Facts Archive - Page 5 of 78 - Interesting Facts

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The human body has 206 bones — unless you’re talking about babies, in which case the number is closer to 300. Many of a newborn’s bones are actually made of cartilage, which is much more malleable and allows fetuses to curl inside the womb as they develop. As children grow, cartilage turns into bone in a process called ossification, and the excess bones fuse together. (If you’ve ever wondered how those “soft spots” on an infant’s head — technically known as fontanelles — become stronger, bone fusion is the answer.) This is also a big part of why calcium is so important for babies: New bone tissue can’t grow without it.

Newborns don’t cry tears.

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For the first weeks of their life, babies don’t technically cry. They may make a lot of noise when expressing their displeasure, but because tear ducts don’t fully form for a month or so, their eyes will remain dry while they do so.

Ossification doesn’t happen overnight, however — it continues until a person reaches their mid-20s, which is around when humans reach their peak bone mass. In much the same way that we’re constantly shedding our skin, our bones are constantly changing as well, with old bone gradually destroyed and new bone material formed. The process is called remodeling, and it helps keep the skeletal system healthy long after we’ve settled down at 206 bones.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Babies born worldwide every minute

250

Bones in the human foot

26

Most babies born to a mother at once

9

Pounds of compressive force the adult male femur can support

6,000

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You can hear cauliflower growing.

Umbrellas were once used only by women.

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Pink lemonade was invented at the circus.

Pigs don’t really sweat.

The smallest bone in the human body is the ______.

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The smallest bone in the human body is the stapes.

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Humans and giraffes have the same number of neck bones.

Despite having the longest necks in the animal kingdom — they can reach a length of 8 feet, twice as long as the neck of any other creature — giraffes have the same number of cervical vertebrae as humans: seven. The key difference is that giraffes’ vertebrae are much longer, with each of them measuring close to 10 inches in length; in humans, the entire vertebral column is around 28 inches for men and 24 inches for women. We have the same number of neck bones as our tall, spotted friends for the simple reason that we’re both mammals — sloths and manatees are the only members of this particular class that don’t have seven.

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Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.

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Some love it and some hate it, but few know what causes it. “New car smell” is a familiar scent to anyone who’s ever sat in a car fresh from the lot, and many consider it an olfactory perk of the car-shopping experience. This distinctive aroma is caused by a chemical process known as off-gassing, which is just what it sounds like: chemicals being released into the air from all that leather, plastic, and various other interior materials. Many of these are volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as formaldehyde and benzene, which release a potent scent.

Dogs have the strongest sense of smell of any animal.

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Per a 2014 study, elephants put their noses — the largest in the world — to better use than any other creature on Earth. They have 2,000 genes coded for nasal receptor proteins, as many as rats (1,200) and dogs (800) combined.

If that sounds mildly unsettling, some researchers agree — VOCs can potentially cause eye or nose irritation, though the chemicals likely aren’t released in volumes high enough to do much more than that. Anyone who’d prefer to err on the safe side — or who simply has an aversion to the smell — can accelerate the off-gassing process by rolling down their windows or ensuring their air conditioner is sourcing air from outside the car. Those who’d rather immerse themselves in the aroma long after their car is new, meanwhile, can always invest in air fresheners meant to emulate the scent.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Individual parts in a new car

30,000+

Motor vehicles produced globally in 2023

93.5 million

Average cost of a new car in January 2024

$47,401

Top speed (in mph) of the Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut, the world’s fastest car

330

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The word “car” comes from “karros,” a Gaulish word meaning “______.”

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The word “car” comes from “karros,” a Gaulish word meaning “two-wheeled Celtic war chariot.”

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A man once put 3 million miles on a single car.

If you get an exceptionally well-made car and maintain it to the best of your abilities, there’s a decent chance of getting up to 250,000 miles on it. While that might sound like a lot, it nonetheless pales in comparison to the world record: 3,250,257 miles, which an American man named Irv Gordon put on his Volvo P1800 over the course of 52 years. For those crunching the numbers, that averages out to a whopping 60,000 miles per year for more than half a century. Gordon bought the vehicle in 1966 on a Friday, and by the end of the weekend he’d already racked up 1,500 miles. Contributing factors to these impressive numbers included Gordon’s 125-mile daily commute to the Long Island middle school where he taught, his love of spending time behind the wheel, and his unfailing dedication to the vehicle’s upkeep.

