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Ring Around the Rosie Is Probably Not About the Plague, and 9 More Rhyme Origins

Generations of children have been told that Ring Around the Rosie describes the Great Plague of London in 1665, with its rosy rash, pockets...

Galileo’s Middle Finger, Chopin’s Heart and 13 More Body Parts You Can Still See

Almost a century after Galileo was buried, an antiquarian and an anatomist removed his middle finger, two other fingers and a tooth, and the...

Alaska Natives Aged 12 to 80 Guarded 6,640 Miles of U.S. Coast in World War II

In June 1942, six months after Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes bombed Dutch Harbor in Alaska's remote Aleutian Islands, and Japanese forces then occupied the...

Sequoyah Could Not Read Any Language, Yet Spent 12 Years Inventing Cherokee Writing

Sequoyah could not read or write in English or any other language when he set out, in 1809, to give the Cherokee Nation a...

The U.S. Census Once Tracked Overdue Library Books, Dead Animals and 8 More Oddities

In 1880, the U.S. Census wanted to know how hard American libraries chased people who did not return their books. It asked whether fines...

The Grand Canyon Is Not the Deepest Canyon in the U.S., and 10 More Surprises

The Grand Canyon is about one mile deep, which sounds enormous until you learn it is not even the deepest canyon in its own...

Alcatraz’s 1962 Escape Is Still Unsolved, and 9 Other Myths About The Rock

In 1962, three inmates vanished from Alcatraz and were never seen again, and to this day nobody can say for certain whether they drowned...

Veterans Day Began as Armistice Day in 1919, and How It Differs From Memorial Day

Veterans Day and Memorial Day both honor the people who served in the U.S. military, which is why so many Americans mix them up....

Colonial Williamsburg Breakfast Was Cornmeal Hoecakes, Not Today’s Pancake Stacks

Williamsburg, Virginia, now calls itself the Pancake Capital of the World, with roughly one independent pancake house for every 1,450 residents, the highest ratio...

A Lab Fish, an LAX Lizard and 8 Other New Species Found in Unexpected Places

New animal species are supposed to turn up deep in rainforests, at the bottom of the ocean or in caves nobody has entered. Some...

Members of Congress Still Get Paid in a Shutdown, and 3 Other Capitol Hill Myths

When the federal government shuts down, hundreds of thousands of workers go without a paycheck. The 535 lawmakers who failed to pass the budget...

Salmonella Is a New Suspect in the 430 BC Plague That Killed Up to a Third of Athens

In the summer of 430 BC an unknown disease tore through Athens, and over several waves it killed somewhere between a quarter and a...

Derry Has Been Officially Londonderry Since 1613, Plus 9 More Renamed Cities

Plenty of people assume the fight over Derry and Londonderry is a modern one. In fact the Northern Irish city has carried the official...

Godzilla Was Born From a 1954 H-Bomb Test That Showered a Japanese Fishing Boat

The monster that has stomped through more than 70 years of movies started as something much darker than a pop culture mascot. In the...

Agatha Christie’s 11 Day Disappearance in 1926 Was Likely a Fugue State, Not a Stunt

For nearly a century, Agatha Christie's vanishing act in December 1926 has been told as a real life whodunit. The best selling novelist of...

Venus de Milo’s Missing Arms and 8 Other Mysteries Behind Famous Statues

Nobody knows what the Venus de Milo was doing with her arms. Scholars have argued for two centuries over whether she held an apple,...

Celery Was a Status Symbol in the Gilded Age, and 4 More Foods the Rich Craved

In the Gilded Age, wealthy Americans showed off celery. They displayed the stalks upright in special glass celery vases at the center of the...

The Great Lakes Had Dozens of Names Before 1744, From Lac du Chat to Karegnondi

Lake Erie was once Lac du Chat, the "Lake of the Cat." Lake Huron appeared on a famous 1656 map as Karegnondi, and Lake...

A Town Where Stairs Were the Streets, and 9 Other Real Places Out of a Fantasy

High in the Chilean Andes sits a town where staircases served as the streets, and 15,000 people once climbed them every day. Elsewhere, people...

A Ghost Army of Rubber Tanks and 9 Other Fakes That Saved Lives in World War II

In March 1945, a U.S. Army unit of 1,100 men convinced German forces it was two full divisions, about 30,000 soldiers. Its weapons were...

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