History
Discover facts about history. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
History
This eyeliner was made from lamp soot
Buying eyeliner at a store is ridiculous when you can scrape it off a burning wick. Surma, or kajal, was traditionally produced by catching the thick, black…
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First topology problem involved crossing seven bridges
An entire field of advanced geometry was born because a city had a weird layout. A mathematician named Euler mapped out a town with seven bridges and…
Discover morePaul Erdős traveled with almost nothing
Paul Erdos didn't care about property, permanent addresses, or anything that wasn't strictly numbers. The eccentric genius couch-surfed his way around the…
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Newton spoke in Parliament just once
For a man who unlocked the deepest secrets of gravity and optics, his political career was breathtakingly pointless. During his entire year serving as a…
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Why people once collected dog poop for tanneries
Tanneries required an acidic substance to properly soften tough animal hides. Enter the 'pure finders', impoverished locals who walked the streets with…
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Indonesian shadow puppets skip the third dimension
Realism is a waste of perfectly good leather. Wayang Kulit theater utilizes incredibly intricate, flat leather puppets cast against a backlit screen. The…
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Early copyright laws only protected authors for a decade
When copyright was initially formulated, it was designed as a very brief, strictly temporary monopoly to encourage creation before the work swiftly entered…
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When lighthouses burned wood to guide ships
Before giant electric lenses, guiding ships away from jagged rocks required absolute brute force. Keepers had to manually haul thousands of pounds of coal and…
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How Iceland lost most of its forests
When settlers first arrived in Iceland, it was covered in lush birch forests. Within a few centuries, they had aggressively chopped down almost every single…
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Frank Slide buried a town in 90 seconds
Because mountains occasionally decide they are tired of standing upright. In 1903, millions of tons of limestone detached from a Canadian peak and obliterated…
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Chinese astronomers actively recorded a supernova
While everyone else was presumably panicking over a terrifying new light in the sky, Chinese observers in 1054 simply did their jobs. They casually logged a…
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Kiwifruit originated in mountainous Chinese forests
Despite a modern branding campaign attempting to tie this fuzzy green orb to oceanic islands, it actually began as a wild vine in the rugged mountains of…
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The drilling accident that swallowed a lake
Thanks to a spectacular calculation error, an oil rig accidentally drilled directly into an active subterranean salt mine under a Louisiana lake. It created a…
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When armor turned a fall into a death trap
Being a noble knight sounds romantic until you realize you were essentially a walking iron coffin. Early medieval armor could weigh upward of 50-60 pounds,…
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Chinese bamboo seating adapts to brutal summer heat
Upholstered cushions are a sticky nightmare in deep humidity. Traditional summer furniture swaps out soft fabrics for tightly woven bamboo and rattan that…
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Karl Marx earned a living writing for a capitalist newspaper
The father of communism funded his anti-capitalist manifesto by working for the mainstream capitalist media. During his exile in London, Marx was incredibly…
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Why 1950s meals were set in gelatin
The mid-century dining table was a bizarre landscape of gelatinous horrors. It was considered peak culinary sophistication to suspend chunks of tuna, hot…
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Pistachio trees were cultivated in Central Asia
Central Asia decided that prying open rigid shells for tiny green snacks was a worthy historical pursuit. These ancient farmers spent decades selectively…
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Why nobles cut their clothes to show off
The ultimate societal flex was taking sharp shears to your expensive outer garments just to prove you had an even more ridiculously expensive layer hidden…
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Before Dr. Seuss, there was a terrifying war cartoon
Long before he was teaching children about green eggs and ham, Dr. Seuss was drawing wildly xenophobic and terrifying military propaganda. Deployed to the…
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Galileo's middle finger is on display
Even in death, the legendary astronomer is permanently flipping off his earthly critics. Almost a century after his passing, his grave was opened so his…
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When English law required bodies to be buried in wool
To artificially prop up the miserably failing domestic wool industry in 1666, Parliament passed the bizarre "Burying in Woollen Acts." It legally mandated…
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When Roman emperors used lotteries to fund public works
Taxes make citizens violently angry, but gambling makes them highly distracted. Emperor Augustus heavily utilized state-sponsored lotteries during massive…
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Why pretzels look like crossed arms
Because dough shaped into a physical representation of folded limbs was highly encouraging. Early bakers twisted the dough to mimic people hugging themselves,…
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