Palm fields in southern China. (Credit: szeuyan/iStockphotos.com)

Prior to the release of the study, published in the journal PLoS ONE this month, little had been known about the ancient diet of the Xincun region along the southern coast of China, thanks in part to the destruction of plant remains in the humid, subtropical weather. What scientists did know is that agriculture had come later to this area along the Lower Yangtze River than elsewhere in China and much of the rest of the world—rice crops first took root around 2,500-2,000 B.C. and archeologists believed it quickly became the region’s staple crop. Today, more than 70 percent of the world’s rice production occurs in subtropical China.

Eager to learn more about the early diet of Xincun, researchers turned to a new technique, known as ancient starch analysis. This allowed them to extract sediment from grinding stones used to process food around 3,350 B.C., hundreds of years before rice was first grown in the there. The samples, tested in both the United Kingdom and China yielded some surprising results. Researchers had expected to find examples of starches from plants indigenous to the region, such as water chestnuts and lotus and fern roots, but were shocked when the sediment also turned up starches from other plants, including bananas, tubers and subtropical palms. Palm starch, which is extracted from its trunk, then ground up, dried and used as flour, has been a reliable source of nutrients for thousands of years. It may not taste great, but it can be grown year round in the right conditions. There is little evidence, however, of it being a cultivated crop in ancient times. It has historically been eaten by nomadic groups who, once they have exhausted the plant source in one area, move onto the next—as is still the case today with transient tribes in Borneo and Indonesia.

The residents of Xincun, however, were a sedentary society, so their continued consumption of palms over a long period of time likely means that they cultivated the plant nearby, making it the region’s first agricultural crop. According to the University of Leicester’s Dr. Huw Barton, a co-author of the study, residents of Xincun and surrounding areas did eventually adopt rice as their primary crop, but with palms and other foodstuffs at their disposal, it probably happened at a much slower pace than in regions without an established, indigenous agricultural base. Barton, who compared the study’s unlikely findings to “hitting the jackpot,” believes that the new evidence indicates “that there was something much more interesting going on in the subtropical south of China 5,000 years ago than previously thought.” Barton’s team hopes to continue its work in other settlements along the coast of China.

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After the demise of the USSR in 1991, many felt that Lenin—and his tomb—deserved to meet the same fate. Russian President Boris Yeltsin called for the closing of the tomb and reburial of the body in a Lenin family plot in St. Petersburg, but failed to push the measure through. His successor Vladimir Putin, however, feels differently and has refused any efforts to move the Communist icon. Russians, it would seem, are still conflicted over the matter—recent polls show the country’s younger generation much more eager to literally “bury” the past than older Russians, with nearly 70 percent of them saying they favor the idea of a permanent burial for Lenin.

Lenin was in ill health long before his January 1924 death. A workaholic who thought nothing of putting in 15 or more hours a day at his desk, he spent much of his adult life suffering from insomnia, migraines and other maladies. In 1903, severe spinal pains and an inflamed chest left him in agony for months. After several failed attempts at a cure, he was finally diagnosed with erysipelas, also known as St. Anthony’s fire, a potentially fatal bacterial infection of the skin and tissue. He recovered, but did little to change his ceaseless work habits until 1918, when the more serious of two failed assassination attempts left him with a punctured lung and two bullets permanently lodged in his neck and collarbone. Lenin’s reaction to the assassination attempt, including the violent political reprisals and mass killings that became known as the Red Terror, eerily mirrored an earlier period in his own life. In 1887, Lenin’s older brother, Alexander, or Sasha, had been executed for his own role in a failed assassination attempt on Czar Alexander III, and many historians credit Sasha Ulyanov’s death with setting Lenin on his revolutionary path.

The Red Terror also unleashed the brutal Russian Civil War between Lenin’s Bolshevik Red Army and an alliance of ant-Bolsheviks known as the “Whites.” The six-year struggle, which ultimately led to the creation of the USSR in December 1922, taxed Lenin’s health even further, leading to the first in a series of debilitating strokes in May of the that year. He recovered, but a second stroke that winter forced him to retire from public life. A third stroke in March 1923 rendered him mute and he remained bedridden until his death on January 21, 1924 in St. Petersburg. Despite Lenin’s own stated wishes for a private funeral, plans were soon underway for a much grander affair. Just three days later St. Petersburg was renamed Leningrad (a name it would keep until 1991), and Lenin’s corpse was onboard an elaborate funeral train bound for Moscow. One million people paid their respects in the city’s House of Trade Unions as movie cameras rolled, preserving the event for posterity.

Within weeks, Soviet leaders had decided that his body should be put on display in Red Square, but some of Lenin’s followers, had a different kind of “preservation” in mind. Adherents to cosmism, a newly popular Russian philosophical movement that espoused the possibility of immortality through science, wanted to cryonically freeze Lenin for possible resurrection at a later date. One disciple, Alexander Bogandov, went so far as to help buy equipment for the job, but when the body began to decompose even in a deep-freeze, the plan was abandoned in favor of more traditional embalming and chemical preservation.

