Facts Archive - Interesting Facts

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Cabbage. Scratch. Dough. Americans have used many creative nicknames for dollar bills over the past two centuries, though one of the more technical terms — “paper money” — could be considered just as misleading. Turns out, U.S. dollars are made not from paper, but instead from a fiber blend of 75% cotton and 25% linen. This water-resistant, durable material can hold up to far more wear and tear than actual wood-pulp paper could. While a dollar can be torn with intentional force, it would take an estimated 4,000 repetitive folds in the same spot to cause a tear. American dollars also include red and blue synthetic fibers, which are woven into the material and included to make counterfeiting more difficult.

U.S. dollar bills have always been green.

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Green ink on U.S. bills emerged during the Civil War, a move that made it more difficult for counterfeiters to reproduce bogus bucks through (black and white) photography.

Despite its strength, no dollar bill lasts forever. The Federal Reserve generally allows cash to continue circulating regardless of age, so long as it’s in great shape — free from tears, holes, and writing, and still legible. However, all bills have an expected lifespan based on denomination. Smaller bills typically see more frequent use and wear out faster, with $5 bills having the shortest life at just 4.7 years and $1 notes lasting around 6.6 years. After being removed from circulation, threadbare bills are shredded and move on to a new purpose: 90% of destroyed dollars are used to make potting soil, compost, and construction materials like cement.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Denominations available in U.S. paper currency

7

U.S. states in the “Cotton Belt,” stretching from coast to coast

17

Number of $100 bills that can be made from one bale of cotton

313,600

Estimated number of $2 bills still in circulation

1.4 billion

More Interesting Reads

Three eggplants on a cutting board

Eggplants got their name because some were originally white and round.

In World War II, the British had a plan to make aircraft carriers out of ice.

Less time separates humans from Tyrannosaurus rex than separated T. rex from stegosaurus.

Durian fruit is banned on some public transportation.

In the Diomede Islands, you can see from one day into another.

Early U.S. pennies used the motto “Mind Your Business,” a phrase popularized by ______.

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Early U.S. pennies used the motto “Mind Your Business,” a phrase popularized by Benjamin Franklin.

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No living person can have their picture printed on U.S. currency.

The portraits on U.S. currency have traditionally depicted the country’s presidents and founding leaders, though at one time an employee of the federal government put his own face on a paper bill. Spencer Clark served as the superintendent of the National Currency Bureau during the 1860s, a time when the U.S. Treasury temporarily printed paper bills for small denominations under $1 during a coin shortage. Historians are unsure exactly how Clark’s face wound up on the 5-cent note, though one possible explanation is that the bill was supposed to feature William Clark, half of the famous Lewis and Clark exploring duo. However, an alleged miscommunication led Spencer Clark to instead authorize his own image to be printed. Congress was outraged — especially considering Clark’s poor reputation, stemming from prior accusations of fraud and unprofessional conduct — and moved to ensure no other person could commit a similar act. In 1866, Congress passed a law that allows only deceased people to appear on the country’s currency.

Nicole Garner Meeker

Writer

Nicole Garner Meeker is a writer and editor based in St. Louis. Her history, nature, and food stories have also appeared at Mental Floss and Better Report.

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Gravity is an essential force on Earth: It keeps the planet in orbit at a safe and comfortable distance from the sun and even holds our atmosphere in place. It does have a downside, however: It weighs down the human body, making us a tiny bit shorter by the end of the day. From the moment we climb out of bed in the morning, gravitational forces push down on us, applying downward pressure on our joints, compressing our spines, and causing our organs to settle. All that strain adds up, enough to shrink a body by 1 centimeter. Gravity is at work whether we’re sitting or standing, but at bedtime, our bodies get a slight reprieve as lying down redirects the force. Sleeping horizontally gives our spines and joints time to decompress and gain back the height lost during the day, making us once again slightly taller by morning.

Children have more vertebrae than adults.

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At birth, humans tend to have 33 vertebrae — the individual bones that make up the spinal column. By adulthood, many of those bones have completed the normal process of fusing together, leaving the average adult with just 24 vertebrae.

