Answers To 12 Questions About History We Wish We’d Gotten Sooner

In 1952, after the passing of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, the foreign ministry asked Albert Einstein to take his place. Einstein was extended the invitation due to his scientific contributions and also for his previous support of the Zionist cause.

Einstein was Jewish and, in the letter sent to him (written in English and German), he was asked if he would “accept the Presidency of Israel if it were offered… Acceptance would entail moving to Israel and taking its citizenship.”

Einstein declined, sending this as his reply:

I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel [to serve as president], and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it. All my life I have dealt with objective matters, hence I lack both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people and to exercise official functions.

For these reasons alone I should be unsuited to fulfill the duties of that high office, even if advancing age was not making increasing inroads on my strength. I am the more distressed over these circumstances because my relationship to the Jewish people has become my strongest human bond, ever since I became fully aware of our precarious situation among the nations of the world.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is, according to restoration experts, more straight than it’s ever been. Efforts to keep the structure “stable and very slowly reduce its lean” were announced as successful in 2018, which was necessary to counteract centuries of the tower standing on soft ground.

Construction on Pisa’s tilting tower began in 1173, and even early in the process, it was clear that the structure wouldn’t stand straight. By the time the third story was added in 1178, it had already begun to shift and showed signs of its characteristic tilt.

Completed during the 14th century, the tower shifted about two millimeters each year until the most recent successful corrective action.

Modern passports, as documents required for international travel, have been around for about a century. Throughout history, missives and administrative documents were used to introduce ambassadors, arrange safe passage, and confirm identities. The use of the word “passport” can be found in 16th-century texts, but official traveling papers weren’t required of the masses until the early 20th century.

As immigration increased, countries deemed it necessary to keep track of individuals entering and exiting their borders. This was especially true after WWI. In Britain during the 1910s, passports included descriptions of “shape of face… complexion… features…” – basically physical characteristics alongside information about country of origin.

In many places like the US, a passport was once a status symbol. It reflected the ability to travel and was required for international travel as of 1920. Passports also indicated citizenship and symbolized national identity.

The association between royalty and purple goes back to antiquity, with a notable emphasis in the Roman world. The elite status of purple is in large part due to the cost of the dye used to color garments. Because it was so expensive, only the most prominent and wealthiest members of society could afford to wear it.

Purple was largely derived from a substance found in the glands of predatory sea snails in the Muricidae family. Tyrian purple, specifically, was used as early as the 16th century BCE. It smelled bad and was extracted through an exhaustive process that involved drying, boiling, and straining.

The importance of purple extended into the Middle Ages and the early modern period, ultimately becoming more available to middle and lower classes thanks to the development of synthetic dyes during the 19th century.

In the Roman world, gladiators were entertainers, athletes, slaves, and prisoners – depending on the time, circumstances, and place – but they weren’t all male. A few rare female gladiators existed, and they were called “gladiatrices” (the singular being “gladiatrix”). It’s possible they were also called “ludia,” a word used to describe stage performers and the wives of gladiators alike.

Roman satiricist Juvenal, writing during the late first and early second centuries, described one female gladiator, Mevia, who fought bare-breasted. He mocked women entering the gladiatorial ring, expressing the “sense of shame… found in a woman wearing a helmet, who shuns femininity and loves brute force.”

During the late second and early third centuries, writer Cassius Dio described exhibitions in which women fought, including those held by Emperor Domitian (d. 96 BCE), who was said to have held fights where “he would pit dwarfs and women against each other.”

Women were banned from arenas by Septimius Severus in 200 CE.

The US was the first – and only – country to send astronauts to the moon, with the initial landing on July 20, 1969. This wasn’t for lack of trying on the Soviet Union’s part.

In 1966, the USSR sent a probe to the moon called the Luna 9. Just a few weeks before the US landed on the moon’s surface, the Soviet counterpart to the Apollo spacecraft made attempts to get off the ground.

Several failed attempts to get the USSR’s N1 rocket into space meant the US not only orbited the moon first, but was also the winner in the moon-walking leg of the Space Race. The failure of the N1 was a major setback for the USSR and, by the early 1970s, the Soviets had stopped sending spacecraft to orbit and explore the moon entirely.

The last person to walk on the moon – an American like everyone before him – was Gene Cernan in 1972.

In 1896, Great Britain fought against the Zanzibar Sultanate in the shortest war in history. It lasted about 38 minutes.

When Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini of Zanzibar passed on August 25, it meant new leadership was about to take over the East African Islamic government. The British wanted a successor who was as favorable to them as bin Thuwaini had been, but his less malleable cousin, Khalid bin Barghash, became sultan instead.

Britain had assumed protectorate status over Zanzibar in 1890 and saw bin Barghash’s succession as an act of war. The British government issued an ultimatum demanding Hamoud bin Mohammed become sultan, and it was set to expire in the morning hours of August 27. As the clock ticked, British naval forces gathered on the coast.