Lenin’s corpse was preserved, but his internal organs were not—with one exception. His brain was removed and placed in formaldehyde for future study. Beginning in the late 1920s, it was sliced into a series of pieces (now numbering more than 30,000) and sent to research labs in Germany and the Soviet Union in the hopes of discerning hints of Lenin’s “genius” from his lobes. Most of the samples remain under lock and key to this day, safely behind reinforced metal doors at the Moscow Brain Institute alongside dozens of other eminent Russians.

While the official cause of Lenin’s death was a massive stroke, not everyone remains convinced. In the decades following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, historians, researchers and medical professionals have gotten into the guessing game over what really killed Lenin. In 2004, a Russian neurologist released a study that named syphilis as the culprit (though no evidence of the disease was found in the 1924 post-mortem). Last year, a clinical pathology conference at the University of Maryland took a stab at solving the case as well. Noting that some of Lenin’s symptoms in his final days (including seizures) were not often found in stroke victims, Russian historian Lev Lurie presented an intriguing possibility. Lenin might have been poisoned—and it might have been Joseph Stalin who did it. The true cause of Lenin’s death is likely to remain unknown unless an investigation into his remaining tissues (the 30,000 brain slivers, perhaps) is allowed.

Stalin may not have killed Lenin, but the two men had a difficult relationship that continued into the afterlife. A year before his death, Lenin finished work on a document, later known as his Testament, that presented a roadmap for the future of the Soviet government. The testament was also highly critical of his fellow leaders, including Joseph Stalin, Nikolai Bukharin and Leon Trotsky, and called for Stalin’s removal from his position as general secretary of the Communist Party. Lenin died before he could present the paper, and when his widow gave the document to Stalin and two other successors, Nikoali Bukharin and Lev Kamenev, the three men went into damage control mode. They strictly limited access to the document, going so far to denounce it after an English translation was leaked by American journalist Max Eastman and later published in The New York Times. For nearly 30 years, mere mention of Lenin’s Testament and its claims against Stalin were tantamount to a death sentence, and it wasn’t fully published in Russia until after Stalin’s death.

It would seem that Lenin could never truly escape Stalin. When his successor died in March 1953, he was embalmed by members of the same team that had prepared Lenin’s body in 1924 and his body was moved into Lenin’s mausoleum. The two revolutionary roommates shared the space for eight years, until Stalin’s body was removed and reinterred near the Kremlin wall during the “De-Stalinization” process of the late 1950s. Lenin, meanwhile, has remained in place continuously with one exception: His body was temporarily evacuated from Moscow in advance of the approaching German Army during World War II. Every 18 months, a 15-person team gives Lenin a makeover that includes a 30-day cleansing bath and a crisp new suit, followed by weekly cosmetic touch-ups with an anti-fugal bleach solution. The Soviet government used to pay for the crypt—and corpse’s upkeep, but since the 1990s private donations have footed the beauty bill.

The Warsaw Ghetto Heroes Monument in Warsaw, Poland. (Credit: East News/Getty Images)

In late 1940, more than a year after the German invasion of Poland, Nazi high command began the forced migration of the country’s 3 million Jews into a series of urban ghettoes. In Warsaw, the country’s capital, more than 400,000 were relocated to a 1.3-sqaure-mile corner of the city, where a newly installed 10-foot-high wall topped with barbed wire surrounded them. By the end of the year, 30 percent of Warsaw’s pre-war population was occupying less than three percent of the city’s territory. All communication with the outside world was cut off; radios were confiscated, telephone lines were cut and mail was heavily censored. Jews were forbidden to leave the ghetto and anyone caught outside its confines was executed. Living conditions inside were horrific. Individuals received rations of less than 200 calories per day, leaving many on the verge of starvation. Denied access to their previous jobs, unemployment was rampant, with smuggling goods from non-ghetto parts of Warsaw one of the only means of employment. Sewage was rarely collected and overflowed into the streets, and with most medical care cut off it wasn’t long before a series of deadly epidemics, including typhus, broke out in the cramped, squalid streets. Within two years, nearly 100,000 had died, a quarter of the ghetto’s population.

Despite these hardships, the Jewish community attempted to maintain some semblance of normalcy, establishing new schools; libraries; social organizations that attempted to feed, clothe and care for the ill; and even an underground symphony orchestra. As in other ghettoes—and later concentration camps—life in the ghetto was administered by a judenrat, or council of elders, installed by Nazi officials and often complicit in collaborating with their occupiers. In July 1942, the leaders of the Warsaw judenrat were informed of a new Nazi policy that would remove thousands of Jews from the ghetto for resettlement in the East. Unaware that the policy, officially known as Grossaktion Warsaw, would actually send these Jews to the newly completed Treblinka death camp, judenrat officials began compiling a list of names for the first transports. That summer, word began to seep back to the ghetto of the Nazi’s true intentions, Adam Czerniaków, the head of the judenrat, committed suicide. The Nazis chose July 23, a Jewish holiday commemorating the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, as the start of the mass deportations—and by September 21 (Yom Kippur) between 250,000 and 300,000 Jews had met their deaths in Treblinka or been sent to forced labor camps, leaving fewer than 60,000 Jews in the ghetto.