Even though this ebb and flow is a normal process our bodies endure, over time humans tend to shrink in stature. The human body constantly breaks down and replenishes its bones to keep them healthy, though by age 35, that process tends to slow, with bones breaking down faster than they rebuild. The aging process also causes the cushions between our bones to retain less water and deteriorate, which makes the bones settle together. These processes slowly chip away a few millimeters of height at a time, which can eventually add up — on average, men tend to lose an inch of height between 30 and 70 years old, while women can lose up to 2 inches.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Estimated number of genes that impact a person’s height

12,000+

Average number of inches children grow per year after age 2

2.5

Height (in feet) of Robert Wadlow, the world’s tallest man ever

8’11”

Approximate height (in feet) of Afshin Ghaderzadeh, the world’s shortest living man

2’1”

More Interesting Reads

Three eggplants on a cutting board

Eggplants got their name because some were originally white and round.

In World War II, the British had a plan to make aircraft carriers out of ice.

Less time separates humans from Tyrannosaurus rex than separated T. rex from stegosaurus.

Durian fruit is banned on some public transportation.

In the Diomede Islands, you can see from one day into another.

On average, the world’s tallest people are from ______.

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On average, the world’s tallest people are from the Netherlands.

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Astronauts get taller in space.

Most people reach their maximum height by early adulthood — unless they’re astronauts. That’s because scientists who rocket into space for extended periods tend to grow about 3% taller during their time off Earth. In astronaut Scott Kelly’s case, a 340-day trip aboard the International Space Station gave him the souvenir of around 2 additional inches of height. NASA research on astronaut bodies shows that while in space, the spine’s vertebrae decompress and relax, giving space explorers the benefit of added height. However, that increase in stature is temporary; once back on Earth, the planet’s gravitational forces are back in play, causing those extra inches to disappear.

Nicole Garner Meeker

Writer

Nicole Garner Meeker is a writer and editor based in St. Louis. Her history, nature, and food stories have also appeared at Mental Floss and Better Report.

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Not everyone gets to meet their idols. Henry Ford, one of America’s manufacturing giants, did — and was even lucky enough to become friendly with his hero. The automobile creator long looked up to serial inventor Thomas Edison, and in 1891, toward the start of his career, landed a job as a night engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit. Eventually, the two inventors crossed paths at a work party, where Edison supposedly inspired Ford to further pursue his experimental automobiles. Ford had recently created his first prototype, the Ford Quadricycle, and eventually left the company to work on prototypes that became the Model T. But that wasn’t where their relationship ended — Edison and Ford quickly became friends, corresponding regularly, dedicating speeches to one another, and even purchasing neighboring estates in Florida. So it’s no surprise that the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, features artifacts from both inventors, though some are unusual — such as a test tube that supposedly contains Edison’s final breath.

Thomas Edison invented the incandescent light bulb.

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Credit for Edison’s best-known invention is somewhat misplaced; he did make improvements to the incandescent bulb, but he didn’t create it. Inventors tinkered with the bulbs for at least 40 years before Edison received his patent, which added bamboo filaments to help bulbs last longer.

Legend has it that Ford, who had an eccentric bent and was interested in life after death, obtained the vial by asking Edison’s son Charles to capture his friend’s final breath. However, that tale is a bit hyperbolic. Historians believe that the tube was actually given to Ford as a sentimental gesture in honor of his friend. According to a letter written by Charles Edison in 1953, a set of empty test tubes was close to his father’s death bed when the inventor died in 1931. Charles requested that the attending doctor seal the tubes with paraffin wax, potentially capturing his father’s last breaths, and later gifted one to Ford. The test tube at the Henry Ford Museum is not the only one of its kind — Edison’s estate includes a collection of 42 test tubes that supposedly contain the inventor’s final breaths.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Year of Edison’s first patent for an invention, the electric vote recorder

1869

U.S. patents awarded to Thomas Edison

1,093

Year Ford left Edison’s company to launch the Ford Motor Company

1899

Times Henry Ford ran for public office, losing a 1918 race for U.S. Senate

1

More Interesting Reads

Three eggplants on a cutting board

Eggplants got their name because some were originally white and round.

