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Abraham Lincoln was the ultimate self-made man. Largely self-educated, he rose from the humblest of origins to become a lawyer and politician before being elected President of the United States in 1860.

His unshakeable faith in and devotion to the United States was severely tested during the Civil War, and his savvy leadership ensured the Union’s survival. But his life and legacy were more complicated than history books often present. Explore six intriguing facts about America’s 16th President.

Abraham Lincoln Was the Only President to Receive a Patent

Lincoln had a lifelong fascination with machinery and often tinkered with mechanical devices and tools. He also spent much time traveling and working on the river boats that sailed along the Mississippi River and other waterways, which were prone to breaching onto shores in shallow waters. In 1848, while Lincoln was serving his sole term as a U.S. congressman, a boat he was traveling home to Illinois on got stuck on a sandbar — forcing the captain to empty the barrels of cargo on board so he could use them to buoy and lift the ship back on the water.

The incident sparked a new idea in Lincoln, who spent the congressional break working on a design for inflatable bellows that could be attached to a ship’s hull to lift it over sandbars or other impediments. He had a scale model created and submitted the idea to the U.S. Patent Office. In May 1849, he received U.S. Patent No. 6469, although his flotation system was never put to practical use.

Lincoln Was the First President To Have a Beard

When you think of Lincoln, the first image that comes to mind is likely of a tall, thin man with a signature beard. But Lincoln actually spent much of his life clean-shaven, despite attacks by his political opponents who mocked his gaunt face and nearly emaciated frame.

The introduction of photography was a game-changer in politics, and Lincoln, a little-known politician who had served just one term in Congress, seized on the new technology to introduce himself to the American people. It was one of these photos that caught the attention of Grace Bedell, an 11-year-old girl from New York. After seeing his picture on an election brochure, she wrote to Lincoln and urged him to grow a beard to obscure his thin face, cheekily noting, “All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President.”

Lincoln endearingly responded to Bedell and said that he worried some might see the change as a political ploy. He won without facial hair, but began growing a beard shortly before taking office — he even visited Bedell to show it off in person during a visit to New York. Lincoln’s beard became iconic, but it proved to be a short-lived trend. Only four other Presidents had full beards while in office, and the last was Benjamin Harrison, who left office in 1893.

Lincoln Was the First U.S. President To Appear on a Coin

Since the nation’s founding, U.S. currency has featured images and symbols linked to the concept of liberty, such as eagles or winged figures of victory. That changed in 1909 when the U.S. Mint redesigned the 1-cent coin to commemorate the centennial of Lincoln’s 1809 birth. The new coin, the first circulating one to honor a real person, featured a portrait of Lincoln by sculptor Victor David Brenner. The artist’s 1907 plaque of Lincoln reportedly caught the attention of then-President Theodore Roosevelt, who lobbied for its use on the new Lincoln penny, which was released in August 1909. Lincoln remained the only President honored on a coin for more than two decades until a redesigned quarter was released in 1932 to mark the bicentennial of the birth of America’s first President, George Washington.

Lincoln Helped Establish Thanksgiving as a National Holiday

Proclamations in support of national days of Thanksgiving dated back to the earliest days of the republic, including one issued by President George Washington in 1789 to celebrate the new U.S. Constitution. But the practice soon fell out of favor. In the subsequent decades, several states had their own celebrations, but no national commemoration. A national holiday had long been the dream of writer and magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale. The author of the poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” Hale lobbied for a national day of thanks at the end of November and continued her push even after the outbreak of the Civil War.

In 1863, she wrote a letter to Lincoln, who had already called for several other days of thanks to commemorate Union victories earlier in the war. Within weeks of receiving Hale’s letter, Secretary of State William Seward drafted a proclamation in the hopes of healing “the nation’s wounds.” The proclamation also called for a national day of Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November to be celebrated annually. That remained the date until 1939, when it was briefly moved to the third Thursday by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, before returning to its current day in 1941.