That summer, even before the true horrors of the Nazi’s plans were fully apparent, several underground resistance groups had formed, including the Jewish Military Unit (ZZW) and Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB). With a combined membership of fewer than 1,000 and a small cache of weapons (some acquired from Polish resistance groups outside Warsaw, but many homemade), they resolved to fight any future deportations. On January 18, 1943, a small squadron of resistance leaders was smuggled into a group of Jews awaiting the second round of deportations, and opened fire on their Nazi captors. The ZZW and ZOB lost several men and more than 5,000 Jews were deported, but German officers, surprised by the resistance, suspended operations early. This initial “victory” inspired hundreds of others to join the armed revolt—seemingly overnight a subterranean world that connected the city’s sewers and alleyways with hastily assembled bunkers and fighting posts was erected. Led by 24-year-old ZOB head Mordecai Anielewicz, the insurgents executed Nazi collaborators and prepared for what they were now certain would be a final German push to liquidate all Jews remaining in the ghetto.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began in earnest on April 19, the day before the start of Passover, when SS units arriving for the final deportations were greeted by an ambush. Insurgents set fire to German tanks, hurled handmade grenades and Molotov cocktails at advancing troops and managed to stall the SS advance before finally forcing them to retreat. In a symbolic display, two young Jewish fighters raised both the Polish national flag and a hastily created flag of one of the resistance groups from the top of an occupied building. Ordered to destroy the insurgency and level the ghetto for good, more than 2,000 forces swarmed into the ghetto, including Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht units, non-Jewish Polish soldiers and even a group of Jewish police. Armed with heavy artillery and armored vehicles, they spent the next several days systematically destroying parts of the ghetto, building by building, flushing out resistance fighters who were killed or captured. Chaos reigned in the ghetto’s underground warren, which was soon filled with fire, smoke and debris. More than 6,000 Jews would die there, while dozens of small clashes went on above. By early May, it was clear that end of the uprising was imminent. A number of resistance leaders managed to escape from the city, but others stood their ground, including ZOB leader Mordecai Anielewicz. On May 8, Anielewicz and several others died under murky circumstances—it remains unclear if they committed mass suicide to evade capture or were killed by German forces. Sporadic fighting continued on for another week, until the last of the insurgents were rounded up.

Of the more than 50,000 Jews captured during the uprising, 14,000 were either executed immediately or killed upon arrival at Treblinka. The remaining prisoners were sent to a number of concentration camps, where by the end of the war all but few thousand were dead, along with the 6 million other Jews and another 6 million non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Still, the doomed resistance of Warsaw’s Jews inspired similar uprisings in other ghettoes and concentration camps. In August 1943, 1,000 inmates at Treblinka, possibly including fighters recently arrived from Warsaw, staged an armed revolt that, while eventually crushed, allowed dozens of prisoners to escape. A year later, the Polish resistance Home Army led an even larger revolt in the non-Jewish quarters of the city, which despite little support held out for more than two months against German troops before finally collapsing.

The bravery of the men, women and children of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising has inspired a number of books, songs and films. The 2002 Academy-Award winning film, The Pianist, tells the true-life tale of musician Wladyslaw Szpilman’s escape from the ghetto and was directed by Roman Polanksi, who had lost his entire family in the Holocaust and himself had managed to escape from the Krakow ghetto. In 2010, a new documentary, A Film Unfinished, explored the history of an never-completed Nazi propaganda film of a highly fictionalized version of life in the ghetto in the weeks before the uprising, meant to convince the world of the Nazi’s “humane” treatment of the Jews. And today, Lohamei HaGeta’ot (“Ghetto Fighters”), a kibbutz in northern Israel, remains in operation more than 70 years after it was founded by a group of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising survivors.

Magicicada shell after molting (Credit: Pailoolom/iStockphotos.com)

Of the few thousand cicada species worldwide, seven native only to eastern North America stand out as unique. These so-called periodical cicadas live underground as nymphs for precisely 17 years—or 13 years for some broods—sucking fluid from tree roots to gain nourishment. They then tunnel to the surface in mass as soon as soil temperatures reach a sustained 64 degrees. After molting into winged adults, the rest of their lives are consumed mainly with sex. Males vibrate membranes on their abdomens to court females, which flick their wings in response. When a bunch of male cicadas gets going at once, the din reaches 90 or 100 decibels. That’s the sonic equivalent of a jackhammer or lawn mower, and above the level at which sustained exposure can cause hearing loss. “I just think it’s something really special,” said John Cooley, a researcher at the University of Connecticut. “It’s great to see the woods come alive with that sound.”

