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Text • Rachel Gresh

Life in 1950s America, By the Numbers

Elvis was on the radio, The Ed Sullivan Show was on the TV, and scores of people were hightailing it to the suburbs — this was 1950s America.

The post Life in 1950s America, By the Numbers appeared first on History Facts.

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Text • Adam Levine

9 World War II Facts Every History Buff Should Know

The Second World War plunged nearly every part of the globe into a violent clash that altered the course of history.

The post 9 World War II Facts Every History Buff Should Know appeared first on History Facts.

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Text • Paul Chang

It’s Alive! A Brief History of ‘Frankenstein’

Mary Shelley’s gothic horror novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was published in 1818, and is widely considered to be the first science fiction novel.

The post It’s Alive! A Brief History of ‘Frankenstein’ appeared first on History Facts.

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Text • Mark DeJoy

6 Highways That Shaped America

Let’s look at when some of the country’s biggest and most vital interstates were built. 

The post 6 Highways That Shaped America appeared first on History Facts.

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Text • Kristina Wright

6 of the Spookiest Events in History

History is filled with spooky events, from strange episodes caused by human behavior to natural phenomena that remind us how little we understand the world around us. Some of the strangest incidents were mysteries in their own time but make more sense now, while others still...

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Text • Nicole Villeneuve

5 of the Most Common Ancient Roman Jobs

It’s easy to picture life in ancient Rome as being dominated by gladiators in the arena or rich and powerful Roman senators lounging around their fancy villas. But somebody had to grow the food, make the bread, wash the clothes, and serve the wine in this ancient empire.&nbs...

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Text • Adam Levine

5 Facts About England’s Elizabethan Era

Her reign from 1558 to 1603 is considered a golden age of English history. 

The post 5 Facts About England’s Elizabethan Era appeared first on History Facts.

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Text • Tony Dunnell

What Did Leonardo da Vinci Invent?

The Renaissance master was far more than a talented artist: He was an engineer, inventor, and student of seemingly everything.

The post What Did Leonardo da Vinci Invent? appeared first on History Facts.

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Text • Kristina Wright

Why Were People Tied to Train Tracks in Old Movies?

It’s one of the most recognizable images in movie history: a villain in a black coat and a top hat, a helpless victim bound to railroad tracks, and a locomotive bearing down as a hero races in for a last-second rescue.  In the early days of cinema, trains were a popular...

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Text • Michael Nordine

Warplanes timed their machine guns to fire directly through propeller blades.

There’s no slow motion in real life, but World War I engineers managed the next best thing. Known as synchronization gear, the technology allowed warplanes to fire machine guns through their own propeller blades without hitting them. This innovation, also known as interrupte...

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Text • Michael Nordine

Greenland got its flattering name as a recruiting pitch.

Greenland is icy and Iceland is green, as the saying goes, and for the most part it’s true. Nearly 80% of Greenland’s surface area is covered in glaciers, compared to just 10% to 14% of Iceland’s, which has led many to observe that the two remote islands should probably swit...

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Text • Nicole Villeneuve

People used to hang chairs on walls.

If you’ve ever gotten frustrated watching a robot vacuum repeatedly ram itself into a chair leg, you might have liked spending time in an 18th-century Shaker home.  The Shakers were a religious group founded in England in 1747, and many emigrated to the American colonie...

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Text • Michael Nordine

Early amusement parks were built near graveyards.

Graveyards are typically considered somber places, but that wasn’t always the case. Before the days of Disneyland and Six Flags, cemeteries even hosted some of America’s first amusement parks, for a number of practical reasons that made more sense in the late 19th century th...

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Text • Bess Lovejoy

An Egyptian mummy received military honors.

Egypt’s Ramses II was one of the most storied leaders of the ancient world. During a reign that lasted from 1279 to 1213 BCE, he earned renown as a military strategist, a canny politician, and an ambitious builder who constructed major temples as well as a new capital he nam...

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Text • Tony Dunnell

Why Do We Drive on the Right Side of the Road?

When it comes to transportation, Americans and Brits have one thing in common: They both consider the other to be driving on the wrong side of the road. But how did it come to this?  Today, only about a third of the world’s countries drive on the left side of the road, ...