Michael Nordine

Staff Writer

Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.

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Interesting Facts

Cats certainly aren’t unknown in the world of physics. Isaac Newton had a cat named Spithead (and supposedly created a cat door for him), while Albert Einstein once said that only two things provided refuge from the misery of life: “music and cats.” Of course, the most famous example is Schrödinger’s cat, a thought experiment devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger to explain the complexity of quantum superposition. But none of these cats, whether real or allegorical, has ever written an influential physics paper. That distinction belongs solely to F.D.C. Willard, a Siamese cat otherwise known as Chester.

The CIA tried using cyborg cats as spies in the 1960s.

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As part of Operation Acoustic Kitty, the CIA implanted a microphone and a radio transmitter inside a cat to spy on Cold War adversaries. But the project quickly hit a dead end, with a now-unclassified document stating the obvious problem: “Cats are not especially trainable.”

While it’s fun to imagine Jack H. Hetherington — the paper’s very human author — working alongside his cat to explore atomic behaviors at different temperatures, the reason for the feline’s inclusion was actually a matter of pronouns. Before submitting his paper for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters back in 1975, Hetherington noticed that he’d used the royal “we” throughout his work, and a colleague informed him that the journal used such verbiage only when a paper had multiple authors. Unwilling to go back and change the entire paper (these were typewriter days after all), Hetherington instead invited Chester, under the more official-sounding pseudonym F.D.C. Willard, to be his collaborator. Hetherington’s deception was baked right into the name: Felis Domesticus Chester Willard (Felis domesticus being the genus and species of the common house cat, and Willard being Chester’s father’s name). According to Hetherington, the journal’s editors didn’t find the feline contribution especially amusing, but time heals all wounds. In 1980, Willard even went on to become the sole “author” of a scientific paper in French. And in 2014, Physical Review Letters granted free access to all cat-written physics papers as an April Fools’ Day joke.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Animals (including one cat named Simon) who’ve received Britain’s Dickin Medal for wartime animals

75

Estimated households in the U.S. that have a feline family member

43.1 million

Year Erwin Schrödinger devised the thought experiment Schrödinger’s cat

1935

Ship sinkings a cat nicknamed “Unsinkable Sam” survived during World War II

3

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The Norse goddess of fertility ______ rode in a chariot pulled by two tomcats.

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The Norse goddess of fertility Freyja rode in a chariot pulled by two tomcats.

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In 1963, France sent the world’s first (and still only) cat to space.

On October 18, 1963, a Parisian stray cat named Félicette began her spacefaring journey aboard a French rocket launched from the Sahara Desert. The black-and-white cat was chosen from a crew of 14 cats trained for the mission, and she quickly traveled from the surface nearly 100 miles skyward, far beyond the Kármán line that separates Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. After becoming the first cat to escape the gravitational embrace of Earth, Félicette parachuted back to the planet’s surface. There, she was recovered by helicopter (still very much alive); the entire trip lasted only 15 minutes. Today, few people know about Félicette’s epic journey, as it’s often overshadowed by the 1957 flight of the Soviet space dog Laika. To commemorate the one and only astrocat’s achievements, a 2017 Kickstarter campaign raised £43,323 to create a memorial to Félicette. Today, the bronze statue — featuring Félicette perched atop the globe — resides at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France.

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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Sunlight tends to be good for us. It helps our bodies create vitamin D and mood-lifting serotonin, and even syncs our circadian rhythms. However, some people experience an unexpected side effect after glancing into the sun: sneezing. As many as one in four people have the reaction, appropriately called ACHOO syndrome (short for autosomal dominant compelling helio-ophthalmic outburst). The sun isn’t the only thing to blame — the reaction can occur when moving from dark to light settings, after seeing bright lights, or even from witnessing a camera flash.