The Pilgrims, who arrived in Massachusetts in 1620, confused such an outbreak with the plague of locusts described in the Bible. “They had never seen anything like this,” Cooley explained. “They thought it was a punishment for something they had done.” William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth Colony and a signer of the Mayflower Compact, described them in 1633 as “like for bigness to wasps or bumblebees, which came out of holes in the ground and replenished all the woods, and ate the green things, and made such a constant yelling noise as made all the woods ring of them, and ready to deaf the hearers.” A century later, naturalist Paul Dudley claimed that “farmers have not been able to hear their cowbells tho in sight” and that the noise coming from cicadas “carried even some terror with it.” Another naturalist to weigh in was Henry David Thoreau, who noted during an 1843 emergence on Staten Island, New York, that sailors could hear them offshore.

Periodical cicadas have even played a role in a number of military and political events. During the Revolutionary War, colonial troops burned Onondaga Indian crops and villages in upstate New York as punishment for their supposedly pro-British leanings. But the tribe apparently staved off a famine by eating cicadas. In the 1850s, people reportedly considered them an omen of war, and in 1902 they nearly drowned out a pro-imperialism speech from President Theodore Roosevelt. More recently, President Ronald Reagan criticized Democratic budget proposals in 1987 by saying, “Like the cicadas, the big spenders are hatching out again and threatening to overrun Congress.”

This year’s mixed-species batch of periodical cicadas, known as Brood II, first hatched in the spring of 1996—back when President Bill Clinton was in his first term, Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter was a rookie and Princess Diana was still officially married to Prince Charles—making them among the world’s longest living insects. Some in the southern portion of their range have already started to emerge, whereas others will come out later this month or in early June. Cicadas don’t sting, carry diseases communicable to people or devour crops, though they can occasionally damage young trees. Yet despite their benign nature, many people fear or loathe them. “People are always asking, ‘How do you kill them, how do you get rid of them?’ And my answer to that is, ‘Maybe that’s not such a good idea,’” Cooley said. “They’re a part of the ecosystem. They don’t do any harm to people, there’s no reason to try and eradicate them.” He pointed out that two of the 17 periodical cicada broods—the Florida panhandle’s Brood XXI and New England’s Brood XI–have gone extinct, after their 1870 and 1954 cycles respectively. The cause of the extinctions remains unknown.

The slow-flying insects are known to provide an easy source of food for birds, turtles, squirrels, snakes, raccoons and even some humans. Lou Sorkin, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History, compared them to soft-shell crabs, except with different flavor. “I think it’s like corn,” he said. “Some people say asparagus.” Want to check them out but can’t make it to the East Coast? Then wait until next spring, when Brood III, a 17-year-brood, surfaces in the Midwest, and Brood XXII, a 13-year-brood, appears near Baton Rouge, La.

Artist's representation of Hanging Gardens of Babylon (Credit: iStockphotos.com)

Greek and Roman texts paint vivid pictures of the luxurious Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Amid the hot, arid landscape of ancient Babylon, lush vegetation cascaded like waterfalls down the terraces of the 75-foot-high garden. Exotic plants, herbs and flowers dazzled the eyes, and fragrances wafted through the towering botanical oasis dotted with statues and tall stone columns.

Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II was said to have constructed the luxurious Hanging Gardens in the sixth century B.C. as a gift to his wife, Amytis, who was homesick for the beautiful vegetation and mountains of her native Media (the northwestern part of modern-day Iran). To make the desert bloom, a marvel of irrigation engineering would have been required. Scientists have surmised that a system of pumps, waterwheels and cisterns would have been employed to raise and deliver the water from the nearby Euphrates River to the top of the gardens.

The multiple Greek and Roman accounts of the Hanging Gardens, however, were second-hand–written centuries after the wonder’s alleged destruction. First-hand accounts did not exist, and for centuries, archaeologists have hunted in vain for the remains of the gardens. A group of German archaeologists even spent two decades at the turn of the 20th century trying to unearth signs of the ancient wonder without any luck. The lack of any relics has caused skeptics to question whether the supposed desert wonder was just an “historical mirage.”

However, Dr. Stephanie Dalley, an honorary research fellow and part of the Oriental Institute at England’s Oxford University, believes she has found evidence of the existence of the legendary Wonder of the Ancient World. In her soon-to-be-released book “The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced,” published by Oxford University Press, Dalley asserts that the reason why no traces of the Hanging Gardens have ever been found in Babylon is because they were never built there in the first place.

Dalley, who has spent the better part of two decades researching the Hanging Gardens and studying ancient cuneiform texts, believes they were constructed 300 miles to the north of Babylon in Nineveh, the capital of the rival Assyrian empire. She asserts the Assyrian king Sennacherib, not Nebuchadnezzar II, built the marvel in the early seventh century B.C., a century earlier than scholars had previously thought.

