.

Museums in the Ancient Mediterranean

The idea of gathering and displaying objects wasn’t unique to Mesopotamia. In the Greek and Roman worlds, temples often doubled as repositories of offerings, art, and plundered treasures. Sculptures also decorated public gardens, forums, and bathhouses.

The Museum of Alexandria, founded in the third century BCE, was another important milestone in the history of museums. Despite its name, this mouseion — literally a shrine to the Muses — resembled more of a research institute than a gallery. Attached to the famous Library of Alexandria, it housed scholars, lecture halls, and dining rooms rather than artifacts. Still, the institution’s prestige meant that later Europeans revived the word “museum” to describe their own collections.

Curiosity Cabinets

After Ennigaldi’s experiment, it took nearly 2,000 years before anything resembling a museum emerged in Europe. During the Renaissance, wealthy European nobles, merchants, and scholars began assembling “cabinets of curiosity” or “wonder rooms.” These eclectic collections brought together fossils, coins, artworks, scientific instruments, and exotic artifacts from voyages abroad.

The goal was encyclopedic: to contain the world’s marvels in miniature. Visitors might marvel at a stuffed dodo, a mummy’s hand, or a carved gem, all jumbled together without concern for taxonomy. John Tradescant, a gardener to English royalty, famously opened his home and garden in South London to display such a collection, later catalogued and published as the Musaeum Tradescantianum.

These cabinets were largely private, their accessibility subject to the whim of the owner. Yet they laid the foundation for the idea that collections could be displayed for education as well as prestige.

The Birth of the Public Museum

The leap from private collections to public institutions occurred from the 15th through 18th centuries. A turning point came in 1471, when Pope Sixtus IV donated ancient bronze sculptures to the people of Rome. This gift formed the nucleus of the Capitoline Museums, which officially opened in 1734 and are often considered the first truly public art museums.

Another watershed was the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. Built to house the collections of the wealthy antiquary Elias Ashmole and the Tradescant family, it opened its doors in 1683 and is frequently cited as the first modern museum. Its displays included antiquities, coins, zoological specimens, and the (now-lost) body of the last dodo seen in Europe.

By the mid-18th century, museums were firmly established. The British Museum, founded in 1753 from the collection of Irish physician and naturalist Hans Sloane, institutionalized the model: publicly accessible repositories dedicated to collecting, preserving, and classifying the world’s knowledge. The Louvre, transformed into a national museum during the French Revolution in 1793, underscored the museum’s political as well as cultural significance.

The First Museum

So, what was the first museum? The answer depends on how you define “museum.” If we mean the first known collection curated for historical interest and accompanied by labels, the title belongs to Princess Ennigaldi’s collection in Ur. If we mean the first public institution designed to grant ordinary people access to cultural treasures, the Capitoline Museums of Rome claim the honor. And if we mean the first modern museum in the European sense — systematic, educational, and encyclopedic — the Ashmolean in Oxford stands out.

Each reflects a different stage in humanity’s enduring desire to preserve the past and make meaning from material culture. The museum has never been a single invention, but rather a recurring impulse across time: the need to gather objects, organize them, and invite others to see what stories they tell. In that sense, the first museum may not be a place at all, but an idea that keeps resurfacing whenever people try to make sense of history through things.

Intercom Systems

They may seem quaint now compared to sophisticated smart home systems, but there was a time when built-in intercoms were a handy home tool. As postwar suburban homes grew bigger in the 1950s and ’60s, families could use them to communicate with each other from different parts of the house. A voice from the kitchen would announce dinner, remind someone to take out the trash, or check who was home — all without anyone leaving their room.

Intercoms such as the ones made by NuTone were primarily fixtures of upscale homes. They were marketed as a luxury convenience that could also broadcast AM and FM radio throughout the house. But the novelty of intercoms didn’t last long, and by the 1980s, some major intercom manufacturers such as GE had ceased making them. 

Milk Doors

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a little door on the side of the house was a common sight for many American families, but it wasn’t for letters or for a pet to scurry in and out. These built-in compartments, which usually had two doors, one on the outside and one on the inside of the compartment, were for milk. This was during an era when milkmen delivered glass bottles of fresh milk to the home. The milk doors were a receptacle for new bottles, and a place for families to return empty ones and leave the milkman’s payment. 

Milk delivery continued for decades throughout the U.S. But by the 1960s and ’70s, it was competing with a new reality. Suburban sprawl made delivery routes longer and more costly, supermarkets offered cheaper one-stop shopping, and refrigerators became standard in nearly every home. Daily milk delivery was no longer needed, and remaining milk doors became little more than a symbolic portal to the past.

Razor Blade Disposals

Perhaps one of the strangest bygone house features is the built-in razor-blade disposal. Prior to the early 20th century, men would need to visit the barber for a fresh shave, since doing so at home was considered too risky. But thanks to the invention of the safety razor in 1904, at-home shaving became the norm. While this was a major leap forward in convenience, the disposable razor blades were a nuisance when it came time to throw them out. Too sharp (and potentially contaminated) for the regular trash, they were instead placed into the wall. 

That’s right — small openings were incorporated into the back of medicine cabinets or in the walls above sinks. Once the blades went in, they didn’t come out. They often stayed inside the walls, accumulating until someone decided to renovate somewhere down the line. By the mid-1970s, fully disposable razors with the blade built right in became popular, and these strange little slots went out of style.

