“When I was young I walked all over this country, east and west,” said the Apache leader Cochise, “and saw no other people than the Apaches. After many summers I walked again and found another race of people had come to take it.”
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In August 2018 data scientist David Bamman examined how authors recently interviewed in the New York Times’ By the Book column answered the question “What’s on your nightstand?” Women mentioned male and female authors almost equally; men mentioned male authors more than 79 percent of the time. “Don’t read in bed,” advised Fran Lebowitz. “It’s too stimulating. Watch TV instead. It’s boring.”
Fear of witches among the Kaguru of Tanzania is extreme: some prefer to defecate inside their huts rather than be alone in the dark at night.
In June 2020 the city council of Sturgis, South Dakota, mailed surveys to determine whether residents favored proceeding with or postponing the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in August. Nearly 63 percent of respondents wanted the event postponed, while 37 percent voted for it to proceed. Despite the democratic results, the council went ahead with the rally, which attracted 460,000 people to the city of 7,287. The state of South Dakota confirmed 124 residents had become sick from coronavirus after attending the rally.
According to one theory, the association between storks and human infants in northern European folklore arose from an ancient Germanic custom of holding weddings on the summer solstice, before storks began their annual migration to Africa. Nine months later, when the babies conceived the previous summer were being born, the storks would return north to breed.
The wardrobe that accompanied Tutankhamen to the afterlife included ninety sandals, four socks, 145 loincloths with thread counts of two hundred, and a fake leopard skin made of linen with sewn-on spots.
In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote, “Four o’ the clock it was, to make a guess; / Eleven foot long, or little more or less, / My shadow was, as at that time and place, / Measuring feet by taking in this case / My height as six.”
From History of Dearborn, Ohio, and Switzerland Counties, Indiana (1885): “It has been repeated time and again that the annexation of Texas was carried in the U.S. Senate by one vote; that Edward A. Hannegan, then the U.S. senator from Indiana, was elected to the Senate by one vote, and that that one vote was given Hannegan by Daniel Kelso, then senator from Switzerland County, who was elected by one majority. This is an error, for Kelso, when he voted for Hannegan, represented Switzerland County by virtue of a majority of about 150 voters of the county, over Samuel Howard, at the August election of 1842. In 1843 David Henry was elected over Kelso by one majority. Kelso contested the election, and the Senate declared that neither was elected and sent them back to the people for decision, and at the August election, 1844, Henry was elected by a small but decided majority.”
A 2018 study run at Buttercups Sanctuary in Kent, England, found that goats are sensitive to human emotions and strongly prefer to sniff smiling, happy faces rather than frowning ones.
A 2011 study found that Chinese consumers are charged more due to “superstitious manipulations” of retail prices—fives and sixes appear more often than unlucky fours, eights and nines more than unlucky sevens. “Retailers,” the study reported, “are the clear winners.”
It is said that Alexander the Great once found Diogenes the Cynic examining a pile of human bones. “What are you looking for?” the ruler inquired. “I am searching for the bones of your father,” replied the philosopher, “but I cannot distinguish them from those of his slaves.” On another occasion a woman came to see Diogenes, complaining that her son was poorly behaved, and asked what she could do about it. Diogenes answered by slapping the woman in the face.
At thirty-one ounces, the Trenta, a new drink size introduced by Starbucks in 2011, holds the same volume as the average capacity of the human stomach.
A twelfth-century-bc Chinese king consulted an oracle and was told his lucky charm would not be a tiger, dragon, bear, or leopard but rather a wise counselor. He soon came upon a sagacious old man fishing in the river and conscripted him into service. It is said the man’s virtue was such that he fished not with a hook but with a straight piece of iron; acknowledging his integrity, fish impaled themselves voluntarily.
“A horrid-looking wretch he is, sooty and scoundrelly in aspect, a cross between the nutmeg dealer, the horse swapper, and the night man,” declared a Stephen Douglas–leaning newspaper of Abraham Lincoln during the presidential race of 1860.
In 1876 Dr. Gustav Jaeger, zoologist and physiologist at the University of Stuttgart, began advocating the wearing of rough animal fibers, particularly undyed sheep wool, close to the skin; early customers of his “Sanitary Woollen System” included Oscar Wilde and Henry Stanley, who brought them on his expedition to Africa to search for Dr. Livingstone.