According to Oxford University, Dalley, who is a scholar in ancient Mesopotamian languages, found evidence in new translations of the ancient texts of King Sennacherib that describe his own “unrivaled palace” and a “wonder for all peoples.” He also mentioned a bronze water-raising screw—similar to Archimedes’ screw developed four centuries later—that could have been used to irrigate the gardens.

Recent excavations around Nineveh, near the modern-day Iraqi city of Mosul, have uncovered evidence of an extensive aqueduct system that delivered water from the mountains with the inscription: “Sennacherib king of the world…Over a great distance I had a watercourse directed to the environs of Nineveh.” Bas reliefs from the royal palace in Nineveh depicted a lush garden watered by an aqueduct, and unlike the flat surroundings of Babylon, the more rugged topography around the Assyrian capital would have made the logistical challenges in elevating water to the gardens far easier for an ancient civilization to overcome.

Dalley explains that the reason for the confusion of the location of the gardens could be due to the Assyrian conquering of Babylon in 689 B.C. Following the takeover, Nineveh was referred to as the “New Babylon,” and Sennacherib even renamed the city gates after those of Babylon’s entrances. Dalley’s assertions could debunk thoughts that the elusive ancient wonder was an “historical mirage,” but they could also prove that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are mislabeled and should truly be the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh.

Statue of Minerva at Green-Wood Cemetery (Credit: Getty Images)

The area that Green-Wood would later call home had already played a crucial role in American history—the August 1776 Battle of Brooklyn. Also known as the Battle of Long Island or Battle of Brooklyn Heights, it was the first major battle of the American Revolution to be fought after the issuing of the declaration and, with more than 42,000 combatants, was the largest battle of the war. The deadliest fighting took place on a 220-foot-tall bluff (the highest point in Brooklyn) that soon became known as Battle Hill. The Battle of Brooklyn was an American defeat, with the British launching a surprise flanking move to the rear of General George Washington’s vastly outnumbered troops, but it is positively remembered for Washington’s secretive, late-night evacuation of his forces to Manhattan, saving the Continental Army from certain destruction and avoiding what may have been an early and definitive defeat in the war. In 1920 a monument dedicated to the battle was erected on the site, facing in the direction of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

Two decades after the cemetery was opened, the United States found itself embroiled in the deadliest conflict in its history, and Brooklyn, like tens of thousands of cities and towns across the nation found itself scrambling to provide adequate burial spots for the seemingly never-ending stream of Civil War dead. They established a “soldier’s lot” that provided for free burial of those killed in the war—by 1865 more than 200 soldiers and sailors, many of them unknown, were buried there, with thousands of other veterans joining in the years ahead. In 2002, the cemetery launched its Civil War project, which, to date, has located the graves of more than 5,000 men who fought in the Civil War, installing new, permanent memorial markers for each one.

Despite the brutal conflict raging in much of the country, the mid-1800s were a high point for Green-Wood. With both Central Park and Prospect Park still under construction and few of New York’s iconic cultural buildings yet in existence, Green-Wood Cemetery, with its 478 acres of rolling hills, marble monuments and lush landscaping, became a popular escape from the already crowding city. By 1860, more than 500,000 people were visiting the cemetery every year, at a time when the combined population of Brooklyn and Manhattan was just over 1,000,000. In fact, only the majesty of Niagara Falls drew more New York tourists than the cemetery next door.

In order to maintain its reputation as the final resting place of New York’s finest citizens, organizers forbid the burial of anyone who had died in jail or been executed for a crime. Despite this provision, a number of unsavory characters managed to make their way past the cemetery gates, including mobster Albert Anastasia, notorious Bowery Boys gang leader William “Bill the Butcher” Poole and William “Boss” Tweed, the legendary leader of New York’s corrupt Tammany Hall political machine. The cemetery also has an unusual group of living residents: Hundreds of monk parakeets, believed to have escaped or been released into the wild in the 1960s, now call the area home. In fact, the flock has become so well known that nearby Brooklyn College has adopted them as the school’s mascot.

Today, 175 years after it was founded, Green-Wood remains a fully operational cemetery, with nearly 600,000 permanent residents. It also remains a huge tourist draw, attracting more than 200,000 visitors every year. While some people still come, as the earliest did, for a brief respite from the crowded city, others come to visit the graves of some of New York’s greatest. Among the most popular resting places are those of composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein and artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Baseball fans can pay their respects to more than 200 players and executives from the game’s early years, including Brooklyn Dodgers owner Charles Ebbets. Many visitors are also drawn to one of the cemetery’s most unusual features—the more than two dozen above-ground catacombs built into the side of a hill and designed to calm the Victorian-era fear of being buried alive. Among those buried there is Ward McAllister, the social arbiter who, alongside Caroline Astor, helped define New York’s Gilded Age society with his exclusive list of the city’s “400” elite—many of whom would join him in the hereafter in Brooklyn.