The Gettysburg Address Was Less Than 275 Words Long

The 1863 Union victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was a key turning point in the war, but a bloody one, with over 51,000 combined casualties. The enormity of the losses spurred a local lawyer to push for the creation of a national cemetery to properly bury the dead. The day’s events were scheduled around an address by Edward Everett, a former Massachusetts senator and secretary of state who was considered one of the nation’s best orators. Lincoln’s invitation was almost an afterthought, and he wasn’t invited until just three weeks before the November 19 ceremony.

Lincoln wrote part of the speech at the White House and likely finished the rest in Gettysburg the night before the ceremony. The following day, Everett delivered a two-hour speech, while Lincoln spoke for just two minutes. In his address, the President honored the sacrifices of the dead and called on a “new birth of freedom” as critical to the survival of America. Immediate reactions to Lincoln’s speech were mixed. But in the years following Lincoln’ death, the Gettysburg Address became one of the most important speeches in American history.

Lincoln’s Views on Slavery Were Complicated and Evolving

As a young politician, Lincoln opposed slavery on moral grounds and opposed its expansion. But he — and many other conservative Americans — disagreed with the more radical abolitionist cause, which called for the immediate end to slavery. Lincoln believed that the U.S. Constitution provided no measure for the federal government to unilaterally abolish slavery nationwide. Instead, he supported a slow, gradual end to the system in which slave states would voluntarily free their enslaved people in exchange for financial compensation by the government. Lincoln also supported the “colonization” movement, which encouraged the formerly enslaved to leave the United States for settlements in Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere. And while he believed Black people had the same “inalienable” rights to freedom as white people, he did not initially support the idea of equal political and civil rights for Black Americans.

Lincoln’s positions began to shift during his presidency thanks to intense pressure from abolitionist leaders and the shifting nature of the Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation was largely framed as a war effort to weaken the Confederacy by stripping it of its enslaved population. But the proclamation redefined the purpose of the war to one being undeniably fought over the moral question of freedom. Lincoln’s views on racial equality also began to shift in large part because of the brave sacrifices of Black soldiers. He strongly supported the passage of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. In his final public speech just days before his assassination in April 1865, he called for limited voting rights for Black Americans, a far cry from full equality but a position many Americans still considered radical.

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The Vikings are mostly known as a group of aggressive invaders who pillaged and plundered their way from Scandinavia to other European nations from about the eighth to the 11th century. In fact, the word “Viking” means “pirate invader” in the Old Norse language. Though they were a fearsome lot, the Vikings were also skilled boatbuilders and seafarers who sailed to other lands for many reasons, seeking riches and profitable trade routes. Historians have uncovered former Viking sites as far away as Iceland, Greenland, and Canada that reveal fascinating history about historic civilizations. Here are six things about the Vikings you might not know.

Not All Vikings Came From Scandinavia

Sweden, Norway, and Denmark receive most of the attention regarding Viking history, but a group of warriors known as the Oeselians lived on a large island called Ösel. Known as Saaremaa today, the island is located off Estonia’s coast in the Baltic Sea. According to 13th-century Estonian documents, Oeselians built merchant ships and warships that could carry about 30 men each.

In 2008, workers inadvertently discovered a burial ground in the town of Salme that included human remains, along with swords, spears, knives, axes, and other weapons. Archaeologists excavated the site (and later a second site nearby) and found the remains of two Swedish ships dating to about 750 CE. One ship contained neatly ordered remains and the other more haphazard, indicating battles had taken place. Archaeologists believe the two ships likely carried Swedish Vikings who met their end while attacking the Oeselians.

Latvian Vikings Were Known as the “Last Pagans”

Another tribe of fierce Viking warriors, the Curonians, lived along the Baltic coastline of modern-day Latvia starting around the fifth century CE. The Curonians were referred to as Europe’s last pagans, since they resisted all attempts to convert to Christianity long after neighboring nations did so — by some accounts, they practiced ancient rituals into the 19th century. They frequently raided Swedish settlements and attacked merchant ships, often forming alliances with other groups, including the nearby Oeselians.

