Among some species of North American fireflies, females lie in wait for light emitted by males drifting above. A 2022 study found that 96 percent of male fireflies preferred to attempt mating in darkness. No mating occurred in bright artificial light, under which the researchers observed “males crawling directly past or even over females without initiating mating stage one.” The fireflies were “waiting to mate in dimmer conditions,” a New York Times article suggested, “essentially waiting for a night that never comes.”
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“Battle Hymn of the Republic” author Julia Ward Howe complained to her sister in August 1846 about the death of her sister-in-law: “My mourning has been quite an inconvenience to me this summer. I had just spent all the money I could afford for my summer clothes and was forced to spend $30 more for black dresses,” Howe wrote. “The black clothes, however, seem to me very idle things, and I shall leave word in my will that no one shall wear them for me.”
Members inducted into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2010 included Yvonne Brill, whose electrothermal hydrazine thruster keeps satellites in space orbit, as well as Arthur Fry and Steven Silver, who created sticky notes (Fry, the concept; Silver, the glue). “Note: It took one woman to invent a rocket thruster,” wrote a Washington Post reporter about the induction ceremony, “and two men to invent Post-its.”
Each year from late August to October, thousands of male Oklahoma brown tarantulas travel through the prairieland of southeast Colorado in search of a mate. The spiders, which reach sexual maturity around the age of ten, often survive just one migration season. “Once they wander and mate, it gets cold,” said one entomologist. “They’ll be dead by Christmas.”
In 1978 Janet Parker, a medical photographer at the UK’s Birmingham Medical School, worked one floor above the microbiology department, where smallpox research was being conducted. She became ill on August 11 but was not diagnosed with smallpox until nine days later. A subsequent investigation concluded Parker had been infected either through the building’s duct system or by visiting the microbiology department. She died on September 11, 1978, becoming the last known person to die of smallpox.
An antigerm campaign to outlaw the shared drinking cups used at public fountains spread through the United States in 1911. One pamphlet referred to the “cup of death”; another showed the Grim Reaper enticing a young girl to take a sip. Illinois declared the practice “as antiquated as the ducking stool and the inquisition,” while the American Medical Association noted a curious new “jet apparatus” that could keep a child’s lips from touching a water spout.
When Julius Caesar learned that an all-female religious ceremony at his home had been infiltrated by the politician Clodius Pulcher in drag, Caesar divorced his wife Pompeia. A lawyer asked why he had responded so harshly, considering that Pompeia had not done any wrong herself. “Because,” Caesar responded, “I thought my wife ought not even to be under suspicion.”
One in four thousand people are said to suffer from photosensitive epilepsy, in which flashing computer screens can induce seizures. In 2008 the World Wide Web Consortium determined that online content should not flash more than three times in a one-second period. Federal government websites must design pages that avoid screen flickering within the range of 2 to 55 hertz.
A scholar in Peking contracted malaria in 1899 and was given medication with an ingredient labeled “dragon bones.” The bone chips, he found, were inscribed with writing dating back to China’s second dynasty. Thousands more were uncovered in the decades following; many of these “oracle bones” had inscriptions recording celestial events, which scientists have since used to calculate changes in the length of an earth day and in the rate of the earth’s rotation.
About 40 percent of employers peer at the social-media profiles of prospective candidates, and 40 percent of party guests admit to snooping through a host’s medicine cabinet or drawers. The percent of women who admit to having looked through a partner’s phone without permission is 34 percent; of men, 62.
Two years after being exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974, Nobel Prize–winning writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn settled in a small Vermont town, living there reclusively for some eighteen years. He did however attend a few town meetings and was once spotted marching in a parade to celebrate the bicentennial of Vermont statehood.
In love with the same slave girl, Iris, two men in first-century Pompeii fought via graffiti. Severus tagged the wall first, writing that Iris did not love Successus, adding, “His rival wrote this.” Successus responded, “Don’t even think to speak badly of a man more handsome than you, especially one who is both most vicious when crossed and yet also good.” “I have written all there is to say,” Severus retorted. “You love Iris, but she does not love you.”
In 1906 Congress passed “An Act to Prohibit Shanghaiing in the United States.” One section made unlawful the inducing of a man “intoxicated or under the influence of any drug” to perform labor aboard a foreign or domestic ship.
In 1927 Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik identified a phenomenon that came to be known as the Zeigarnik effect, which states that waiters are good at remembering particulars of a restaurant bill—until the bill is paid. “Unfinished tasks are remembered approximately twice as well as completed ones,” concluded Zeigarnik.
In October 2021 U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo tweeted that “parents should decide what their children are taught in schools.” One user responded, “Why even have teachers?” and another, “Why send children to school at all?” A third user quipped, “I think teachers should decide what surgeries people need to have.”