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Nate Barksdale ‑ Stories

Boy and girl eating ice cream

Who Invented Ice Cream?

The origins of ice cream, sorbet and other chilled dairy treats are difficult to pin down—but span back to antiquity.

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The Stories Behind 7 State Mottos

Get the surprising stories behind these mottos.

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10 19th‑Century Celebrities You Should Know

In the 1800s Industrial Revolution advances in transportation and communication laid the groundwork for the modern culture of fame. People were famous for their skill, power or money, but a true celebrity was also famous just for being famous.

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8 Things You Might Not Know about Booker T. Washington

Check out fascinating facts about the most famous and influential African American of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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Jon Harington, inventor of the flush toilet

Who Invented the Flush Toilet?

The first modern flushable toilet was described in 1596 by a godson of Queen Elizabeth I.

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Laika, the first dog in space, in the sputnik 2 capsule. (Photo by: Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

What was the first animal in space?

Though far less famous than later non‑human astronauts, the first animals in space were a group of fruit flies, launched to an altitude of 42 miles at the tip of a V‑2 rocket, developed and used by the Germans during World War II and later by American military scientists on February 20, 1947. The flies, […]

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A Library of 8 Lost Literary Works

It’s tempting to think that literary greatness affords a form of immortality, but the sad truth is that even great works fall by the wayside.

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Champagne: A Bubbly History

During World War I the trenches of the Western Front ran right through the vineyards of Champagne, the historic French winemaking region 90 miles north of Paris. Between 1914 and 1918, heavy shelling uprooted row upon row of chardonnay and pinot noir vines, pruned short per the instructions of a 17th‑century Benedictine monk named Dom […]

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'Saint Nicholas of Lipna', 1294. Petrov, Alexa (Late 13th century). Russian icon painting. Found in the collection of the State Open-air Museum of History and Architecture Novgorodian Kremlin, Novgorod.

Who Was St. Nicholas?

Behind the jolly, red‑suited, shopping mall Santa of today lies a real person—St. Nicholas of Myra, a Christian monk who lived in the third century A.D., in what is now Turkey.

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HUNGRY The History of Christmas Pudding

The History of Christmas Pudding

Christmas Pudding (also known as plum pudding or figgy pudding) is a dish as famous as it is misunderstood.

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"Allegory of the Tudor Succession (The Family of Henry VIII)," ca. 1590, after Lucas de Heere. Artist unknown.

8 Things You May Not Know About Henry VIII

A monarch of outsized proportions, passions and appetites, King Henry VIII (1491‑1547) ruled England for 36 years.

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Voting

What is the world’s oldest democracy?

The term democracy, which means “rule by the people,” was coined by the Greeks of ancient Athens to describe their city‑state’s system of self‑rule, which reached its golden age around 430 B.C. under the skilled orator and politician Pericles. It is probable that the Athenians were not the first group of people to adopt such […]

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