The Curonians were also among the region’s wealthiest groups, primarily due to the trade of amber (precious fossilized tree resin). The Baltic region contains vast amounts of amber, nicknamed “the gold of the North,” and Baltic amber was once traded all over Europe and northern Africa. One of the Curonians’ primary settlements, Seeburg, was along the Baltic coast in modern-day Grobina. There, you can visit the Curonian Viking Settlement, an attraction that immerses visitors in folklore and activities such as archery, boat trips, and excursions to visit historical sites.

Vikings Established the Kingdom of Dublin

Ireland once contained many wealthy monasteries, since it had been a Christian nation for about three centuries before the first Vikings’ arrival late in the eighth century CE. At first, the Vikings either traded with or marauded Irish monasteries and set up temporary camps. Around 840 CE, they established a year-round settlement and built a wooden fort (called a longphort) along the River Liffey bank in modern-day Dublin. The Vikings used the settlement as a base to raid inland settlements and obtain timber to build ships. Over the next three centuries, they formed alliances and fought battles with local rulers, establishing the Kingdom of Dublin. Dublin became a strategic and bustling trading port and one of the longest-lasting Viking settlements outside Scandinavia.

Construction workers initially discovered two extensive Viking settlements in Dublin, one at Wood Quay and the other at Christ Church Cathedral. Dublin embraces its Viking history, and one of the best ways to experience it is by visiting Dublinia, a museum and historic area that hosts festivals. The National Museum of Ireland also houses many artifacts and a Viking Age exhibit.

Normandy Is Named for the Vikings

According to medieval Latin documents, Normandy (a province in northwestern France) is named for the Vikings that pillaged, plundered, and later settled here beginning around 790 CE. The Latin name for them was Notmanni, which means “men of the North.” Defenseless monasteries were often their first targets, and a Danish Viking expedition even sailed up the Seine River to raid and occupy Paris in 845 CE.

After a French king ceded land to him in 911 CE, a Viking leader named Rollo established a permanent settlement in the region, which became known as the Duchy of Normandy. The Normandy territory expanded over the next several hundred years as Scandinavian Vikings colonized the area. They eventually gave up their paganism for Christianity and integrated into society. Rollo’s descendants built a stronghold and, later, around 927 CE, a palace in Fecám, which you can visit today. Fecámp overlooks a protected harbor (the likely site where Rollo first came ashore), making it easy to visualize a fleet of Viking ships bobbing on anchors.

Vikings Settled Iceland

Unsurprisingly, when these medieval seafaring raiders invaded an area, they encountered resistance from the Indigenous populations. But when Norwegian Vikings arrived in Iceland in 870 CE, the only inhabitants they found were a small group of Irish monks, who left soon after. The Vikings discovered Iceland by accident when they were blown off course during storms. Once word reached Norway that Iceland was open for the taking, settlers descended on the island, bringing with them enslaved peoples from the British Isles. DNA testing and genealogy studies have shown that early Icelanders were about half Norse (from Norway and Sweden) and half Gaelic (from Ireland and Scotland).

By 930 CE, the settlers had divided Iceland into 36 principalities, formed the Althing (assembly of free men), and adopted a Norwegian law code to establish a commonwealth. Two surviving texts from the 12th and 13th centuries, the Íslendingabók (Book of the Icelanders) and the Landnámabók (Book of the Settlements), detail these early activities. Surprisingly, the Norse language hasn’t changed much over the centuries, and Icelanders today can still understand their Viking ancestors’ language. You can find historic and replicated Viking sites, artifacts, and festivals all over Iceland if you visit today.

Greenland’s Vikings Disappeared

A Norwegian Viking known as Erik the Red was the first European to settle in Greenland in 983 CE. Two years later, he led an expedition of Icelandic settlers to Greenland, about 900 miles away. The settlers established two communities, the East Settlement near present-day Qaqortoq and the West Settlement near Nuuk. For the next 300 years or so, the settlers successfully farmed, fished, raised cattle, and hunted caribou, seals, walruses, polar bears, and other Arctic animals. However, Greenland couldn’t provide all the resources (such as timber and iron) they needed, so Greenlanders relied on trade with European nations.

During this time, Europeans began importing ivory, which they used to decorate churches and make chess pieces and other trinkets. Greenland’s walrus population was plentiful at the time, and Greenlanders collaborated in groups to hunt walruses for their skins and tusks. The island nation’s success was mostly due to a bustling ivory trade.