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Anna Jarvis, who had no children of her own, conceived of Mother’s Day as an occasion for honoring the sacrifices individual mothers made for their children. In May 1908, she organized the first official Mother’s Day events at a church in her hometown of Grafton, West Virginia, as well as at a Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia, where she lived at the time. Jarvis then began writing letters to newspapers and politicians pushing for the adoption of Mother’s Day as an official holiday. By 1912, many other churches, towns and states were holding Mother’s Day celebrations, and Jarvis had established the Mother’s Day International Association. Her hard-fought campaign paid off in 1914, when President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill officially establishing the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

Jarvis’ conceived of of Mother’s Day as an intimate occasion—a son or daughter honoring the mother they knew and loved—and not a celebration of all mothers. For this reason, she always stressed the singular “Mother’s” rather than the plural. She soon grew disillusioned, as Mother’s Day almost immediately became centered on the buying and giving of printed cards, flowers, candies and other gifts. Seeking to regain control of the holiday she founded, Jarvis began openly campaigning against those who profited from Mother’s Day, including confectioners, florists and other retailers. She launched numerous lawsuits against groups using the name Mother’s Day, and eventually spent much of her sizeable inheritance on legal fees.

In 1925, when an organization called the American War Mothers used Mother’s Day as an occasion for fundraising and selling carnations, Jarvis crashed their convention in Philadelphia and was arrested for disturbing the peace. Later, she even attacked First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for using Mother’s Day as an occasion to raise money for charity. By the 1940s, Jarvis had disowned the holiday altogether, and even actively lobbied the government to see it removed from the calendar. Her efforts were to no avail, however, as Mother’s Day had taken on a life of its own as a commercial goldmine. Largely destitute, and unable to profit from the massively successful holiday she founded, Jarvis died in 1948 in Philadelphia’s Marshall Square Sanitarium.

The sad history of Mother’s Day founder Anna Jarvis has done nothing to slow down the popularity—and commercialism—of the holiday. According to an annual spending survey conducted by the National Retail Federation, Americans will spend an average of $168.94 on Mother’s Day in 2013, a whopping 11 percent increase from 2012. In total, Mother’s Day spending is expected to reach $20.7 billion this year. In addition to the more traditional gifts (ranging from cards, flowers and candy to clothing and jewelry), the survey showed that an unprecedented 14.1 percent of gift-givers plan to buy their moms high-tech gadgets like smartphones and tablets.

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The addition of the spire also helps the building edge out Chicago’s Willis Tower (1,451 feet) as the tallest building in the western hemisphere and the third tallest in the world. Some architects and building experts have questioned One World Trade Center’s claim on the title, arguing that the section installed this morning should not count towards the building’s official height. However, Chicago’s Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, considered an authority in the field, has stated that One WTC’s spire, unlike ornamental and removable antennae that top other structures, is an integral architectural feature of the building’s construction.

The spire is comprised of 18 steel sections and three communication rings, and has been in installed in stages, with the heaviest ring—67 tons—put in place in January. The final section (with an American flag attached) was hoisted to the building’s roof last week in anticipation of today’s event. The spire’s LED-powered light will serve as a beacon to ward off aircraft and will provide state-of-the-art television and radio transmission services, replacing those destroyed in the 2001 terrorist attacks.

It’s been a long road for One World Trade Center. After a series of costly and contentious delays, construction finally began in April 2006. When it opens for business in 2014, it will include 2.6 million square feet of office space, much of which has already been leased to long-term tenants. It’s 45,000 tons of structural steel is six times as much as was used to build the Eiffel Tower, and thanks to its special state-of-the-art iCrete exterior, it can withstand almost three times more pressure than its New York City neighbors.

One World Trade Center is the largest of a series of buildings being erected in the area that became known as Ground Zero in the days and weeks following the attacks. The new, 16-acre site already includes the National 9/11 Memorial, which features two reflecting pools—standing in the footprints of the former Twin Towers—that pay homage to the 2,983 victims of both the 1993 and 2001 attacks. Four World Trade, a 72-story skyscraper on the site, is slated for completion later this year and work also continues on a memorial museum.

Railroad car carrying Abraham Lincoln's body, April 1865.

Back in the mid-1990s, while working at Chicago’s Benedictine University, Wesolowski served as the director of the Lincoln Train Project, which aimed to research and create a traveling museum exhibition about the 1865 funeral procession. As part of that project, he constructed a 15-foot (4.6-meter) scale model of the train that transported Lincoln’s body. Now in Arizona, Wesolowski was contacted by organizers of the 2015 Lincoln Funeral Train Project, who are building a full-size replica of Lincoln’s funeral car and intend to retrace the route of the procession as part of the 150th anniversary celebrations in 2015.