In World War II, the British had a plan to make aircraft carriers out of ice.

Less time separates humans from Tyrannosaurus rex than separated T. rex from stegosaurus.

Durian fruit is banned on some public transportation.

In the Diomede Islands, you can see from one day into another.

Henry Ford once designed a plastic car made from ______.

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Henry Ford once designed a plastic car made from soybeans.

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Thomas Edison and Henry Ford once camped with a president.

If you’ve ever hit the open road with your best friend, you might be more like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison than you know. Together with two other friends — naturalist John Burroughs and tire manufacturer Harvey Firestone — they set out on a series of summer camping trips. Between 1914 and 1924, the group (who called themselves “the Four Vagabonds”) trekked along the eastern coast, camping in the Adirondacks, the Catskill Mountains, and throughout Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, among other places. On one adventure in July 1921, the group (minus Burroughs) invited Warren G. Harding, then-sitting president of the United States, to camp in Maryland, in a spot the crew dubbed “Camp Harding.” However, the adventures of the Four Vagabonds weren’t just for fun; they were part of a media campaign that depicted the businessmen as “roughing it” when in reality they often slept at hotels and had a large staff accompanying them to cook meals.

Nicole Garner Meeker

Writer

Nicole Garner Meeker is a writer and editor based in St. Louis. Her history, nature, and food stories have also appeared at Mental Floss and Better Report.

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To most grocery shoppers, there’s nothing particularly exciting about cauliflower. While the dense and crunchy stalks of this cruciferous plant are great as a side dish or snack, they’re consumed far less than the most popular produce-aisle picks (potatoes, tomatoes, and onions). However, some farmers might say that cauliflower has at least one unique and unexpected property that’s worth your attention: If you listen closely, you can hear it growing.

In the U.S., nearly all cauliflower is grown in one state.

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There’s a good chance that the majority of cauliflower you’ve ever eaten in the U.S. has come from one state: California. The Golden State is a produce powerhouse, and its farmers produce around 90% of the country’s cauliflower supply. (Arizona and Oregon also contribute.)

While most plants are silent, cauliflower is able to eke out a barely audible sound thanks to how quickly it grows. The vegetable can add as much as 1 inch per day under the right growing conditions. That rapid expansion means the florets of the plant’s popcorn-like heads often rub against one another as they grow, creating a noise many farmers call “cauliflower creak.” Some agriculturalists describe the tone as a soft squeak, while others say it’s best described as the faint popping noise made by Rice Krispies cereal when doused in milk. However, there are occasions when cauliflower fields reach a more detectable decibel, like in 2015, when British farmers were graced with optimal weather conditions for their cauliflower harvests. That year, some cauliflower cultivators alerted vegetable enthusiasts to what they believed would be the loudest cauliflower creak in decades.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Water content in a head of cauliflower

92%

Weight (in pounds) of the world’s largest cauliflower, harvested in the U.K.

60.5

Amount (in pounds) of fresh cauliflower eaten per person in the U.S. in 2020

2.61

Pounds of cauliflower harvested in the U.S. in 2020

1.003 billion

More Interesting Reads

Three eggplants on a cutting board

Eggplants got their name because some were originally white and round.

In World War II, the British had a plan to make aircraft carriers out of ice.

Less time separates humans from Tyrannosaurus rex than separated T. rex from stegosaurus.

Durian fruit is banned on some public transportation.

In the Diomede Islands, you can see from one day into another.

The edible head of a cauliflower plant is called a ______.

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The edible head of a cauliflower plant is called a curd.

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Vienna is home to a group of vegetable musicians.

