Only one person has been portrayed on-screen more than Abraham Lincoln, and he doesn’t actually exist: Sherlock Holmes. Honest Abe has been inspiring filmmakers since 1908, when Van Dyke Brooke directed The Reprieve: An Episode in the Life of Abraham Lincoln, and has since a...
If you’ve been to a few weddings, you probably know the flow by now: the vows, the kiss, and then the party, with a few time-honored traditions woven in. One of the most iconic rituals? Guests showering the newlyweds with rice as they make their grand exit. It’s a festive mo...
When William of Normandy invaded England in 1066, it began a transformation of the Old English language. The Norman conquerors replaced the Anglo-Saxon ruling class, bringing with them their Anglo-Norman language, which was based on Old French. Over time, the two languages b...
Most historical wills are fairly predictable. Someone gets the house, someone else gets the family silver, a favorite niece might inherit some jewelry. But every so often, a person uses their final legal document for something a little more memorable. Across the centuries, p...
Washington, D.C., was officially established as the U.S. capital on July 16, 1790, when the Residence Act moved it from Philadelphia. The capital had moved a few other times during the Revolutionary War: Among the country’s lesser-known seats of government are Baltimor...
Most of us, whether as kids or adults or both, have probably tossed a coin into a fountain or a well at some point. And there’s a good chance we’ve done it without really thinking why — especially when we’re already thinking about what to wish for. But the coin-throwing cust...
Imagine hosting a dinner party where the menu featured flamingo in pepper sauce, wine infused with rose petals, and honey-soaked dates for dessert. To wealthy Romans, that wasn’t fantasy — it was haute cuisine. Those dishes appear in De Re Coquinaria (The Art of Cookin...
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 modern English word “history” comes partly from the Latin historia and partly from the French storie (or estoire), but those terms both trace their roots back to the same place. Not coincidentally, that place is one of the bedrocks of Western civilization: ancient Greece...
While the Coinage Act of 1792 established the United States Mint and the dollar as the unit of currency for the fledgling nation, it was quite some time before a fully standardized monetary system took root. In the meantime, people in possession of valuable metals continued ...
Even with the decline of letter writing in the digital age, the ZIP code remains an American institution, a neat five-digit number that caps an address and, like an area code, can serve as a point of pride and prestige. Given the ZIP code’s place as an oft-used and universal...
For many people, a handshake feels so natural that it’s easy to assume humans have been greeting each other this way for as long as humans have been around. In the Western world, whether you’re meeting someone for the first time or sealing a business deal, extending your han...
Wealthy people have always found unusual ways to signal their power, taste, and control — often by acquiring items that are rare, impractical, or arduous to obtain. Long before designer handbags and luxury sports cars became status symbols, social elites flaunted their fortu...
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...
For centuries, “X” has marked the spot when we don’t know where exactly the spot is. Its use in algebra to mean an unknown quantity spread into the wider culture, giving “X” an air of mystery, as seen in titles such as The X Files and even the term “X-rays,” named by their d...
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 ...
For the ancient Greeks, Romans, and folks in other cultures, dreams were far more than idle nighttime fancies. They were powerful, often sacred experiences that shaped lives, politics, religious practices, and art. While ancient people likely dreamed about many of the ...
Spend any time gazing at medieval European paintings, and one question tends to emerge: What is going on with those babies? Far from the sweet, chubby cherubs we might expect to see, these infants often resemble balding middle-aged men, complete with wrinkled foreheads and d...
In the world of eyewear, few accessories have captured the imagination quite like the monocle. Widely regarded today as an eccentric throwback from an earlier age, the monocle began life as a fairly simplistic and imperfect device for correcting eyesight. But something odd h...
If you’ve ever shopped for mirrors in an antique shop, you may have noticed small black spots scattered across the glass. Sometimes these spots appear along the edges, but others seem to float across the surface like little shadows trapped inside the mirror. They’re not scra...
Leonardo da Vinci is remembered as one of history’s geniuses, a man whose curiosity seemed to have no limits. Born in 1452 during the Italian Renaissance, he created some of the world’s most celebrated works of art, including the “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper,” while fill...
Businesses come and go, and even industry titans are subject to the whims of the market. Just look at Woolworth’s, Circuit City, Blockbuster, Pan Am, Compaq, and Tower Records — all gone. But some companies have impressive staying power, surviving wars, economic collap...
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 ...
Today, visitors to famous sites usually exit through the gift shop and leave with something like a postcard or refrigerator magnet. But for centuries, many travelers preferred a far more literal keepsake: a piece of the monument itself. Tourists routinely chipped off fragmen...
Paul Rand, the influential art director and graphic designer who created logos for IBM, UPS, and ABC, once said, “Design is the silent ambassador of your brand.” He knew how important a logo could be — more than simply identifying a company, it could become shorthand for an ...
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...
The Middle Ages weren’t just shaped by monarchs and wars — they were lived by everyday people whose names appear in the records they left behind. Parish registers, royal charters, tax rolls, and literature give us a glimpse into the history of common names in medieval Englan...
Every city experiences noticeable changes with the march of time. Political leaders come and go, businesses appear and disappear, old landmarks are destroyed and new ones erected. To paraphrase the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, nothing is permanent within these cente...
There are around 8 billion people on Earth today, and 1.4 billion of them are in China, making the country home to around 17.5% of the global population. If that seems high, consider that at the turn of the 19th century, a whopping 1 in 3 people lived in China. Between...
Ever since Harry S. Truman’s presidential terms, from 1945 until 1953, presidents have been given descriptive code names used by the Secret Service to provide an added layer of anonymity when discussing the movements of the commander in chief. The process of selecting these ...
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