It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

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Keeping your eyes open during a sneeze might feel uncomfortable — and difficult — but it can be done. However, some doctors suspect there’s a good reason our bodies reflexively close our eyelids: Doing so helps protect your eyes from the irritants being expelled from your nose.

ACHOO syndrome — also called “photic sneeze reflex” or “sun sneezing” — isn’t an allergy. While researchers aren’t entirely sure why it happens, one theory is that it’s caused by a nervous system misfire involving the trigeminal nerve, which connects the eyes and nose with the brain. Within seconds of seeing bright light, the pupils of the eyes contract and stimulate this nerve, possibly causing the nose to accidentally sneeze. People who experience ACHOO syndrome may get a runny nose and watery eyes, too, though these symptoms tend to disappear within a few minutes. Sun sneezing also has a genetic component; children of parents who have the photic sneeze reflex have a 50% chance of experiencing the same phenomenon.

Some people diagnosed with ACHOO syndrome also reflexively sneeze when undergoing anesthesia, though for the most part the condition is more of an annoyance than a health concern. While there’s no treatment for sun sneezing, it is possible to reduce occurrences of the involuntary reaction with a few handy accessories, like hats and sunglasses, which block sudden bursts of light.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Estimated number of times the average person sneezes a day

4

Max speed (in mph) of a sneeze

100

Record (in days) for the world’s longest sneezing fit, held by a British woman

976

Number of droplets that leave your nose when sneezing

100,000

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“______” is the medical term for sneezing.

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“Sternutation” is the medical term for sneezing.

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Marine iguanas sneeze salt.

Humans aren’t the only beings on Earth that sneeze — elephants, whales, and even fish do it, too. Marine iguanas, however, may be one of the only animals whose sneeze particles are mostly made up of salt. Found in the Galapagos Islands, they are the only kind of lizard that can survive in aquatic conditions, swimming in the ocean and feasting on algae. To thrive in their salty habitat, which would prove fatal to other lizards, marine iguanas are able to filter the excess salt from their blood, then excrete it via forceful snorts and sneezes.

Nicole Garner Meeker

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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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State seals are often crimped or stamped on legal documents, lending them authenticity and formality. Yet these small symbols have another role, as miniature visual histories specific to each state. In some cases, they also represent a state’s hopes for the future. At least that’s how artist Emma Edwards Green viewed the seal she created for Idaho in 1891 — which just so happens to be the only state seal designed by a woman.

Idaho became the 43rd state on July 3, 1890, formed from a territory that had once included land in present-day Montana and Wyoming. Upon statehood, Idaho legislators looked to commission the state seal’s design by way of a competition, with a generous $100 prize (about $3,300 today) for the winning artist. Green, an art teacher who had relocated to Boise after attending school in New York, was in part inspired by the fact that it seemed Idaho would soon give women the right to vote. In March 1891, Green’s work was selected as the winner, beating out submissions from around the country.

Idaho was the first state to use a slogan on its license plates.

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In 1928, the Western state embossed “Idaho Potatoes” on its plates, a reference to its spud farms, which produce nearly one-third of the country’s crop. (The motto later became “Famous Potatoes.”) Many other states have since followed the trend for slogans and mottos on plates.

The final design, which is also featured on Idaho’s flag, is packed with symbolism. Worked into the design are cornucopias and wheat to represent Idaho’s agriculture, a tree meant to be reminiscent of the state’s vast timberlands, and a pick and shovel held by a miner. Green’s most forward-thinking detail, however, is an image of a man and woman standing at equal heights in the seal’s center, a symbol of gender equality that would eventually come with voting rights for all. True to their word, Idaho legislators passed women’s suffrage in 1896 — five years after Green’s seal became the state’s official symbol — making Idaho the fourth state to enfranchise women, more than 20 years before the 19th Amendment gave the same right to women nationwide.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Year Emma Edwards Green was born

1856

Idaho’s population, according to the 2020 Census

1.83 million

Pounds of potatoes harvested in Idaho each year

13 billion

Types of precious and semiprecious gemstones found in Idaho

72

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Idaho’s official nickname is “______.”