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Text • Kristina Wright

The Rise and Fall of the American Department Store

There was a time when going to the department store was an exciting event. For generations of Americans, a trip to Gimbels or Marshall Field’s meant visiting a local landmark downtown — and often dressing for the occasion, as these stores also served as gathering places for ...

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Text • Bess Lovejoy

Pink was historically worn by men.

For the most part, pink is seen as a feminine color in the United States today. But while a pink suit on a man might turn heads now, in 18th-century Europe it could mark its wearer as a fashionable gentleman.  Wealthy men of the time dressed in shades of pink ranging fr...

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Text • Kevin McCaffrey

How the 1970s Changed Television

The decade was kind of like TV's adolescence: The medium got a little edgier, experimenting with new approaches and pushing social boundaries.

The post How the 1970s Changed Television appeared first on History Facts.

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Text • Adam Levine

20th-Century Inventions That Changed the World

From the airplane to the personal computer, the innovations of this era fundamentally changed the fabric of people’s everyday lives.

The post 20th-Century Inventions That Changed the World appeared first on History Facts.

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Text • Kristina Wright

6 Surprising Etiquette Rules From the Past

While specific customs may evolve, the underlying principles of courtesy, respect, and consideration for others remain as relevant today as they were a century or two ago.

The post 6 Surprising Etiquette Rules From the Past appeared first on History Facts.

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Text • Tony Dunnell

7 Things You Would Find on a City Street 100 Years Ago

If we could travel back 100 years and land on a typical city street, we’d probably be mightily discombobulated.

The post 7 Things You Would Find on a City Street 100 Years Ago appeared first on History Facts.

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Text • Michael Nordine

Stalin, Lenin, and Trotsky were all pseudonyms.

You’ve probably never heard of Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, or Lev Davidovich Bronstein — except you actually have. Those three men are known to the world as Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky, respectively.  All three Soviet l...

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Text • Michael Nordine

Men used to believe mustaches filtered germs.

Victorian doctors had what they considered a good reason for prescribing beards: They believed that facial hair, including mustaches, served as a natural barrier against germs and illness. The idea would appear to make sense at first glance: If whiskers can make cold weather...

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Text • Nicole Villeneuve

Retro Playground Equipment That Was Super Dangerous

Playgrounds are supposed to be places where children can burn off some energy, not literally get burned. But for much of the 20th century, there were real risks associated with many popular pieces of playground equipment, including scorching-hot metal slides that often launc...

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Text • Nicole Villeneuve

What Airports Looked Like 50 Years Ago

Flying in the 1970s wasn’t all that dissimilar from how we fly today: You checked in for your flight, made your way through security, found your gate, and waited to board. But beyond that familiar routine, airports themselves were very different half a century ago. The mid-1...

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Text • Bess Lovejoy

Why Front Porches Slowly Disappeared

On a warm evening a century ago, the front porch might have been the most inviting place in the house. One member of the family may have been settled comfortably in a rocking chair, while another read the newspaper on the front steps. A neighbor walking past might have stopp...

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Text • Kristina Wright

The Greatest Sentences Ever Written

What makes a sentence great? Is it the way it sounds? The idea it contains? The emotion it evokes? What is the strange alchemy that makes a handful of words survive long after the people who wrote them are gone?  There are, of course, thousands of contenders for the sup...

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Text • Nicole Villeneuve

Women had battleships built into their hair.

What do you do when your country wins a naval battle? In 18th-century France, you apparently wore a ship on your head. In 1778, the French warship Belle Poule battled the British Arethusa, and the French victory inspired the rather unusual fashion statement of constructing a...

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Text • Bess Lovejoy

Artists painted with a pigment literally ground from Egyptian mummies.

Among the many indignities inflicted upon ancient Egyptian mummies, being squeezed from a tube onto an artist’s palette may be one of the strangest. For centuries, European artists used a brown pigment known as “mummy brown” or “Egyptian brown,” made by grinding up material ...

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Text • Nicole Villeneuve

6 Facts About the Mount Rushmore Presidents

The four U.S. Presidents carved into Mount Rushmore were chosen by sculptor Gutzon Borglum to represent major milestones and ideals in American history.

The post 6 Facts About the Mount Rushmore Presidents appeared first on History Facts.