Then a series of events in the 13th century led to the demise of Greenland’s Viking settlements. Greenland winters became harsher and storms more frequent, making it exceedingly dangerous to hunt and export ivory in treacherous seas. The longer winters shortened the already short farming season, creating food scarcities. Meanwhile, African elephant tusks became a competing source for ivory, collapsing the Greenland market. On top of that, the Black Plague was sweeping across Europe, further reducing the ivory demand and disrupting Greenland’s ability to survive. Archaeologists and historians believe that many of Greenland’s impoverished inhabitants died over time (many drowned at sea), and the others simply left and went to North America, Iceland, or Europe. By the end of the 14th century, the Norse settlements were vacant.

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History, at first glance, is a simple enough concept — a series of events that happen in chronological order and that eventually add up to the overarching story of humanity. However, sometimes it doesn’t take much to throw off our sense of that timeline. Historical outliers, anachronisms, and different types of development made by disparate cultures can intersect in ways that make you question your hold on temporal reality. These six facts will challenge your perception of time, and prove that history isn’t always as simple as it may seem.

George Washington Didn’t Know Dinosaurs Existed

The birth of the United States dates back little more than 245 years, but a lot has happened since then. One of the big paleontological updates, for example, is the discovery of dinosaurs. The first dino fossil ever discovered was in 1677, when English naturalist Robert Plot found the femur of what we’d now call a megalosaurus. However, Plot believed that this bone belonged to some ancient race of giant humans — not the animals we know today as dinosaurs. It wasn’t until the 1820s, when geologists in England uncovered more megalosaurus fossils, as well as bones belonging to the iguanodon, that they correctly identified the remains as belonging to some sort of giant extinct reptile. Even then, it’d take nearly two decades before the word “dinosaur,” meaning terrible lizard, was officially coined by Richard Owen. That means George Washington, and most of the founding generation of the United States, didn’t know anything about dinosaurs, and may have even believed an ancient race of human giants once roamed the Earth.

Woolly Mammoths Were Alive After Egyptians Built the Pyramids

Woolly mammoths were once hunted in Europe by Neanderthals, so it seems weird that they overlap with the recorded history of Homo sapiens. Yet the gargantuan beasts still roamed the Earth when the Egyptians toiled away on the Great Pyramid of Giza. Though “roam” may be a bit of an exaggeration: By the end of their natural time on Earth, woolly mammoths were completely confined to Wrangel Island off the coast of northeastern Russia.

This small island, roughly the size of Crete, saw the last gasps of this species, as the ice age that sustained the creatures’ survival completely receded. Sadly, the few mammoths on the island suffered what scientists call a “genomic meltdown,” as inbreeding affected the species’ ability to mark territory and mate. It’s estimated that the last woolly mammoth died around 1700 BCE, about 800 years after the completion of the Great Pyramid. However, new advancements in genetics could see the return of these woolly beasts to the planet.

The First Computer Was Invented Before the Roman Empire

A computer found in an ancient shipwreck among the islands of Greece sounds like a sci-fi story with a dash of time travel — but in this case, reality is stranger than fiction. Now regarded as one of the most astounding archaeological finds in history, the Antikythera Mechanism, named after the nearby island where the shipwreck was discovered, is an ancient analog computer built around the second century BCE. The machine was used to calculate eclipses, moon phases, and the movements of the five planets known to antiquity: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. This means humanity’s conception of a computer predates the rise of the ancient Roman Empire, which began with the reign of Emperor Augustus in 27 BCE.

When the mechanism was discovered in 1900, no one knew how these strange, greenish pieces of bronze fit together, and the mystery wasn’t solved until historian Derek J. de Solla Price figured it out in the 1950s. Yet to this day, experts aren’t sure who originally created the Antikythera Mechanism; the famous mathematicians Hipparchus and Archimedes are good guesses. The next analog computer to rival the complexity of the Antikythera Mechanism didn’t arrive until the astronomical clocks of the Renaissance, more than 1,500 years later.