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Idaho’s official nickname is “the Gem State.”

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Some of Idaho’s ancient volcanoes could once again become active.

South-central Idaho is home to Craters of the Moon National Monument, a 750,000-acre preserve at the foot of the Pioneer Mountains. Established in 1924 by President Calvin Coolidge, the park has rugged lava fields resembling the moon’s pitted surface, likely created 2,000 to 15,000 years ago from a series of volcanic eruptions. Surprisingly, the site’s more than 25 cinder cone volcanoes are considered dormant — not extinct — despite 2,000 years passing since their last activity. That’s because volcanologists believe they erupt on a 3,000-year cycle. In fact, the USGS believes it’s possible another eruption will happen in the next 1,000 years. However, Craters of the Moon is graded as a “low threat” volcanic site, since cinder cone volcanoes are the smallest kind (no more than 1,200 feet tall), with only moderately explosive eruptions lasting less than a year.

Nicole Garner Meeker

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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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You wouldn’t think of the filmmaker responsible for Psycho, The Birds, and Vertigo as having any phobias, let alone one as rare as ovaphobia. And yet the Master of Suspense once admitted on the record that he was “worse than frightened” of eggs, which he said revolted him — so much so, in fact, he refused to ever taste egg yolk, which he found particularly repulsive. “Have you ever seen anything more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its yellow liquid?” he asked in one interview. (Anyone who’s seen such lesser-known Hitchcock works as Frenzy and Family Plot might say yes, but the point stands.)

Hitchcock never won a competitive Academy Award.

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Despite receiving five Best Director nominations — for “Rebecca,” “Lifeboat,” “Spellbound,” “Rear Window,” and “Psycho” — Hitchcock left each ceremony empty-handed. To make up for it, the Academy presented him with the honorary Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1968.

The breakfast staple wasn’t the filmmaker’s only fear. As fate would have it, Hitchcock was as afraid of his own films as most of his viewers were. “I’m frightened of my own movies,” he said in a 1963 interview. “I never go to see them. I don’t know how people can bear to watch my movies.” So if you’ve yet to muster the courage to watch Psycho, take solace in the fact that Hitchcock himself would understand your reluctance.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Feature films Hitchcock is traditionally credited with directing

53

Cameos made by the director in his own movies

39

Eggs produced in America in 2025

105 billion

Words in Hitchcock’s acceptance speech for his honorary Oscar (“Thank you … very much indeed.”)

5

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Hitchcock made four films each with lead actors ______.

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Hitchcock made four films each with lead actors Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart.

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Alfred Hitchcock popularized the MacGuffin.

You might not know them by name, but you’re almost certainly familiar with MacGuffins, a term likely coined by British screenwriter Angus MacPhail. Think of the glowing suitcase in Pulp Fiction, the eponymous statue in The Maltese Falcon, or even the Dude’s rug in The Big Lebowski — if a physical object kick-starts a movie’s narrative but doesn’t serve any true purpose in and of itself, it’s a MacGuffin. Hitchcock made frequent use of MacGuffins, in everything from The 39 Steps to North by Northwest, and held a unique view of them; namely, that the best MacGuffins are those that end up being utterly useless. “The main thing I’ve learned over the years is that the MacGuffin is nothing,” he said to fellow auteur François Truffaut in 1962. “I’m convinced of this, but I find it very difficult to prove it to others.”

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Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.

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Lady Liberty has pushed her torch high into the New York City skyline since 1886, but at one time, the grand statue did more than just inspire Americans — it was also a lighthouse. The same year French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi oversaw completion of his copper creation (formally named “Liberty Enlightening the World”), President Grover Cleveland approved a plan for the statue to be lit as a lighthouse. Engineers believed the Statue of Liberty’s torch, at 305 feet above sea level, could act as a navigational tool for ships approaching the New York Harbor, and thus set to work installing nine electric lamps within the torch, plus more along Lady Liberty’s feet and in the statue’s interior.

The Statue of Liberty’s design was once patented.

