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 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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There are more people on Earth today than ever before — nearly 8 billion, to be exact — which represents a full 7% of all 117 billion people estimated to have ever lived throughout the course of human history. The figure comes from the Population Reference Bureau, which released its first estimate in 1995 and has updated it occasionally in the years since. As with most math on this scale, the calculus wasn’t easy. That’s partly because our knowledge of history is ever-evolving: When the bureau initially calculated the number, modern Homo sapiens were thought to have first appeared around 50,000 BCE, but recent discoveries put the actual date closer to 200,000 BCE.

All the cattle on Earth weigh more than all the humans.

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With a biomass of about 386 million tons, humans weigh a lot — but we don’t weigh as much as our bovine neighbors. An estimated 1.3 billion cattle share the planet with us, and their biomass comes out to an absolutely beefy 716 million tons.

Three main factors go into the math: how long humans are thought to have been walking the Earth, the average population during different eras, and the number of births per 1,000 people during said eras. As you might imagine, the growth has been astronomical — there were just 5 million humans in 8000 BCE, 300 million in 1 CE, and 450 million in 1200. And while the bureau acknowledges that this is “part science and part art,” even being off by a few billion gives us a ballpark figure to imagine all the people who came before us.

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That dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago is pretty common knowledge. Not as well known, but just as fascinating, is the fact that Earth was on the other side of the galaxy when most of them were alive. It takes the sun (and thus the rest of the solar system) around 250 million years to orbit the center of the Milky Way. The first dinosaurs actually appeared at the dawn of the Triassic around 250 million years ago, but for most of their very long reign — namely the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods — our humble planet was in a completely different neighborhood of the galaxy. That means, of course, that the stars the dinosaurs saw in the sky would have looked different from the view we have today.

All dinosaurs were green or gray.

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Despite the muted colors we’re used to seeing them rendered in, a number of dinosaurs were bright and vibrant. Some had iridescent feathers, others had spots or stripes, and one is even thought to have had a bandit mask à la raccoons.

Though not new information, this knowledge made something of a splash a few years ago when NASA astronomer Dr. Jessie Christiansen created an animation showing which part of the Milky Way our prehistoric predecessors resided in. Perhaps the most intriguing part of the video is its ending, which asks what our planet might be like the next time we complete a trip through the Milky Way. Fortunately, our solar system stays far, far away from the inhospitable galactic center (and its supermassive black hole) as it moves through space. If it didn’t, there’d be no life on Earth whatsoever — human, dinosaur, or otherwise.

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Although her aviation career lasted just 17 years, Amelia Earhart remains one of the most famous people ever to take to the sky. In addition to being renowned for her many firsts — including being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and the first person to fly alone from Hawaii to the mainland U.S. — she’s known for her 1937 disappearance and the many theories it spawned. Less well-known but considerably more fun to imagine is the time she took Eleanor Roosevelt on a nighttime joyride from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore on April 20, 1933. The brief flight took place with both of them in their evening wear following a White House dinner party.

Some people believe that Amelia Earhart was a spy.

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According to this fanciful theory, Earhart didn’t disappear at all — she started a new assignment for President Franklin Roosevelt, a close personal friend of hers, that entailed keeping a watchful eye on Japanese activities. Some even believe she was later captured by Japan.

“I’d love to do it myself. I make no bones about it,” the First Lady told the Baltimore Sun after the flight. “It does mark an epoch, doesn't it, when a girl in an evening dress and slippers can pilot a plane at night.” In fact, Roosevelt herself had recently received a student pilot license and briefly took over the controls of the twin-engine Curtiss Condor, borrowed from Eastern Air Transport at nearby Hoover Field. Eleanor's brother Hall also ditched the dinner party in favor of the flight that night, as did Thomas Wardwell Doe, the president of Eastern Air Transport, and Eugene Luther Vidal (head of the Bureau of Air Commerce) and his wife Nina Gore, parents of author Gore Vidal. When the plane returned after the short journey, the Secret Service guided everyone back to the White House table for dessert. Needless to say, they all had quite the story to tell at their next dinner party. Roosevelt and Earhart remained friends for the rest of Earhart’s life, sharing an interest in women’s causes, world peace, and of course, flying.

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In the spring of 1847, American newspapers printed horrifying reports about an ill-fated group of pioneers who had become trapped in the Sierra Nevada over the winter. With few provisions and facing unbearable cold, nearly half of the group’s 81 members perished before rescue parties could find them, four to five months later. Eventually, the Donner Party’s tragic tale became embedded in American history, but it could have had a much greater impact had a young Illinois lawyer chosen to join the group.

Wagon wheel tracks from the Oregon Trail are still visible.

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Before the Transcontinental Railroad, wagons were the only way for emigrants to journey west over land. From 1840 to 1880, hundreds of thousands traced their way across the prairies, and the evidence remains. Today, ruts from wagon traffic are still visible from Missouri to Oregon.

In the 1840s, emigrants were itching to go west in search of gold, new beginnings, and a glimpse of the West Coast’s famed beauty. So it wasn’t strange that Abraham Lincoln, then working as a lawyer, helped at least one traveler settle his affairs before beginning the journey. An Irish entrepreneur named James Reed had known Lincoln from their days serving together in the Black Hawk War in 1832. According to the historian Michael Wallis, Reed — a founder of the Donner Party — extended an invitation to the 37-year-old lawyer and his family to join the voyage. Lincoln was likely tempted: He reportedly had a lifelong interest in visiting California. But his wife, Mary Todd, was adamant they should remain in Illinois considering the difficulty of 2,000 miles of wagon travel with a young son and a baby on the way. The Donner Party departed Springfield, Illinois, without the Lincolns on April 15, 1846. Mary Todd was present as the wagons pulled away, waving farewell to an expedition that would go on to face extreme peril. Abraham Lincoln, however, traded his dream of westward travel for political ambitions that took him much further in history when he became the 16th President 15 years later.

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