John Joseph Merlin pioneered early roller skates, played violin while wearing them, and reportedly crashed into a £500 mirror at a masquerade.
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John Joseph Merlin pioneered early roller skates, played violin while wearing them, and reportedly crashed into a £500 mirror at a masquerade.
Discover the strange history of “kangaroo feathers,” the emu plumes worn by Australian Light Horse soldiers and the military tradition behind the joke.
Two boys named Leslie, born 10 years apart, changed their names, and became American icons. Follow their remarkably different lives and see if you can identify them.
Discover how 40,000 irreplaceable photo negatives of the JFK photo archive stored for safekeeping at the World Trade Center were destroyed on September 11, 2001.
Ancient Rome taxed urine because it was valuable to textile workers. Meet Vespasian, the urine tax, and the origin of “money doesn’t stink.”
Celebrate 12 years of Commonplace Fun Facts with a behind-the-scenes look at how to write with curiosity, skepticism, research, and rabbit trails.
William Painter invented the modern bottle cap in 1892. Explore the crown cork, his unusual patents, and the strange myth of a train ejection seat.
The 1980s very special episode turned sitcoms into public-service announcements about drugs, abuse, AIDS, grief, and refrigerator danger.
In 1896, James C. Boyle patented an automatic hat-tipping device that tipped, spun, and reset itself—and he even planned to put advertising on it.
Benjamin Franklin’s 1750 satire explains how to become a truly disagreeable companion—and why his advice remains painfully relevant today.
Florenz Ziegfeld loved elaborate notes. Eddie Cantor preferred brevity. Their clash produced one of Broadway’s funniest lessons in overcommunication.
Discover the surprising stories behind unusual patron saints associated with television, pilots, dentists, taxi drivers, the Internet, and more.
Discover the London Necropolis Railway, the Victorian funeral train that carried coffins, mourners, and even first-class dead passengers to Brookwood.
Before he was 16, Martin Van Buren was already arguing cases in court—and once had to stand on a table so the jury could see him.
Discover how Dagen H switched Sweden from left- to right-hand traffic in ten minutes—after voters overwhelmingly rejected the idea.