The Austrian city of Vienna is often called the “capital of classical music” — after all, it’s where some of history’s most prominent composers (such as Mozart and Beethoven) spent much of their time. It also happens to be a spot where modern experimental artists, like the Vegetable Orchestra, perform regularly. Founded in 1998 as a joke, the group of nearly a dozen musicians builds its own instruments from fresh produce purchased at nearby markets, fashioning drums from pumpkins, recorders from carrots, and more than 150 other produce contraptions. Each concert requires around 70 pounds of vegetables, which are made into instruments over two to three hours and last only one performance. However, audiences who attend Vegetable Orchestra concerts don’t just hear their veggies; they get a chance to eat them, too, since the band’s produce scraps are crafted into a soup that is served after every performance.

Nicole Garner Meeker

Writer

Nicole Garner Meeker is a writer and editor based in St. Louis. Her history, nature, and food stories have also appeared at Mental Floss and Better Report.

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Umbrellas have been around for a long time — at least 3,000 years, according to T.S. Crawford's A History of the Umbrella — but they were used by only select segments of the population for much of that history. Ancient Egyptians used them to shade their pharaohs, setting the tone for an association with royalty and nobility that would also surface in China, Assyria, India, and other older civilizations. Meanwhile, they were deemed effeminate by ancient Greeks and the Romans who assumed many of their cultural habits. It should be noted that these early umbrellas protected against the sun, not rain, and were generally used by women to shield their complexions. The association between women and umbrellas persisted through much of Europe for centuries, and stubbornly remained into the 18th century, even after the first waterproof umbrellas had been created (around the 17th century in France).

Baltimore was once the umbrella capital of the world.

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The nation’s first umbrella factory opened in Baltimore in 1828. The Beehler Umbrella Factory motto was “Born in Baltimore, Raised Everywhere!” By the 20th century, Baltimore factories made 1.5 million umbrellas annually, and the city was deemed the umbrella capital of the world.

In England, at least, the man credited with ushering in a new age of gender-neutral weather protection was merchant and philanthropist Jonas Hanway. Having spotted the umbrella put to good use during his many travels, Hanway took to carrying one through rainy London in the 1750s, a sight met with open jeering by surprised onlookers. The greatest abuse apparently came from coach drivers, who counted on inclement weather to drive up demand for a dry, comfy ride. But Hanway took the derision in stride. Shortly after his death in 1786, an umbrella advertisement surfaced in the London Gazette, a harbinger of sunnier days to come for the accessory’s reputation as a rain repellant for all.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Umbrellas owned by the average person in Japan, per a 2014 survey

3.3

Diameter (in meters) of the world’s largest umbrella

24.5

Umbrellas sold annually in the United States

33 million

Consecutive weeks Rihanna’s “Umbrella” topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 2007

7

More Interesting Reads

Three eggplants on a cutting board

Eggplants got their name because some were originally white and round.

In World War II, the British had a plan to make aircraft carriers out of ice.

Less time separates humans from Tyrannosaurus rex than separated T. rex from stegosaurus.

Durian fruit is banned on some public transportation.

In the Diomede Islands, you can see from one day into another.

The English word “umbrella” originates from the Latin term “umbra,” meaning “______.”

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The English word “umbrella” originates from the Latin term “umbra,” meaning “shade/shadow.”

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Umbrella champion Jonas Hanway was a pronounced opponent of tea drinking.

You’d expect a man bold enough to navigate the hardscrabble streets of 18th-century London with a dainty umbrella to possess a certain determination to get things done, and indeed, Jonas Hanway was a champion of many causes. He founded the Marine Society to recruit cadets for the navy, served as an executive for the Foundling Hospital children’s home, advocated for the safety of chimney sweepers, and even attempted to convince a nation of tea drinkers that they were doing something profoundly wrong. This last effort came by way of his 1756 work “An Essay on Tea,” which summed up the evils of the seemingly benign refreshment with the subtitle: “Considered as pernicious to health; obstructing industry; and impoverishing the nation.” As with his umbrella crusade, his zealous stance on tea drinking was met with a degree of public mockery, most notably in a response by famed British writer and lexicographer Samuel Johnson in Literary Magazine. But there was no posthumous redemption to be earned in this particular arena, as his countrymen and women went right on indulging themselves with the beverage, and continue to do so to the tune of 100 million cups daily.

