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Abraham Lincoln was a bartender
You know that the 16th president of the United States fought for the freedom of slaves and the Union, but what you didn’t know is that he was a licensed bartender. Lincoln’s liquor license was discovered in 1930 and displayed in a Springfield liquor store. According to Wayne C. Temple, a Lincoln expert, Congress wanted to fire Ulysses S. Grant in 1863 because he drank a lot, and Lincoln’s response was to send Grant a supply of whiskey.
Beethoven never knew how to multiply or divide
The renowned pianist went to a Latin school called Tirocinium, where he was taught some math but never learned multiplication or division—only addition. Once, when he needed to multiply 62 by 50, he wrote 62 down a line 50 times and added it all up.
The word “aquarium” means “watering place for cattle” in Latin
Of course, today’s aquariums aren’t for cows. The first aquarium that looks like what you’d imagine was created in 1921 and opened in 1924 in England.
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ron Wayne started Apple Inc. on April Fools’ Day
The three technology innovators signed the documents to form the Apple Computer Company on April 1, 1976. But the company was not fully incorporated until January 3, 1977. Thirty years later, the company was renamed Apple Inc. and is no joke. In 2018, Apple became the country’s first trillion-dollar company.
The inventor of the tricycle personally delivered two to Queen Victoria
In 1881, Queen Victoria was on a tour on the Isle of Wight when her horse and carriage could not keep up with a woman riding a tricycle. Intrigued by the bike, the queen proceeded to order two. She also asked that the inventor, James Starley, arrive with the delivery. Though you might associate tricycles with toddlers, Queen Victoria made them cool among the elite at the time.
Your brain synapses shrink while you sleep
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Sleep and Consciousness studied mice to observe what happens to their brains while they sleep. Dr. Chiara Cirelli and Dr. Giulio Tononi found an 18 percent decrease in the size of synapses after a few hours of sleep. Don’t worry, though—this nighttime brain shrinkage actually helps your cognitive abilities.
A waffle iron inspired one of the first pairs of Nikes
Bill Bowerman was a track and field coach in the 1950s who didn’t like how running shoes were made. He first created the Cortez shoe but wanted a sneaker that was even lighter and could be worn on a variety of surfaces. During a waffle breakfast with his wife in 1970, he came up with the idea of using the waffle texture on the soles of running shoes. Waffle-soled shoes made their big debut in the 1972 U.S. Olympic track and field trials in Eugene, Oregon.
Boars wash their food
National Geographic reported that at Basel Zoo in Switzerland, zookeepers watched adult and juvenile wild boars pick up sandy apples and bring them to a nearby creek in their environment to wash before eating. Though some items like sugar beets were eaten without the human-like behavior, the boars brought a whole dead chicken to the creek to wash before chowing down. One ecologist called this a “luxury behavior.”
The first commercial passenger flight lasted only 23 minutes
In 1914, Abram Pheil paid $400 (which would be $8,500 today) for a 23-minute plane ride. The Florida flight flew between Saint Petersburg and Tampa, where only 21 miles of water separate the cities. Pheil, a former mayor of Saint Petersburg, and the pilot, Tony Jannus, were the only passengers. This momentous flight paved the way for air travel as we know it.
The world’s first novel ends mid-sentence
The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu in the 11th century, is considered the world’s first novel. After reading 54 intricately crafted chapters, the reader is stopped abruptly mid-sentence. One translator believes the work is complete as is, but another says we’re missing a few more pages of the story.
The French-language Scrabble World Champion doesn’t speak French
New Zealand native Nigel Richards memorized the entire French Scrabble dictionary, which has 386,000 words, in nine weeks to earn his title. He has also won the English World Scrabble Championship three times, the U.S. national championships five times, and the U.K. Open Scrabble tournament six times. This comes 20 years after a 28-year-old Richards first played the game.