The original railcar that transported Lincoln’s body was sold at auction after the funeral procession and eventually bought by a series of private owners. In 1911, it was destroyed in a fire. Though many details are known about the car, its color was believed to be lost to history. As no color photographs, lithographs or contemporary paintings of the car exist, Wesolowski combed through newspaper articles and other written accounts, only to find that descriptions of the color were either missing or contradictory. Some accounts (written long after the Civil War) described it as “chocolate brown,” others as closer to a claret, or red-wine color. As Wesolowski points out, chocolate bars didn’t exist at the time of the procession, so chocolate brown at the time would have referred more to Dutch chocolate, which was more reddish brown in color than the chocolate we think of today.

Wesolowski finally hit pay dirt when he found a man from Minnesota who had inherited part of the original railcar’s window frame, perhaps one of the only pieces that survived the 1911 fire. He and his fellow researchers analyzed a small piece of the window trim under high-powered microscopes, then scraped away microscopic flecks of paint and compared them with pigment records and national color standards of the time. Through this painstaking process, they managed to identify the color as a brownish-red that Wesolowski describes as “dark maroon.” While celebrating his historic find, Wesolowski ruefully admits that his own 1995 model was “a little too much on the red side.”

Interestingly, Lincoln’s funeral car was originally intended to be the official presidential railroad car—the equivalent of Air Force One today. The U.S. Military Railroads built the car and delivered it to the president in early 1865. Tragically, Lincoln never rode in it until his death. After being shot on April 14 at Ford’s Theatre by the actor and rabid Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth, he was transported to a boarding house across the street from the theater, where he died early the next morning. His body lay in state at the White House and the rotunda of the Capitol building before being loaded into the railroad car, which had been modified to transport Lincoln’s coffin and the coffin of his young son Willie, who had died of typhoid fever in 1862. Willie had been buried in Georgetown’s Oak Hill Cemetery, but after his father’s assassination his coffin was removed and placed aboard the funeral train.

By military order, Lincoln’s funeral procession consisted of no fewer than nine cars, including the funeral car, officers’ car, six passenger cars and one baggage car. The procession left Washington on April 21, 1865, and proceeded across the Northern states, stopping for formal funeral ceremonies in 12 major cities. Smaller communities organized numerous other memorial services along the train’s route. According to a contemporary newspaper report, during the 12-day journey, which covered some 1,600 miles, there were no accidents—an unusual distinction for such a long journey in a time when trains lacked many of today’s safety features. On May 4, 1865, Lincoln’s body was placed in the reception vault at Springfield’s Oak Ridge Cemetery, though he wasn’t officially buried until 1901, when his cemetery monument was completed.

A wreath is laid during a a V-E Day ceremony at the World War II Memorial, May 8, 2013. (Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Joseph Stalin insisted on a second surrender ceremony.
As the fighting neared its end, the post-war political wrangling had already begun. When Soviet leader Joseph Stalin heard about the surrender ceremony in Reims, he was none too pleased. He declared that the U.S.S.R’s representative there, Ivan Susloparov, had not been authorized to sign the document and that the wording differed from a previous agreement Stalin had approved. Stalin, who ensured Soviet troops were the first to arrive in Berlin in an effort to secure control of the city before the Allies, also refused to accept a surrender signed on French soil, and declared the Reims document simply a preliminary surrender. Stalin’s remarks caused massive confusion; German radio announced that the Axis may have surrendered on the Western Front, but remained at war with the Soviets, and fighting continued throughout the day on May 8. Finally, just before midnight (in the early hours of the 9th, Moscow time), another hastily assembled ceremony got underway in Soviet-controlled Berlin. So, while much of the world would commemorate V-E Day on May 8, Victory Day in the Russia and its republics would be celebrated on May 9.

V-E Day sparked the deadly Halifax Riot.
Unfortunately, not every V-E Day celebration ended peacefully. For six years tensions had been rising in the critical Canadian port city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, as thousands of sailors flooded the city, more than doubling its population. With housing, commodities and entertainment in short supply, prices were high and tempers were extremely short. On May 7, when word reached the city of the impending surrender, business leaders, fearing an influx of servicemen in search of a celebration, decided to close all liquor stores, restaurants and stores, while the city suspended local transportation. Despite these concerns, the nearby military base’s commander gave more than 10,000 sailors temporary leave to enjoy the end of the war downtown. Angered at what they considered gross mistreatment by city residents, and with little in the way of peaceful diversions, the men eventually began to riot, looting retail stores and liquor outlets and starting dozens of fires. The Halifax Riot continued into May 8, with another 9,000 sailors teeming into town. By the time order was restored and the looting had stopped late that afternoon, three servicemen were dead, 360 had been arrested and the city had suffered more than $5 million in damages—$62 million in today’s money.