Tim Ott

Writer

Tim Ott has written for sites including Biography.com, History.com, and MLB.com, and is known to delude himself into thinking he can craft a marketable screenplay.

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Original photo by Mickey O'neil/ Unsplash

Climate change isn’t just raising the temperature of the world’s oceans — it’s also changing their color. As the oceans absorb the excess heat generated by greenhouse gases, that heat is altering the aquatic life in their waters. Research published in Nature in 2023 shows that the familiar blue hue of the oceans has been steadily transforming over the past 20 years into a greener shade, especially in tropical and subtropical areas of the world.

The world’s largest migration happens in the ocean every single day.

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Every night, trillions of sea creatures called zooplankton travel to the ocean’s surface to feed on photosynthesizing phytoplankton. Although the distance for some organisms is only 1,000 feet, that’s the equivalent of a human swimming 50 miles in an hour.

The color of the ocean is dependent on a variety of factors, but one key is the light absorption of H2O. Water usually readily absorbs longer wavelengths of light — red, yellow, and green — and scatters blue. However, a concentration of marine life can cause emerald waters. The newly green hue detected by the 2023 research likely reflects a change in the ocean’s phytoplankton — the algae responsible for 70% of the world’s oxygen, and which also provides the foundation for the marine food web. Scientists monitored ocean color using NASA’s Aqua satellite, and found marked shifts toward green in about 56% of the world’s oceans between 2002 and 2022. Statistical simulations showed that added greenhouse gases are to blame, although it’s not exactly clear how, since areas that warmed the most at the surface weren’t the ones that turned green the most. Some scientists theorize that the change may have to do with reduced mixing in the layers of ocean water, caused by the heat, which limits the nutrients that rise to the surface and consequently affects the types of plankton that can survive. But don’t go color-correcting your photos just yet: While satellites can detect the change in ocean hue, the change is slight enough that most humans probably wouldn’t notice a difference.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Percentage of the Earth that’s covered by oceans

71%

Maximum ocean depth (in feet), found at the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench

36,201

Estimated number of phytoplankton species in the world’s oceans

20,000

Episode of “The Muppet Show” in which Kermit sings “It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green”

219

More Interesting Reads

Three eggplants on a cutting board

Eggplants got their name because some were originally white and round.

In World War II, the British had a plan to make aircraft carriers out of ice.

Less time separates humans from Tyrannosaurus rex than separated T. rex from stegosaurus.

Durian fruit is banned on some public transportation.

In the Diomede Islands, you can see from one day into another.

The world’s cleanest and clearest large body of water is the U.S.’s ______.

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The world’s cleanest and clearest large body of water is the U.S.’s Crater Lake.

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Human eyes are most sensitive to the color green.

Human eyes can perceive only a small fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum. The visible spectrum, which excludes things like radio waves, X-rays, infrared, ultraviolet, and (very dangerous) gamma rays, stretches from around 380 nanometers (nm) to about 740 nm. Glimpse a rainbow — or recite the elementary school acronym ROYGBIV — and you’ll notice that green lies right in the middle of our visual sweet spot. The color occupies around 520 to 565 nm, and the light sensitivity of the human eye in daytime peaks at about 555 nm, which is a green that’s close to yellow. Because of this advantageous middle-of-the-road placement, the human eye can discern more shades of green than any other color. Since seeing green is also less of a strain on our visual system, the color positively affects our mood — essentially, our nervous system gets to relax. Green’s innate ability to “placate and pacify” is one reason the hue can often be found in places of healing, especially hospitals.

Darren Orf

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Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.

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The circus brought death-defying performers and exotic animals across the American landscape in the 1800s, but it also introduced something a little sweeter: pink lemonade. There are two origin stories for the rose-tinted drink, both involving the big top. One version, revealed in a 1912 obituary, credits the invention to Chicago saloonkeeper, theatrical promoter, gambler, and circus vendor Henry E. Allott. The story goes that after running off to join the circus at age 15, Allott accidentally dropped some red cinnamon candies into a tub of traditional lemonade, only to find that the new mixture was a hit with concession-stand customers.

