Before the bicycle, the average distance between the birthplaces of spouses in England was 1 mile.

If you think meeting new people nowadays is difficult, imagine doing it without a phone, a car, or even a bike. This was the case for much of human history, of course, and it had such a profound effect on social interactions that the average distance between the birthplaces of spouses in England was just 1 mile prior to the invention of bicycles. Those calculations come from Yale’s Stephen Stearns, a professor of evolutionary biology, who studied parish registries of birth, marriage, and death. He found that most couples weren’t just from the same village — they were often from neighboring farms.

Bicycles have always been known as bicycles.

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Karl von Drais’ original invention was known as a Laufmaschine (“running machine”), and early bikes were also known as velocipedes and dandy horses.

The bicycle was invented in 1817, which geneticist Steve Jones called “the most important event in recent human evolution” in his book The Language of the Genes. In addition to increasing genetic diversity by making it easier for couples who lived farther away from each other to meet and reproduce, bicycles were also intrinsically linked to women’s rights because they allowed women greater autonomy in the early 20th century. No less an authority than Susan B. Anthony proclaimed in an 1896 interview with journalist Nellie Bly that bicycling “has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel.”

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