Ulysses S. Grant is one of the most important figures in U.S. history. A brilliant tactician and military strategist, he served as the commanding general of the Union armies toward the end of the Civil War, bringing them to victory, then served for two terms as the United States’ 18th president (1869–1877). So it’s strange that many Americans don’t know his real name. Born Hiram Ulysses Grant on April 27, 1822, Grant went by the name Ulysses from a young age (even when boys teased him with names like “Useless Grant”). So where does the “S” come from? 

Walt Whitman published Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs after his death.

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By 1885, several business failures had left Grant in financial ruin. Dying from cancer and afraid for his wife’s future, Grant finished his memoir days before his death. The book, published later that year by his friend Mark Twain, earned Julia Grant $11 million in today’s dollars.

In mid-June of 1864, during the height of the Civil War, Congressman Elihu B. Washburne had the same question and wrote to Grant in search of an answer. “In answer to your letter of a few days ago asking what ’S’ stands for in my name,” Grant wrote in response, “I can only state nothing.” Twenty-five years earlier, when U.S. Congressman Thomas Hamer nominated Grant to the prestigious military academy West Point, he wrote the then-17-year-old’s name as “Ulysses S. Grant,” thinking his middle initial was “S” for his mother’s maiden name, “Simpson.” Grant tried to remedy the error but to no avail — the “S” even appeared on his diploma. The mistake proved prophetic as the object of his lifelong devotion became embedded within his very name: U.S. Grant.

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As implied by its name, Election Day is, well, a single day. That wasn't always the case, however: States used to hold elections whenever they wanted within a 34-day period leading up to the first Wednesday in December. This ultimately created some issues, as you might imagine — early voting results ended up holding too much sway over late-deciding voters, for one thing. The current date was implemented by the Presidential Election Day Act of 1845, and federal elections now occur every two years on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

The first presidential election spanned two calendar years.

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George Washington was unanimously elected the first president of the U.S., but it took a while — from December 15, 1788, to January 10, 1789, to be precise. Washington wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of being president but answered the call “in obedience to the public summons.”

That may sound arbitrary at first, but the date was chosen quite deliberately. American society was rooted even more deeply in agriculture in the mid-19th century than it is today, so November was chosen for its timing after the harvest. Additionally, it took a full day of traveling for many to reach their polling place, which limited options: Church made weekends impractical, and Wednesday was market day for farmers, so Tuesday proved ideal.

The current process isn’t perfect, of course. U.S. elections tend to have lower turnout than those of most other developed nations, and there have been calls for decades to make Election Day a national holiday. A 2018 poll found that 65% of Americans favored the idea, though there’s been little legislative movement on the proposal. Should it ever be put to a vote, you know when it will be held.

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Turnips aren’t usually considered fancy fare — over the years, they’ve served as livestock fodder and occasionally been used to pelt unpopular figures in public. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, however, they were not just begrudgingly served for dinner, but also used as small lanterns. The durable root crop is often harvested as the weather cools, and in Ireland, that was just in time for Samhain, the Celtic celebration of summer’s end. Ancient Celts believed that the separation between the living world and spirit realm was at its weakest during autumn, making it possible for ghosts and demons to cause mischief. To protect themselves and their homes, superstitious folk across the British Isles would carve frightening faces into produce — sometimes potatoes or beets, but most commonly turnips — as a way to ward off harm. With a lit candle placed inside, the illuminated faces acted as old-world lanterns that banished the unwanted and guided the way along dark paths. 

The world’s smallest book is about turnips.

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“Teeny Ted From Turnip Town” has its own ISBN number, but you can’t check it out from a library. That’s because the world’s smallest book — a story about a country fair turnip contest — is 0.07 mm by 0.10 mm (smaller than a pinhead) and can be read only with an electron microscope.

Turnip carving slowly faded in popularity, especially after the advent of electricity. Still, the tradition made its way to the U.S., albeit with a twist, thanks to an influx of Irish immigrants fleeing famine around the 1840s: Harvest-time celebrants found that pumpkins, abundant and native to North America, were much easier to carve than turnips. The modified tradition caught on during the later part of the 20th century and gave root to the bewitching American custom of carving jack-o’-lanterns around Halloween.

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Modern contact lenses are made of plastic, using various high-tech polymers that allow oxygen to flow through and reach the cornea. But that hasn’t always been the case: The first usable contact lenses were made of regular ol’ glass. 

The basic concept of contact lenses can be traced all the way back to Leonardo da Vinci, who described a method of vision correction that involved wearing a water-filled glass hemisphere over the eye. Though highly impractical, the concept was similar to a modern contact lens. Centuries later, in 1801, the British polymath Thomas Young created a contact lens prototype made of glass and filled with water based on another theoretical idea posited in 1637 by the philosopher and scientist René Descartes.

The first dual-lens eyeglasses were invented by a monk in 1158 CE.

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It’s hard to say who invented glasses, as the development of corrective lenses was a gradual progression rather than a single aha moment. Evidence of optical lens use dates back as far as the ancient world, while modern reading glasses were likely developed in 13th-century Italy.

The true breakthroughs began in the 1880s, when new glass production technologies allowed for more precise cutting and shaping, making thin lenses possible for the first time. In the same decade, glass contact lenses that actually allowed the wearer to blink were independently invented by Adolf Fick, Louis J. Girard, Eugene Kalt, and August Mueller, making it hard to pinpoint who gets the credit for producing the first practical — albeit imperfect — contact lenses. 

Those early glass contact lenses were far from ideal; they were heavy and uncomfortable, and being made of glass posed a major problem. Unlike other organs in our bodies, which are oxygenated by the blood, our eyes get their oxygen directly from the air — so covering them with glass suffocates them, causing severe eye pain after a few hours. 

Nonetheless, glass lenses were the only option for at least a half-century after their creation. The next great leap forward came in the 1930s, when inventors Theodore Obrig and William Feinbloom began developing plastic lenses made from acrylic resin. Eventually, plastic lenses, which were safer and could be worn for much longer without discomfort, consigned their glass ancestors to the annals of optical history.

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