Pink lemons produce pink-colored juice.

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Named for the color of their flesh, pink lemons yield a clear-colored liquid.

The alternate and more colorful version of the drink’s dawn comes courtesy of an innovative clown named Pete Conklin circa 1857. Fed up with his wages, Conklin renounced the bells and sequins, and instead followed the circus as a lemonade vendor while his former co-workers wound their way through Texas. One hot day, legend has it, Conklin was dismayed to find he had run out of water as his parched customers demanded something to drink. Scouring the lot for replenishment, he dashed into the changing tent of bareback horse rider Fannie Jamieson, who was washing her red tights in a bin of water. Conklin grabbed the bin, its contents colored pink by the garment's aniline dye, and after dumping in the usual sugar and soggy lemon, he unveiled his new “strawberry lemonade” to an appreciative crowd. This story was later confirmed by Conklin’s lion-tamer brother George, and while it may be a tall tale regardless, it’s the type that goes down well when accompanied by a tall glass of our favorite pink beverage.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Tablespoons of juice produced by one medium-sized lemon

2-3

Average salary of a U.S. circus clown in 2023

$55,632

Calories in 8 ounces of Tropicana Pink Lemonade

100

Year the band Closure in Moscow released their album “Pink Lemonade”

2014

More Interesting Reads

Three eggplants on a cutting board

Eggplants got their name because some were originally white and round.

In World War II, the British had a plan to make aircraft carriers out of ice.

Less time separates humans from Tyrannosaurus rex than separated T. rex from stegosaurus.

Durian fruit is banned on some public transportation.

In the Diomede Islands, you can see from one day into another.

The Jewish community of medieval Egypt drank a proto-lemonade of lemon juice and sugar called ______.

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The Jewish community of medieval Egypt drank a proto-lemonade of lemon juice and sugar called qatarmizat.

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Circus peanuts were used to create a famous breakfast cereal.

Circus peanuts likely didn’t originate at the circus, and their murky origins are just one of the many mysteries surrounding the banana-flavored marshmallow treat that ostensibly has something to do with peanuts. Fortunately, there is one thing we know for certain about this holdover from 19th-century penny candy bins. According to General Mills, a product developer named John Holahan decided to mix chopped-up circus peanuts with Cheerios while experimenting with new cereal ideas in the early 1960s. The result was the marshmallow-oat mix that became Lucky Charms, another food product with a name that offers no clue to its content, but nevertheless has endured as a staple of American culture.

Tim Ott

Writer

Tim Ott has written for sites including Biography.com, History.com, and MLB.com, and is known to delude himself into thinking he can craft a marketable screenplay.

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Although not the most glamorous of methods, sweating is a biologically ingenious way to keep cool. Our sweat glands employ energy — in this case, heat — to evaporate water off our skin, which in turn cools us down. Humans, along with some monkeys and all of the great apes, use a similar cooling technique, but sweating isn’t as ubiquitous throughout the animal kingdom as you might expect. For example, pigs don’t sweat — not really, anyway.

Sweat doesn’t smell.

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Sweat itself doesn’t smell — the liquid is made up of lots of water and a little salt. However, sweat glands in our armpits and groin release a type of sweat that is protein-rich, which bacteria then feeds on. The byproduct of this microscopic meal is what actually causes body odor.

Pigs do have some sweat glands, but they’re insufficient to play a significant role in regulating the creatures’ body temperatures. Instead, some of a pig’s internal body temperature is regulated by a thyroid-produced hormone, but the most fast-acting method for keeping cool is simply wallowing in mud. When the mud evaporates, it takes some heat with it, just as when human sweat evaporates. Pigs will also seek shaded areas, lie flat on cool ground, or even pant similarly to dogs. The fact that pigs don’t sweat much has created an idea that eating a pig is unhealthy because they can’t release toxins through sweat — but that’s just a myth.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Types of sweat glands in the human body

3

Pages in Dick King-Smith’s “The Sheep-Pig,” the basis for the 1995 film “Babe”

118

Average lifespan (in years) of a Yorkshire pig

8

Year of Porky Pig’s debut in the animated short “I Haven’t Got a Hat”

1935

More Interesting Reads

Three eggplants on a cutting board

Eggplants got their name because some were originally white and round.

