All 13 Retired Monopoly Tokens
Most people assume the Monopoly tokens are eternal – that the top hat and the dog and the battleship have always been there and always will be. They have not, and they will not.... Read More →
Category: History
Every Person Buried in Poets' Corner
The number everyone quotes for Poets’ Corner is wrong. So is the assumption that everyone there is a poet. The south transept of Westminster Abbey is not primarily a literary cemetery and was not... Read More →
Every Pulitzer Prize Refused, Returned, or Rescinded in History
The Pulitzer Prizes began in 1917 with four awards – two in journalism, one in history, one in biography – and now run to twenty-three categories handed out every spring. The pressure to take... Read More →
Every Secret Service Code Name for U.S. Presidents
For most of American history, presidents did not have Secret Service code names. They didn’t need them. There was no radio chatter to encrypt, no transcontinental motorcade calls to obscure, no telephone network through... Read More →
Every CIA Plot to Assassinate Fidel Castro
The first CIA plot against the Castro brothers was not aimed at Fidel. In July 1960, a Cubana Airlines pilot named José Raúl Martínez, secretly working for the CIA, was assigned to fly Raúl... Read More →
Every Item on the Original 1948 McDonald's Speedee Service Menu
When Dick and Mac McDonald reopened their little barbecue drive-in, the entire operation had been rebuilt around a single sandwich. They had spent the previous three months tearing the place apart – firing twenty... Read More →
Every Nobel Prize Without Its Laureate
The Nobel ceremony has a script. The winners are announced in October, fly to Stockholm or Oslo in early December, are presented their medals by the king on the 10th, give a speech, attend... Read More →
Every McDonald's Location That Existed Before Ray Kroc
On April 14, 1955, Ray Kroc spent the night before his grand opening checking the temperature on his deep fryers in Des Plaines, Illinois. He was 52 years old and had just bet his... Read More →
Every Item on the Original McDonald's Bar-B-Q Menu
On May 15, 1940, two brothers from Manchester, New Hampshire opened a drive-in restaurant at the corner of 14th and E streets in San Bernardino, California. They served slow-cooked barbecue from a pit stocked... Read More →
Every U.S. State Capital That Has Been Moved
On Monday 21 September 1807 the Tennessee General Assembly convened at Kingston, organized itself, and voted to leave. The Senate divided 8 to 4 on a resolution to “adjourn forthwith” to the court-house in... Read More →