The Fax Machine Was Invented the Same Year the First Large-Scale Wagon Train Traveled the Oregon Trail

Although we often associate it with the late 20th century, the fax machine is surprisingly old, and it arrived little more than a decade after the invention of the telegraph. In 1843, Scottish mechanic and inventor Alexander Bain received a patent for a device now regarded as the first fax machine. This machine worked differently than today’s digital machines, however; Bain leveraged his experience as an amateur clockmaker to synchronize pendulums with a clock. One pendulum scanned an image, while another created a copy of the image.

That same year, on May 22, 1843, a wagon train left Missouri on its way west toward Oregon. The nearly 1,000 settlers were part of the first large-scale expedition to travel along what became known as the Oregon Trail, a route that wound through Wyoming’s South Pass and circumvented the Rocky Mountains. (While migrants had been using the Oregon Trail since the 1830s, numbers increased significantly with this Great Emigration of 1843.) Meanwhile, in England, Bain’s machine — and subsequent machines like it — were labeled “copying telegraphs,” though they became obsolete by the early 1860s, after Italian inventor Giovanni Caselli invented the telefax machine, known at the time as the pantelegraph.

The First University in Europe Was Founded 7 Years Before the Crusades

Universities, which served as centers of learning for the intellectual revolutions of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, seem like institutions founded after the unenlightened barbarism of the Crusades. However, the University of Bologna predates Pope Urban II’s call to retake the Holy Land by about seven years. The university formed as an affiliation of guilds mostly studying civil and canon (aka religious) law. By the 12th and 13th centuries, the University of Bologna attracted students from all over the world, and subsequently became a model for other Italian universities and centers of learning further abroad. The only university older than Bologna is the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fes, Morocco, which was originally founded in 859 CE.

Nintendo Existed Before the Death of Civil War General William T. Sherman

On September 23, 1889, Fusajiro Yamauchi founded Nintendo Karuta in Shimogyō-ku, Kyoto, Japan. Many decades removed from the creation of the first video game, Nintendo’s early years focused on producing hanafuda, or Japanese playing cards. Two years later and half a world away, one of the most influential generals in the U.S. Civil War — William Tecumseh Sherman — died at the age of 71. Nintendo remained relatively unknown in the U.S. until the mid-20th century, when the company began exploring ways to expand, and even struck a deal with Disney to create hanafuda with its characters on them. But it wasn’t until the 1970s, when Nintendo became the Japanese distributor of the Magnavox Odyssey, the world’s first home video game console, that the company took a hard right turn into the new entertainment industry.

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“Pharaoh.” The word conjures up images of ancient wealth, divine power, and Yul Brynner in The Ten Commandments. The royal title was applied to Egyptian kings beginning with the New Kingdom (circa 1539 to 1070 BCE), a period of revitalization following the expulsion of rulers who had come from modern-day Syria and Israel. The New Kingdom saw an explosion of Egyptian culture, wealth, and influence, as pharaohs including Thutmose III, Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, and Ramses II expanded the kingdom’s borders and built monumental temples and tombs. Read on for more insight into the pharaohs’ place in history.

Pharaohs Were the Political and Spiritual Leaders of Egypt

The most important duty of pharaohs was preserving the cosmic order, called maat, which they did by enacting laws, defending the kingdom against its enemies, managing all the land (which belonged to the pharaoh), and even collecting taxes. Both pharaohs and ordinary Egyptians were expected to live according to the moral principles of maat, but the pharaoh was additionally tasked with maintaining peace between the gods and the people and keeping chaos at bay. As the intermediaries between the gods and humans, pharaohs led religious festivals, built temples honoring deities, and carried out divine imperatives.

Pharaohs Identified With the Gods Horus and Osiris

The story of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld, fertility, and rebirth, forms the foundation of ancient Egyptian kingship. In the myth, Osiris was the first king of Egypt and ruled with Isis, his queen. Benevolent Osiris taught the people to prosper, but he had an evil brother, Seth — embodying the opposite of maat — who killed and dismembered Osiris so he could take the throne. Isis was able to put his parts mostly back together, and Osiris became the god of the underworld, while his son Horus got revenge on Seth and became pharaoh. (According to one story, Horus killed Seth with a spear after the latter had transformed himself into a hippo.)