Popcorn Ceilings

Love them or hate them, popcorn ceilings were once everywhere. The infamous finish first became popular in the 1950s, when postwar homes were being built quickly and cheaply to accommodate booming populations. Construction crews appreciated the ease and affordability of the ceiling style, since it doesn’t require sanding or finishing multiple layers, and homeowners liked that it hid imperfections and even provided some minor soundproofing.

Popcorn ceilings were the norm for almost 30 years — and you may even have some in your own home today — but you likely won’t see them in homes built after 1980. A major reason? The material itself. Early formulations of the spray-on mixture often contained asbestos, naturally occurring minerals that, when disturbed, can lead to serious health risks. As maligned as their reputation may be, though, anyone who grew up under popcorn ceilings still probably has a soft spot for them — right along with shag carpets and avocado-green kitchen appliances.

Phone Nooks

Before cellphones and even cordless home phones, the household telephone typically stayed in one spot. In the early 20th century, to make room for this emerging technology, homes were sometimes built with a dedicated phone nook (also called a phone niche). These small, recessed wall spaces were usually found in a hallway or near the stairs. They often had a compact shelf for a heavy rotary phone and space for a small seat to tuck underneath. 

If the house wasn’t built with a phone nook, cabinets could be ordered from catalogs such as Sears and installed anywhere homeowners desired. But as phones became smaller, lighter, and eventually mobile, there was no longer a need to anchor them to a single place. Today, phone nooks that remain are often used as storage for items such as mail, keys, tchotchkes, and houseplants.

Fold-Out Ironing Boards

Ironing was once a more frequent chore for many households, so having a simple setup was helpful. Enter the fold-out ironing board: a shallow, built-in cabinet, often in the kitchen, that concealed a board that could be pulled down when needed. This space-saving design choice was common in 1920s homes, along with Murphy beds and phone nooks. 

Of course, ironing boards still exist, but over time many fabrics became easier to launder and wear without wrinkling, and everyday clothing became less formal. As a result, the need for these built-in boards declined. Today, you might find that existing relics of fold-out ironing board cupboards make better spice racks, but they are nonetheless a reminder of the changing domestic habits that keep households evolving. 

Classical Indian Dances

In Central India, the discovery of what appears to be dancing figures amid the Mesolithic-era cave paintings of the Bhimbetka rock shelters underscores the long history of dance on the subcontinent. While it's unknown what particular moves the artist was documenting, the survival of the Naṭyashastra, a Sanskrit treatise on art that may date back to at least the third century BCE, offers better insight on early Indian dances.

Spawned in Southern India, Bharatanatyam was originally a Hindu temple dance performed by solo women. Broken down into the divisions of nritta (technical dance), nritya (expressive dance), and natya (storytelling), Bharatanatyam is characterized by squatting legs and counter-rhythm footwork, its performances lasting up to two hours.

From the eastern part of the country, Odissi also originated as a temple dance performed by women. Compared to Bharatanatyam, its movements are generally slower and subtler, and feature more of the elaborate hand gestures known as mudras.

Kathak developed among nomadic storytellers of North India, so this dance is also strongly built around narrative principles. Not limited to either gender, performers showcase balance and grace with an upright posture and techniques that include chakkars (spins), tatkar (foot strikes), and paltas (patterns). Unlike the country’s other native dances, which date back more than 2,000 years, Kathak came into its modern form by way of combined Hindu and Muslim influences.

Hula, Dragon Dance, and Siva Samoa

In Hawaii, residents have been performing the hula for centuries. This world-famous dance, which involves the swaying of hips and corresponding wavelike arm movements, comes with an array of backstories that tie its roots to differing regions and mythological figures. While such folklore makes hula’s origins nearly impossible to pinpoint, The Encyclopedia of World Folk Dance estimates the dance dates back to around 300 CE.

The encyclopedia also points to a similar dance from a neighboring geographical region with even earlier beginnings. The Siva Samoa, introduced by the Lapita people around 800 BCE, is perhaps the oldest dance of the Polynesian islands. Mainly performed by women at social gatherings, the Siva Samoa incorporates side-to-side swaying, graceful arm movements, and facial expressions to relay the emotions of its performer.

From China, the dragon dance has endured as a tradition of Chinese New Year since the Han dynasty in the third century BCE. Initially performed as a means to worship ancestors and pray for rain, this good luck dance requires the use of multiple performers to coordinate the swirling and sweeping motions of a multipart dragon puppet to the rhythms of cymbals, gongs, and a drum.

Dabke and Belly Dancing

Considering Mesopotamia in the modern-day Middle East is known as the “cradle of civilization,” it follows that some of the world’s oldest dances were nurtured in this region. One such dance is the dabke, or dabkeh, which, according to The Encyclopedia of World Folk Dance, can be traced back to the Canaanites or Phoenicians around 2000 BCE. 

Performed by a group of people in a line or circle, the dabke is an energetic dance marked by stomping, kicking, and twirling items such as handkerchiefs. While the dabke has increasingly assumed the status of a protest dance in recent years, it remains a means of celebration at festivals and weddings across Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

Like the hula, the belly dance is a widely recognized performative art with no consensus origin story. One starting point can be found in the Indus Valley in 3000 BCE, where midwives helped prepare expectant mothers with abdominal exercises. Migrating to the Middle East and North Africa, belly dancing took on differing names and variations of the torso-focused thrusting and shaking that distinguished it from other dances. Belly dancing has endured as a highly developed form of expression, and is often credited as the oldest known dance in the world.