Once the ultimatum expired, the Royal Navy struck. They bombed the royal palace, landed on shore, and soon took control. The active military engagement lasted less than an hour and resulted in 500 casualties among bin Barghash loyalists. Hamoud bin Mohammed was then declared sultan.

It may not sound like a real event, but in 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte decided to hold a rabbit hunt. He had courtier Alexandre Berthier release a group of bunnies so he and his colleagues could hunt them. Instead of getting wild rabbits, however, Napoleon’s man had gathered domesticated ones that didn’t run away when released.

Domesticated rabbits were supposed to garner more kills, but they proved to be less than the ideal prey. They didn’t make any effort to flee once they were free. Instead, the lagomorphs headed for Napoleon – hundreds of them charging at him in the hopes of food. Napoleon found no humor in it and stormed off in anger instead.

General Paul Thiébault described the incident in his memoir:

The intrepid rabbits turned the Emperor’s flank, attacked him frantically in the rear, refused to quit their hold, piled themselves up between his legs till they made him stagger, and forced the conqureror of conquerors, fairly exhausted, to retreat and leave them in possession of the field.

The first president of the United States to have a beard was Abraham Lincoln during the 1860s, but predecessors like John Quincy Adams (d. 1848), Martin Van Buren (d. 1862), and Zachary Taylor (d. 1850) all boasted mutton chops and sideburns.

After Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant continued the trend, with numerous US presidents through William Howard Taft sporting beards, whiskers, or mustaches of some kind. Taft, who left office in 1913, was the last POTUS to have facial hair.

Since then, a clean-shaven commander-in-chief has remained the norm, something that is true for many politicians around the world.  In fact, in US politics, a beard is something defeated or disgraced candidates and officials often wear.

After European explorers arrived in the Americas, the exchange of crops, diseases, people, and culture changed world history forever. The so-called Columbian Exchange is known to have wrought havoc on indigenous Americans with the introduction of diseases like malaria,  smallpox, and influenza.

Massive groups of Native Americans in North, Central, and South America perished because they had no immunity to the viruses brought to their shores. In contrast, there was little in the way of reciprocity when it came to disease – with one possible exception: syphilis.

Some scholars theorize that visitors to the Americas brought syphilis back to Europe. They cite accounts that Captain Martin Alonso Pinzón of the Pinta, one of Christopher Columbus’s ships, had the disease and succumbed to it shortly after returning to Europe from the New World.

A subsequent outbreak of syphilis in Naples, Italy, in 1495 further advanced the theory, but many observers assert the disease had an earlier presence in the Old World, but hadn’t been distinguished clearly from other afflictions.

While there are many theories about what the “D” in D-Day means, it’s actually just a military way of saying which day an operation will start. The US military uses comparable designations for other divisions of time, often subbing in “H” for the hour an attack will start.

Instead of taking the real meaning of D-Day (essentially “Day Day”) to heart, many people have decided that the letter stands for “decision,” “departed,” or “disembarkation.” However, these are attributed to the letter after the fact, assigning characteristics from the day’s outcome to the term.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower muddied the waters when it came to the meaning of D-Day in 1964. When he was asked about it, he explained, via his assistant, that “any amphibious operation has a ‘departed date;’ therefore, the shortened term ‘D-Day’ is used.”

It’s common to see the phrases “tropical depression,” “tropical storm,” and “hurricane” used by meteorologists and the like. It’s clear that the distinctions among the terms has to do with severity, but the specifics of what each means are rarely explained.

The earliest formation of a tropical event may be called a cyclone, a broad term for winds that rotate inward around an area of low pressure. They blow counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. Hurricanes and typhoons used to describe regional cyclones. Prior to the winds forming a closed circle, they are called a tropical disturbance.

Once a tropical cyclone takes shape, it is a tropical depression as long as the surface winds remain under 394 miles per hour. When a tropical depression achieves winds between 39 and 73 miles per hour, it is classified as a tropical storm. Winds over 74 miles per hour mean it is a hurricane or a typhoon. The term hurricane is used in the East Pacific and Atlantic Oceans while typhoon is applied in the West Pacific.

A hurricane is category one when the winds are between 74 and 95 miles per hour; category 2 with winds between 96 and 110 miles per hour; category 3 with winds from 111 to 129 miles per hour; category 4 when winds are between 130 and 156 miles per hour; and category 5 when winds exceed 157 miles per hour.

Not all cyclones are tropical, however. A “bomb cyclone” – or bombogenesis – happens when the already-low air pressure of a storm drops quickly and at extreme levels. Essentially, the center of a cyclone “bombs” out.

While bomb cyclones are more common over water, they can occur over land in the midlatitudes (roughly 30 to 60 degrees on either side of the equator). The collision of hot and cold air, resulting temperature change, and instability of the atmosphere causes vast intensification of a storm. This leads to large amounts of rain, wind, and snow like those seen during blizzards and nor’easters – both of which qualify as bomb cyclones.