Despite widespread belief to the contrary, pencils have never been made of lead. Like all roads, this misconception leads to Rome, where ancient people drew on papyrus scrolls with small pieces of lead, a soft (and toxic) metal that rubs off easily. 

Pencils actually contain graphite, a solid form of carbon, and have since the 1600s. Because the graphite people simply dug out of hills in the 17th century behaved similarly to lead but had a darker color, it was called “black lead.” It wasn’t until 1779 that German Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele determined graphite was pure carbon; a decade later, German chemist and mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner gave the substance the name we know it by today.

Ancient humans were familiar with lead.

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It’s sometimes called “the first metal” due to how long people have known about it, though gold and silver have been known to humans for roughly the same amount of time.

Somewhat surprisingly, pencil sales have held steady in recent years even as more and more aspects of daily life have been digitized. More than 3.7 billion of the writing tools were imported in 2022, largely thanks to grade-schoolers, as the implements remain the easiest, most intuitive way for students just learning to write to sharpen their skills — pun intended.

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Time zones can be confusing, but they beat the alternative. To wit: Before time zones were established in 1883, North America alone had at least 144 local times. Noon was when the sun reached its zenith, and in many places the only thing making time official was a town clock. This didn't affect many people’s day-to-day lives, as it often took several days to travel from one place to another, but confusion intensified once the expanding railroad system drastically cut travel times. Because time wasn’t standardized, coordinating schedules across multiple rail lines was nearly impossible, and travelers occasionally found themselves arriving at their final destination earlier than they’d departed. Sometimes, trains even collided.

China only has one time zone.

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Though it used to have five, China reduced that number to just one in 1949 — a decision made by the Communist Party to create national unity. Now the entire country is on Beijing Time, which has created logistical problems given the country’s massive size.

Those problems more or less evaporated after November 18, 1883, when American railroads adopted the first four time zones (Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific) and all clocks in each zone were synchronized. The number of time zones rose to five with the passage of 1918’s Standard Time Act, which added Alaska. (The act also established the use of daylight saving time in the U.S., much to the chagrin of many.) Including its territories, the United States now has four more time zones — Chamorro (which is used in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands), Samoa, Hawaii-Aleutian, and Atlantic — for a total of nine.

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George Washington held the country’s first full Cabinet meeting on November 26, 1791. That meeting, and every subsequent Cabinet meeting over the next 142 years, consisted exclusively of men. But all that changed on March 4, 1933, when Frances Perkins became the secretary of labor under President Franklin D. Roosevelt — and the first woman to hold any position in a presidential Cabinet. The occasion was marked several months later by Time, which put Perkins on the cover of its August 14, 1933, edition. Perkins had previously served under FDR in a similar capacity, having been appointed commissioner of the New York State Department of Labor after Roosevelt was elected governor of New York in 1929. 

Frances Perkins was the only female secretary of labor.

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Though it took another 42 years, Ann Dore McLaughlin became the second woman to serve as secretary of labor, on December 14, 1987, under President Ronald Reagan. Seven others have served as secretary or acting secretary of labor since.

Perkins’ tenure lasted for the entirety of Roosevelt’s 12-year administration, making her the longest-serving secretary of labor in U.S. history. Described by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. as “brisk and articulate” and “intent on beating sense into the heads of those foolish people who resisted progress,” Perkins is best known for her role as chairwoman of the President's Committee on Economic Security, which led to the 1935 act that created Social Security. She was also active in issues around child labor, safety, minimum-wage laws, worker’s compensation, and more. She resigned in 1945, after Roosevelt’s death, and then served on the United States Civil Service Commission under President Truman until 1952.

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