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French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi was issued a U.S. patent for his Statue of Liberty design in 1879, seven years before the statue was completed. The design patent protected Bartholdi from replicas of all sizes (including miniature versions), but lasted only 14 years.

At 7:35 p.m. on November 1, 1886, engineers flipped on the power switch, washing the Statue of Liberty in light for the first time. However, the lights stayed on for just one week due to a lack of funding, and it took two weeks of darkness before the U.S. Lighthouse Board could secure an emergency budget. Even once the lights were turned back on, some questioned the statue’s efficacy as a lighthouse: Newspapers reported that while the lights were initially planned to reach 100 miles or more out at sea, in reality the torch was visible just 24 miles from the harbor. By the early 20th century, the lighthouse was considered “useless” for boat navigation, and on March 1, 1902, the U.S. War Department, with approval from President Theodore Roosevelt, extinguished the light permanently.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Pounds of copper used to create the Statue of Liberty

62,000

Visitors to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in 2023

3.7 million

Stairs visitors climb to reach the Statue of Liberty’s crown from the main lobby

377

Crates used to pack the Statue of Liberty in 1885 when it was shipped from France

214

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The island on which the Statue of Liberty stands was originally called ______.

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The island on which the Statue of Liberty stands was originally called Bedloe’s Island.

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Lady Liberty’s original torch was destroyed in an explosion.

Despite being nearly 140 years old, most of the Statue of Liberty’s copper frame is original. However, one portion, the torch, was replaced in the 1980s due to extensive damage caused by an explosion. In 1916, amid World War I, German saboteurs attempted to stop the U.S. from supplying Britain with ammunition, stores of which were held on Black Tom Island, not far from Lady Liberty in the New York Harbor. The saboteurs set the stockpile ablaze, resulting in an enormous explosion equivalent to a 5.5 magnitude earthquake, which was felt as far as Philadelphia. The Statue of Liberty took more than $100,000 (about $2.8 million today) in damage from shrapnel, including structural mangling of the torch that led to its permanent closure (it was once open to visitors). In 1984, Lady Liberty underwent a multiyear restoration that included replacing the severely damaged torch, and today sightseers can see the original up close on ground-level at the Statue of Liberty Museum on Liberty Island.

Nicole Garner Meeker

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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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Many farewells have religious connections. Adios in Spanish and adieu in French mean “to God,” for example. The go-to parting phrase in English, “goodbye,” looks rather secular by comparison — it just means to part on good terms, right? Not quite. “Goodbye” is actually a contraction of the phrase “God be with ye.” It started popping up around the 1570s (spelled “godbwye”). The “God” part of “goodbye” likely gained an extra “o” over time to be consistent with other common English salutations, such as “good morning” and “good night.”

We don’t know where the English phrase “so long” comes from.

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“So long” might be a take on the Irish goodbye “slán,” or maybe German’s “adieu so lange.” Hebrew’s “shalom” also could be a possible candidate, as could Arabic’s “salaam.” Unfortunately, little evidence exists of the phrase’s adoption into English, so the mystery remains.

It might make sense to think that the word “good,” styled “gōd” in Old English, comes from some etymologically divine background. Yet despite their seeming similarities, “good” and “God” developed separately from one another. “Gōd” in Old English simply means “excellent; fine; valuable, etc.,” whereas the origin of “God” to refer to an all-knowing deity is harder to pin down. In its Germanic past, the word was actually plural (“gods”) and neuter (meaning not masculine or feminine), which reflected the polytheism common throughout Europe before the rise of Christianity. Once Europe embraced a more monotheistic existence, the word “God” transformed into a singular, masculine noun. This polytheistic history can be seen in other languages, too. Remember adios and adieu? Both come from the Latin root deus, a derivation of Greek mythology’s mightiest deity — Zeus.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Century (CE) that the word “farewell,” one of the oldest goodbyes in English, is first recorded

14th

Year the texting abbreviation “TTYL” (talk to you later) entered the Oxford English Dictionary

2016

Number of von Trapp children who sing “So Long, Farewell” in the 1965 musical “The Sound of Music”

7

Release year of “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” featuring the famous catchphrase “Hasta la vista, baby”

1991

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Alexander Graham Bell wanted people to say “______” when answering the phone.

