Imagine trying to pass through border security when all you have to prove your identity is a piece of paper that says “brown hair and freckles.” While that wouldn’t fly today, it’s typically how things worked before passports had photographs. Early passports simply included details such as the holder’s name and the location they were traveling; photography wasn’t invented until the 1820s, and it took many more years for the technology to allow for easy passport photographs.

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At 1 a.m. on March 10, 1879, the arena at Gilmore’s Garden in New York City (later renamed Madison Square Garden) was absolutely packed with screaming fans of America’s latest sports craze: pedestrianism. That’s right, competitive walking. At the venue, fans outside tried to shove themselves in, breaking windows and scaling the roof. It was no less chaotic inside, where ticketholders scrambled on top of tables, chairs, and each other’s shoulders to get a better view. That day marked the start of the Astley Belt, essentially the Super Bowl of walking.

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When the United States government detonated the first atomic bomb, nicknamed Gadget, near Los Alamos, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, they did it in secret — or as secretly as you can test something that creates an explosion reaching 40,000 feet into the air. It was known as the Trinity Test, but as far as the public knew, an Air Force weapons stash had accidentally exploded. Soon after, Kodak started getting complaints that its X-ray film was unusable, due to mysterious exposed black spots, called “fogging,” and one research scientist’s quest to find the source of the problem led him to make a startling discovery.

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As the American Civil War came to an end in 1865, communities across the U.S. honored fallen soldiers through local ceremonies at burial sites. On May 30, 1868, the first national ceremony of this kind took place on a day that would come to be known as Memorial Day — though at the time, it was called “Decoration Day.”

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Timekeeping technology has come a long way from ancient Egyptian sundials, and with it, so has the ability to wake up at whatever precise time might be needed for work, school, or appointments — even if we often ignore a ringing alarm in favor of snoozing for just 10 more minutes.

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Being a parent has been a demanding job since the dawn of humanity. While modern-day parents have access to a plethora of parenting resources and tools across social media, blogs, and podcasts, well-meaning — if not entirely well-informed — figures have offered advice about child-rearing for centuries.

Parenting advice became more widespr

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Though it’s nearly ubiquitous today, wearing pants was considered highly uncivilized in ancient Greece and ancient Rome, where tunics and cloaks, such as togas and chitons, were the norm. The anti-pants sentiment had little to do with clothes themselves, and was more a result of xenophobia toward the cultures that traditionally wore them. Ancient Greek texts deride pants on Persians and Scythians, two groups who were frequently at war with Greece, and in ancient Rome, pants were associated with the Gauls, who fought Rome in the Gallic Wars. 

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Many English monarchs are buried inside ornate tombs located at sites of great reverence. The same can’t be said for Richard III, whose long-lost remains were found and excavated underneath a parking lot in Leicester, England.

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Ancient Roman history is usually dominated by larger-than-life rulers such as Julius Caesar and eloquent senators such as Cicero. However, these men led an empire of millions of everyday citizens who were usually less concerned with conquering the world than they were with putting bread on the table and simply enjoying life. A look at the lives of typical Roman citizens reveals a culture that in many fundamental ways is not so different from ours; the ancient Romans worked, played, socialized, and expressed themselves — albeit often quite rudely. Here are six facts that offer a glimpse of what it was like to be an average citizen in one of the world’s largest and most influential empires.

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In 1558, Elizabeth Tudor assumed the throne of England and Ireland and began her reign as Queen Elizabeth I. From the moment she was crowned, Elizabeth was an unconventional ruler.

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