The British Empire was the largest empire in world history
The British Empire was most powerful in the 1920s, when it controlled 23 percent of the world’s population and approximately 13.7 million square miles of territory—or nearly a quarter of the Earth’s land area, according to a report from Statista.
South American river turtles talk in their eggs
Turtles don’t have vocal cords, and their ears are internal, so scientists believed that turtles were deaf and didn’t communicate through sounds. But research has found that turtles actually communicate at an extremely low frequency that sounds like “clicks, clucks, and hoots” that can only be heard through a hydrophone (a microphone used underwater). These sounds even come from the egg before the turtle hatches. Researchers hypothesize that this helps all the turtle siblings hatch at once.
The MGM lion roar is trademarked
At the start of any movie made by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, the iconic lion roars at the audience. While MGM has gone through several iterations of lion mascots, the sound of the roar is always the same. The company trademarked the “sound mark” with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in the 1980s.
Irish bars used to be closed on Saint Patrick’s Day
You might associate Saint Patrick’s Day with wearing green and drinking so much you think you actually see leprechauns. But until 1961, there were laws in Ireland that banned bars from opening on March 17. Since the holiday falls during the period of Lent in the heavily Catholic country, the idea of binge-drinking seemed a bit immoral.
Nikola Tesla hated pearls
The electrical engineer paved the way for current system generators and motors; the way electricity gets transmitted and converted to mechanical power is thanks to his inventions. But despite his patience with scientific experimentation, he apparently had no tolerance for pearls. When his secretary wore pearl jewelry one day, he made her go home.
Bees can make colored honey
In France, there’s a biogas plant that manages waste from a Mars chocolate factory, where M&Ms are made. Beekeepers nearby noticed that their bees were making “unnatural shades of green and blue” honey. A spokesperson from the British Beekeepers’ Association theorized that the bees eating the sugary M&M waste caused the colored honey.
Bananas glow blue under black lights
To the everyday eye under normal conditions, ripe bananas appear yellow due to organic pigments called carotenoids. When bananas ripen, chlorophyll begins to break down. This pigment is the element that makes bananas glow, or fluoresce, under UV lights and appear blue.
Wimbledon tennis balls are kept at 68 degrees Fahrenheit
The temperature of a tennis ball affects how it bounces. At warmer temperatures, the gas molecules inside the ball expand, making the ball bounce higher. Lower temperatures cause the molecules to shrink and the ball to bounce lower. To make sure the best tennis balls are used, Wimbledon goes through more than 50,000 tennis balls each year.
The world’s oldest toy is a stick
Think of how versatile a stick is. You can use it to play fetch with your dog, swing it as a bat, or use your imagination to turn it into a lightsaber. That’s why, in 2008, the National Toy Hall of Fame inducted the stick into its collection of amazing toys as, very possibly, the oldest toy ever.
Humans aren’t the only animals that dream
Studies have indicated rats dream about getting to food or running through mazes. Most mammals go through REM sleep, the cycle in which dreams occur, so scientists think there’s a good chance they all dream.
You can (probably) mute your microwave.
Most modern microwaves come with a mute option. Sometimes it's as easy as finding the button that has "mute" written on it in small letters and holding that down for a while. Otherwise, check your owner's manual and exponentially improve your quality of life.
Finishing your antibiotics is crucial.
If you stop taking antibiotics before you're supposed to, any bacteria that didn't get killed can develop an immunity to that antibiotic and become a super-strain that's much more difficult to kill in the future. So keep taking your pills, even if you feel better.
You can blur your house on Google's street view.
Go to your house, click on it, and then click "report a problem" at the bottom of the screen. You can also do this for your face or your car.
You can cancel free trials before they expire.
Instead of accidentally getting duped into a membership to a service you don't want, simply cancel during the free trial period. With most free trials, you can cancel immediately after you sign up and still enjoy the entire trial period.
Escalator etiquette is real.
In the United States, it's customary to stand right and walk left on stairs and escalators, even if it's not posted anywhere.