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Alexander Graham Bell wanted people to say “ahoy” when answering the phone.

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The phrase “God bless you” is connected to a papal decree issued in 600 CE.

When someone sneezes, it’s common to say “bless you.” It turns out, that’s just what Gregory I, a sixth-century pope, would’ve wanted. Although evidence of blessing a sneeze dates back to the Romans, the sneeze itself was often seen as a sign of health. That changed during Gregory’s time, when Europe was beset with disease. In fact, a plague had claimed the life of Gregory’s predecessor, Pope Pelagius II, in 590 CE. Although Gregory I ruled in a time that predated the discovery of bacteria by about 1,000 years, he believed sneezing was a sign of disease. So on February 16, 600 CE, he issued a papal edict declaring that “God bless you” was the correct response if any Christian was within earshot of a sneeze. The phrase has hung around ever since.

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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Ruth Wakefield was no cookie-cutter baker. In fact, she is widely credited with developing the world’s first recipe for chocolate chip cookies. In 1937, Wakefield and her husband, Kenneth, owned the popular Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts. While mulling new desserts to serve at the inn’s restaurant, she decided to make a batch of butter drop-do cookies (a thin butterscotch treat) with an alteration, using semisweet chocolate instead of baker’s chocolate. Rather than melting in the baker’s chocolate, she used an ice pick to cut the semisweet chocolate into tiny pieces. Upon removing the cookies from the oven, Wakefield found that the semisweet chocolate had held its shape much better than baker’s chocolate, which tended to spread throughout the dough during baking to create a chocolate-flavored cookie. These cookies, instead, had sweet little nuggets of chocolate studded throughout. The recipe for the treats — known as Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies — was included in a late 1930s edition of her cookbook, Ruth Wakefield’s Tried and True Recipes.

German chocolate cake was actually created in Texas.

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Baker’s Chocolate employee Sam German created a baking chocolate — Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate — for the company in 1852. More than a century later, Mrs. George Clay of Dallas used his chocolate when she submitted the first German chocolate cake recipe to her local newspaper.

The cookies were a huge success, and Nestlé hired Wakefield as a recipe consultant in 1939, the same year they bought the rights to print her recipe on packages of their semisweet chocolate bars. To help customers create their own bits of chocolate, the bars came prescored in 160 segments, with an enclosed cutting tool. Around 1940 — three years after that first batch of chocolate chip cookies appeared fresh out of the oven — Nestlé began selling bags of Toll House Real Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels, which some dubbed “chocolate chips.” By 1941, “chocolate chip cookies” was the universally recognized name for the delicious treat. An updated version of Wakefield’s recipe, called Original Nestlé Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies, still appears on every bag of morsels. For her contributions to Nestlé, Wakefield reportedly received a lifetime supply of chocolate.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Year Milton S. Hershey founded Hersheypark, a Pennsylvania amusement park that now boasts 70 rides and attractions

1906

Emmy nominations Taraji P. Henson received for playing Cookie Lyon on the Fox series “Empire”

2

Weight (in pounds) of the world’s largest chocolate truffle, created by Sweet Shop USA of Mount Pleasant, Texas

2,368.5

Individual chocolate “morsels” Nestle sells every year, mostly in 12-ounce bags

90 billion

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Umbrellas were once used only by women.

The oceans are becoming greener.

Pink lemonade was invented at the circus.

Pigs don’t really sweat.

Jim Carrey’s reporter in the 2003 film “______” often uses the sign-off “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

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Jim Carrey’s reporter in the 2003 film “Bruce Almighty” often uses the sign-off “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

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Cookie Monster’s first name is Sidney.