In World War II, the British had a plan to make aircraft carriers out of ice.

Less time separates humans from Tyrannosaurus rex than separated T. rex from stegosaurus.

Durian fruit is banned on some public transportation.

In the Diomede Islands, you can see from one day into another.

Hibernating during the summer to keep cool is called ______.

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Hibernating during the summer to keep cool is called estivation.

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The phrase “sweating like a pig” comes from iron — not the animal.

During the traditional iron smelting process, hot iron was poured into molds lined with sand and arranged with one runner feeding into many rows. The molds were said to resemble a row of piglets suckling a sow, which is how crude iron became known by its common name, “pig iron.” The phrase “sweating like a pig” comes from the fact that as the iron cools, water vapor condenses on its surface — a signal that it’s now safe to handle. Although this phrase is likely a 19th-century European invention, the Chinese first used pig iron thousands of years ago, and it’s still used today as a raw material for iron steelmaking.

Darren Orf

Writer

Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.

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You may wonder how a long, purple fruit came to be called an eggplant. It all has to do with a specific popular variety from the 18th century known for its egglike color and circular shape. Eggplants were domesticated in the Indo-Burma region as early as 300 BCE and were called vatingana — a Sanskrit word derived from vani, meaning “wind.” During the British occupation of India, English horticulturist John Abercrombie took note of a particularly common local cultivar that looked white and spherical, much like a typical bird’s egg. In 1767, he wrote about this “egg-plant” in the book Every Man His Own Gardener, denoting the first use of the term in English literature.

New Jersey harvests more eggplants than any other U.S. state.

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While China is the biggest global exporter of eggplants, New Jersey harvests the most of any U.S. state. According to a 2019 report by New Jersey’s Department of Agriculture, the state harvests an annual average of 849 acres of eggplant, ahead of California’s average of 705 acres each year.

While these white, circular eggplants have since fallen out of fashion, similar varieties including the Easter eggplant are still grown. But in general, the most widely grown type of eggplant is known for its dark purple color and elongated shape. It wasn’t until the early 19th century that a shift to this variety took place in the United States, when new eggplant seeds were brought over by immigrants from various parts of Asia. In time, those colorful eggplant varieties came to displace the once-standard pale, ovate type.

Despite the fruit’s change in appearance, the original nomenclature stuck in the United States and Canada. However, other areas have coined names of their own. In the United Kingdom, the fruit is known as an aubergine (a French loanword). A brightly colored variant is referred to as a garden egg throughout parts of Africa and the Caribbean. And around the 16th century in Europe, eggplants were also briefly called mad apples, a name inspired by the fact that they’re members of the nightshade family and thus were once believed to be poisonous if eaten.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Days it takes for an eggplant to fully mature

~100

Percentage of an eggplant that’s made up of water

95%

Weight (in pounds) of the heaviest recorded eggplant

8.33

Tons of eggplant produced by China in 2022

38,318,525

More Interesting Reads

In World War II, the British had a plan to make aircraft carriers out of ice.

Less time separates humans from Tyrannosaurus rex than separated T. rex from stegosaurus.

Durian fruit is banned on some public transportation.

In the Diomede Islands, you can see from one day into another.

Humans are the only animals with true chins.

Eggplants contain trace amounts of ______.

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Eggplants contain trace amounts of nicotine.

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The Caesar salad wasn’t named after Julius Caesar.

It’s a common misconception that the Caesar salad was named after Roman statesman Julius Caesar. In reality, it was named for Italian American restaurateur Caesar Cardini. After Prohibition became law in the United States in 1920, the California-based Cardini decided to open a new restaurant across the border in Tijuana, Mexico, so he could legally serve alcohol. But it wasn’t the booze that kept people coming back — it was the salad he became known for. While the exact origin of the dish is debated, there are some theories. According to his daughter, Rosa, the salad was improvised on a busy Fourth of July weekend when the restaurant ran out of various ingredients. The one thing we know for sure is that Cardini claimed credit for the recipe, and in 1938, he moved back to Los Angeles and opened a shop to sell bottles of his beloved namesake salad dressing.

