Much like the durable gems it refers to, the advertising slogan “A Diamond Is Forever” has endured the test of time. The line was first penned in 1947 and cemented a connection between diamond rings and romance, though it was, ironically, conceived of by a woman who never married, opting instead to prioritize her career and spend time with her dogs. 

Mary Frances Gerety was a copywriter at the N.W. Ayer & Son advertising agency, where she was assigned to De Beers, a company that controlled the global supply of rough diamonds. At the time, diamonds weren’t as widely associated with love as they are today — before World War II, only an estimated 10% of proposals featured a diamond engagement ring. Many women tended to prefer more practical engagement gifts, such as a car or washing machine. It was up to Gerety to change that perception by convincing couples that diamond rings weren’t just a luxury, but an essential part of a marriage proposal.

Elizabeth Taylor was married eight times.

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Elizabeth Taylor was married eight times to seven different people. Her most widely discussed relationship was with actor Richard Burton, whom she met while filming the 1963 epic “Cleopatra.” The pair married in 1964, divorced in 1974, remarried in 1975, and divorced once more in 1976.

While working late on an ad campaign for the company, Gerety realized she’d forgotten to come up with a memorable slogan. According to The New York Times, Gerety later recalled, “Dear God, send me a line,” and jotted down the now-iconic phrase before heading to bed. When she awoke the next morning, she thought the slogan was passable but nothing special. But those four simple words, “A Diamond Is Forever,” proved to be hugely successful. U.S. diamond sales skyrocketed from $23 million in 1939 to an astounding $2.1 billion by 1979. Gerety’s creation was later named the top slogan of the 20th century by Ad Age.

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Although the 1848 California gold rush was the largest in American history, it wasn’t the first. That distinction belongs in the state of North Carolina, where in 1799, Conrad Reed, the 12-year-old son of a Hessian Revolutionary War deserter named John Reed, found a 17-pound gold nugget in Little Meadow Creek outside Charlotte. At first — not knowing what his son had stumbled across — the elder Reed used the rock as a doorstop for his home’s front door. It wasn’t until 1802, when he took the rock to a local jeweler, that he began to grasp the enormity of his son’s discovery (although he sold the nugget for far less than it was actually worth). 

The Carolinas are named after an English queen.

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The Carolinas are named after two kings, the English monarchs Charles I and II. “Carolus” is the Latin word for Charles.

By 1803, Reed had established the first gold mining operation in the U.S. As local papers reported on his business, nearby farmers began hunting for gold on their own properties by searching shallow riverbeds, a practice known as “placer mining.” When these shallow-lying deposits dried up in the 1820s, companies ditched the gold pans and began excavating lode mines, which required many more workers. Until 1828, North Carolina was the only gold-producing state in the Union, and its gold rush reached its peak in the 1830s and 1840s, when the industry employed nearly 30,000 people. The state’s gold-hued fortunes changed once the first reports of wealth out West arrived in the Carolinas, but Reed never saw the end of his state’s gold-rush boom time, dying a rich man in 1845 with his mine raking in millions.

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If you think the crowds at Manhattan's Rockefeller Center get crazy during the holidays, imagine the majority of the city's population packing the streets with beds and other personal belongings on a single day of the year. That's how it was for the better part of two centuries for New Yorkers, thanks to a colonial-era tradition that may have stemmed from the English celebration of May Day, or at least traditions brought over by European settlers. Of course, the mood among residents was typically more frenzied than celebratory by the time leases expired May 1; an 1855 New York Times article described the scene as "Everybody in a hurry, smashing mirrors in his haste … and many a good piece of furniture badly bruised in consequence." (The chaos stemmed in part from the fact that landlords had to notify tenants of rent increases on February 1, which were set to take effect three months later; everyone who didn’t agree with the new prices had to be out by 9 a.m. May 1.) It was a harrowing experience for all but the cartmen who jacked up their fees for the day, prompting the city to finally regulate rates for movers in 1890.

New York City rents were the highest of any U.S. city by the end of 2022.

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Although San Francisco has claimed this distinction in previous years, and other locales such as Miami and Boston have seen dramatic rent hikes recently, the Big Apple outdid the competition with a median rent of $3,738 in December 2022.

By the early 20th century, May 1 had given way to October 1 as New York's moving day, with the tumultuous proceedings settling into more of "an exact science." However, the annual moving day custom in NYC soon went the way of the horse and buggy, due to a few factors. World War II drew most of the able-bodied movers into service, and a postwar housing shortage, along with the subsequent establishment of rent-control laws and other housing regulations, reduced the number of the city's moves in general. These days, while moving in New York is certainly still stressful, at least most of the city isn't doing it at once.

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Though they’re now commonly found on everything from jackets to couch cushions, zippers were actually originally intended for shoes. The history of this versatile mechanism can be traced to 1893, when inventor Whitcomb Judson was granted a patent for a rudimentary zipper that he called the “clasp-locker,” an alternative to lengthy shoelaces. The patent described it as “a series of clasps securable to the flaps of the shoes” which automatically engaged or disengaged with a movable hand device. Judson displayed his creation at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, though it was met with minimal interest. Despite several refinements to the product, this zipper ultimately never caught on due to its sharp hooks and the resulting frequency of torn fabric.

The first high-heeled shoes were worn by soldiers.

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High heels were originally worn by 10th-century Persian cavalry, who used them to stabilize their feet in stirrups while riding horseback. They later popped up in Europe, where aristocrats viewed them as a sign of virility. In 1670, France’s King Louis XIV decreed that only nobility could wear them.

Swedish inventor Gideon Sundback later improved upon Judson’s design, creating a more reliable version with two rows of metal teeth pulled together by a slider. These hookless fasteners were designed to be used on “shoes, corsets, and other articles of wear,” according to the 1917 patent. The invention caught the eye of New York City tailor Robert Ewig, who sewed them onto money belts. These belts were rather popular among U.S. sailors, whose uniforms lacked pockets, and in 1918, the Navy bought 10,000 fasteners to incorporate into flight suits. In 1923, the BFGoodrich Company added Sundback’s fasteners to rubber boots and coined the word “zipper,” an onomatopoeia based on the sound they made.

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