Sesame Street’s resident treat fanatic first revealed his given name in a 2004 episode. During a flashback to his high-chair years, the furry blue Muppet (voiced by puppeteer David Rudman) sang about his introduction to cookies. Mid-duet with his mom, the bonneted baby monster rhymed, “Me was just a mild-mannered little kid / In fact, back then, me think me name was Sid.” The show’s official Twitter account later confirmed that “Sid” was short for “Sidney.” In a 2017 video interview, Cookie Monster reiterated, “Me real name’s Sid Monster.” Incidentally, when Rudman wears the puppet, the back of Cookie Monster’s throat runs down Rudman’s sleeve to give the appearance that Cookie Monster is really eating. The baked treats Cookie Monster “consumes” are actually decorated rice cakes, since the oils from real cookies would damage the puppet.

Jenna Marotta

Writer

Jenna is a writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, and New York Magazine.

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Original photo by JFunk/ Shutterstock

Marie Antoinette’s most famous line has echoed for more than 200 years, reportedly adding fuel to the fire of France’s revolution. The only problem is that the French queen’s supposed declaration is a myth — historians don’t think Marie Antoinette ever said, “Let them eat cake,” after being told her subjects had no bread. Researchers point to two main plot holes in the quote’s supposed backstory, the first being its phrasing in English. In fact, the French queen is supposed to have said, “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche,” or “Let them eat brioche,” a reference to a decadent bread made with eggs and butter.

Marie Antoinette helped popularize potatoes in France.

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It's a fact

Eighteenth-century botanists adapted potatoes to Europe’s climate, though many Europeans believed they were unsafe to eat — until Marie Antoinette got involved. The queen wore a spray of potato flowers in her hair in 1785, leading spuds to become a fashionable food for high society.

The second problem is that the outline of the tale predates Marie Antoinette’s reign. At least one similar story cropped up around the 16th century in Germany, wherein a noblewoman suggested the poorest citizens in her kingdom eat sweetened bread. However, the first person to print the line about brioche was likely Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher who mentioned the story around 1767 in his book Confessions, attributing the comment to a “great princess.” Rousseau’s text was published when Marie Antoinette was still a child in Austria, though it’s possible the story inspired French revolutionaries decades later, and was repeated with the addition of Marie Antoinette’s name as propaganda against the French monarchy. Yet there is no historical evidence (aka printed materials) that proves the queen ever uttered the phrase.

While Marie Antoinette was known for her excessive spending, some historians say the centuries-long smear to her reputation has long overshadowed her philanthropic side. As queen, she established a home for unwed mothers, personally adopted and cared for orphans, and even sold the royal flatware in 1787 to cover the cost of grain for impoverished families — all activities befitting a benevolent ruler who just so happened to love shopping.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Guests at Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette’s wedding in 1770

5,000+

Years Marie Antoinette was queen of France, from 1774 to 1793

19

Reported number of gowns Marie Antoinette bought annually

300

Percentage of a worker’s wages spent on bread at the start of the French Revolution

88%

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You can hear cauliflower growing.

Umbrellas were once used only by women.

The oceans are becoming greener.

Pink lemonade was invented at the circus.

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The Ohio town of ______ was named for Marie Antoinette in 1788.

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The Ohio town of Marietta was named for Marie Antoinette in 1788.

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Baking powder wasn’t invented until 1856.

Today, baking a cake can be as quick as whipping together a store-bought mix with eggs and oil, but until the mid-19th century it was an arduous task for home cooks. That’s because baking powder — the leavening agent that gives baked goods their light and fluffy texture — wasn’t invented until 1856. Before then, baking pastries and breads required advanced planning, since achieving an airy texture meant using yeast — which wasn’t commercially available until 1822. Bakers often had to create their own yeast by fermenting fruit, vegetables, or grains. And even with a successful infusion of yeast, batter had to rise between 12 and 24 hours; in some cases bakers tried other strategies, like whipping eggs thoroughly to add air bubbles, using caustic pearlash (which could add a bitter flavor), or by 1846 using the newly invented baking soda mixed with an acidic liquid like sour milk. Then, in 1856, chemist and Harvard professor Eben Norton Horsford patented the first baking powder containing monocalcium phosphate, an acidic compound extracted from boiled animal bones. Horsford’s unique product blended the ingredient with baking soda in a shelf-stable, easy-to-use compound that would become popular among chefs and turn the baking powder business into a multimillion-dollar industry by 1900.

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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