The legend served as a model for the actual pharaohs, who were identified with Horus during their lifetime and then with Osiris after death, and whose rule was characterized as a continuation of the existential battles between Horus and Seth.

Pharaohs Were Believed to Control the Nile

The Nile was central to ancient Egypt. It provided food and water, fertile lands for agriculture, and a blue highway for travel and shipping — and without the river, it’s unlikely that the desert dynasties would have existed. Its annual flooding, which replenished the lands for crops and livestock, was personified in a god named Hapi who had green or blue skin (representing water) and a pot belly (signifying fertility and abundance). As the religious leaders of the Egyptian people, pharaohs conversed with Hapi to ensure the flooding occurred on time. But if the floods were too strong or destroyed homes and farms, the pharaohs were blamed for not keeping the cosmic order up to snuff, which led to political instability.

Women Were Influential Pharaohs

Generally, pharaohs were men whose power passed to their sons, but some female pharaohs ruled Egypt in their own right. Hatshepsut, the queen of Pharaoh Thutmose II, rose to power after his death and reigned as pharaoh from 1472 to 1458 BCE. She led military campaigns and built massive temples, and at the height of her influence was depicted in statuary as a muscular, bare-chested monarch wearing a false beard like male pharaohs sported.

Scholars debate whether Nefertiti ruled explicitly as pharaoh in the 1330s BCE, but it’s certain that she was the queen of Pharaoh Akhenaten and likely the stepmother of another pharaoh, Tutankhamun. She is shown in artifacts in ways normally reserved for pharaohs — and then there’s that undeniably regal bust of Nefertiti, unearthed in 1912, which fueled speculation about her true role. She may have assumed power after Akhenaten’s death while Tut was still young, but the debate continues.

Cleopatra VII, who reigned from 51 to 30 BCE, is probably the most famous female pharaoh of all, thanks to the 1963 Hollywood epic starring Elizabeth Taylor. Though that movie focuses on her love affairs, Cleopatra was much more than a seductress; she was a popular ruler who made reforms of the monetary system, helped increase Egypt’s wealth through trade with Eastern nations, and allied with Roman factions in an attempt to keep Egypt independent.

Pharaohs Were Buried in Extravagant Tombs

Pharaohs were laid to rest in huge, richly ornamented tombs to ease their transition to the realm of Osiris. In the Fourth Dynasty (2575 to 2465 BCE) of the Old Kingdom, the three Pyramids of Giza were commissioned for the pharaohs Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure. Each pyramid there is essentially solid stone with a small burial chamber at ground level or underneath; unfortunately, thieves plundered the tombs centuries ago, and the items buried with the pharaohs to aid them in the afterlife are lost.

A thousand years later, in the New Kingdom, pharaohs were buried in smaller, multi-chambered tombs in the Valley of the Kings, about 330 miles south of Giza. About 64 tombs are scattered across the valley, including those of Thutmose I and his daughter Hatshepsut, Ramses II (aka the Great), and Tutankhamun. All but Tut’s were looted long ago, which is what made the 1922 discovery of his nearly intact tomb, with its hoard of gold objects and furniture, a world-shaking event.

Pharaohs Issued Curses — But Not the One You May Be Thinking Of

According to legend, King Tut supposedly cursed the British archaeologists who disturbed his eternal rest. Roughly nine people involved in the tomb’s excavation died within a few years of their discovery, which the media whipped into stories about a “curse of the pharaohs.” No actual curses were found inside Tut’s tomb, however, and the Egyptologist David P. Silverman argues that pharaohs rarely issued them, since they already enjoyed protections from the gods. The few known royal curses serve as warnings against enemies of Egypt or members of court, and they could be pretty graphic.

“As for [anyone] who will come after me and who will find the foundation of the funerary tomb in destruction,” a curse in a temple devoted to Pharaoh Amenhotep warns, “His uraeus [a serpent-shaped headdress ornament] will vomit flame upon the top of their heads, demolishing their flesh and devouring their bones.”