Bennett Kleinman

Staff Writer

Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Inbox Studio, and previously contributed to television programs such as "Late Show With David Letterman" and "Impractical Jokers." Bennett is also a devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.

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Original photo by KeithSzafranski/ iStock

It was 1942, and among many other challenges, wartime Great Britain had a big problem: Nazi U-boats. These German submarines destroyed U.K.-bound merchant ships laden with much-needed food and supplies, and the attacks became so frequent that from March to September of that year they sank close to 100 merchant ships a month. Airplanes at the time couldn’t fly far enough from land-based airstrips to protect these ships in the ocean, and this aviation limitation left a 300-mile lane of unprotected waters known as “the mid-Atlantic gap.” Britain’s legendary prime minister, Winston Churchill, was desperate to close this gap by any means necessary, and dreamed of building floating islands where planes could refuel. Unfortunately, aircraft carriers were few and far between, and steel was hard to come by during the war effort because it was needed for weapons, tanks, ships, and more.

It takes more than 20 years for some modern aircraft carriers to run out of fuel.

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It's a fact

In the decades following WWII, aircraft carriers increased in size and complexity. Today, a modern aircraft carrier uses nuclear power for fuel, an energy source so dense that these massive ships — some weighing 97,000 tons — don’t need refueling for more than 20 years.

One day, a potential solution arrived when Lord Louis Mountbatten, the head of Britain’s Combined Operations Command (and beloved uncle of the future Prince Philip), presented Churchill with a strange chunk of ice. This wasn’t any normal piece of ice, however: It was pykrete (named after its creator, Geoffrey Pyke), which was a type of ice reinforced with wood pulp. The result was a material that melted very slowly. For Churchill, a vision of a fleet of aircraft carriers made from pykrete came into focus. The proposed pykrete ship would’ve been the biggest “ship” ever constructed, displacing 26 times more water than the largest ship at the time and requiring 26 electric motors for propulsion. A 60-foot-long prototype was soon constructed in Alberta, Canada, that weighed as much as five blue whales. But by 1943, things had changed. Escort carriers had arrived in the Atlantic and long-range aircraft such as the B-24 Liberator had closed the gap for good. Despite pykrete’s amazing ability to hold its shape, the dream of an iceberg aircraft carrier soon melted away.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Wingspan (in feet) of the Spruce Goose, a successful attempt to build a WWII plane without steel

320

Size (in square miles) of the world’s current largest iceberg

1,180

Height (in stories) of the proposed WWII iceberg ship’s rudder

15

Approximate percentage of an iceberg that’s below the water’s surface

90%

More Interesting Reads

Three eggplants on a cutting board

Eggplants got their name because some were originally white and round.

Less time separates humans from Tyrannosaurus rex than separated T. rex from stegosaurus.

Durian fruit is banned on some public transportation.

In the Diomede Islands, you can see from one day into another.

Humans are the only animals with true chins.

When an iceberg breaks off from a glacier, it’s called ______.

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When an iceberg breaks off from a glacier, it’s called calving.

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Some scientists think the moon might be partly responsible for the Titanic’s demise.

On January 4, 1912, a celestial event occurred that hadn’t happened for more than a thousand years. The moon made its closest approach to Earth in the last 1,400 years while it was almost full, only a day after the Earth made its own annual close approach to the sun. According to Texas State University scientists, this one-of-a kind cocktail of astronomical activities created an exceptionally high tide. Their theory posits that this tide allowed some icebergs that would usually get stuck on their journey south from Greenland to be refloated, pushed into southbound currents, and put in the path of unsuspecting ships crossing the Atlantic. One such ship was the Titanic, which famously — and tragically — struck an iceberg that April.

Darren Orf

Writer

Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.

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