It made for a fine presidential birthday present.
On May 8, 1945, Harry Truman had been president for just 26 days—in fact, he had only moved into the White House the day before. Writing to his mother and sister, Truman informed them of the German surrender the day before (which he would announce to the country shortly after finishing the letter), and noted the day’s other, more personal, significance—it was his 61st birthday. When Truman met with reporters later that morning to discuss the surrender, he dedicated the victory to his predecessor Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had died less than a month earlier, then quietly slipped away to celebrate both his birthday and V-E Day with friends and aides.

The location of the surrender was known as France’s city of kings.
The French city of Reims, like much of Europe, had suffered mightily in the early 20th century: Nearly 80 percent of the city had been destroyed during World War I and again during the second world war, when the Nazi-occupied city was heavily bombed by Allied planes. Located in the northeast part of the country, it is today probably best known for producing some of the best champagne in the world. But for hundreds of years, Reims played a crucial (if ceremonial) role in French history. Beginning in 496 with the baptism of Clovis, Rheims was where the coronation of 33 French kings were consecrated, all using anointing oil that according to legend, had been provided directly by God. During the Hundred Years War, Joan of Arc liberated the city and had Charles VII crowned king in the city’s cathedral. The tradition continued until 1825, when Charles X became the last king to be consecrated in Reims.

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Led by Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist, the study attempts to sketch out a linguistic family tree that stretches back some 15,000 years to southern Europe. It was here, researchers believe, that this proto-language originated before splintering into a “superfamily” of seven language groups spanning Europe and Asia: Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, Kartvelian, Dravidian, Chuckchee-Kamchatkan and Eskimo-Aleut. These language groups, in turn, spawned hundreds of languages spoken today.

Pagel isn’t the first scientist to propose the “superfamily” language theory, and it’s a hotly debated topic. The conventional wisdom amongst linguists is that is incredibly difficult to trace the origins of words back very far because they evolve too rapidly. In fact, in 2007, Pagel and his team released a study that indicated that up to 50 percent of all words are likely to be replaced by a completely new word every 2,000-4,000 years. For example, German, English and Russian use the very similar wasser, water and voda to mean the same thing, but somewhere along the linguistic line French adopted eau instead. However, Pagel’s team also discovered something new. They found that a word’s linguistic shelf life was closely related to how much it was used in everyday conversation. The more frequently used, the more likely it was that a word was passed down, relatively intact, for tens of thousands of years—even as the world’s language tree was branching out across the globe.

Pagel’s latest study takes this theory another step further, examining these long lasting, or “ultraconserved” words in more detail. Using computer modeling to predict which words were in common enough usage that they should have changed remarkably little, they were able to compile a list of 23 similar sounding words with the same meaning, known as cognates, that we would instantly recognize today. Many of the words they predicted would be found across several language groups were, but to make the final list a word had to be traceable to at least four out of the seven “superfamily” sisters.

So, what words made the list? Well, our Ice Age ancestors needed to keep warm to survive, so it’s no surprise that the words “fire” and “ashes” and “bark” (as in trees) showed up in a least four languages. As they expected, researchers found that pronouns, including “that,” “who” and “we” showed up frequently—in fact, the word “I” showed up in six out of seven languages groups. There were, however, a few terms that left researchers scratching their heads. The dog may have been ancient man’s best friend, but the living organism that showed up on the list was the “worm.” And even researchers weren’t sure what to make of the appearance of the verb “to spit” on the list. And while this study won’t convince everyone of the existence of a single mother tongue, Pagel believes it provides compelling evidence of a group of Ice Age humans speaking a language that closely resembles those spoken today.

Cobbe portrait of William Shakespeare

The Native American coming-of-age story written by a former KKK member.
When it was first published in 1976, “The Education of Little Tree,” a supposed memoir of its orphaned author’s poor childhood spent with his Cherokee grandparents, became a huge financial and critical success. The book sold more than 9 million copies and was on school reading lists across the country. Imagine the shock then, when in 1991 it was revealed that the author, Forrest Carter, was in fact Asa Carter: former George Wallace speechwriter; member of the Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens Council; and 1970 Georgia white supremacist gubernatorial candidate. In fact, it was Carter who likely penned one of Wallace’s most famous—and incendiary—lines, pledging, “Segregation today, Segregation tomorrow, Segregation forever.” Carter’s name wasn’t the book’s only fiction. According to family members the Carters had no Native-American blood and the book’s depiction of the Cherokee language and traditions came under fire from tribe members. The revelations forced libraries and booksellers to properly reclassify “Little Tree” as fiction, but that hasn’t hurt its popularity—in the years since it been made into a movie and was briefly named to (and then removed from) Oprah Winfrey’s book club.

The famous—and fake—autobiography of the king of the wild frontier.
Frontiersman and U.S. Congressman David (Davy) Crockett had already captured the public’s imagination with his daring exploits long before his death at the Alamo in March 1836. The subject of several myth-building books and the co-author of his own autobiography (written to further his political career), it was a short volume published soon after his death that would help forever cement his reputation as one of America’s greatest folk heroes—even though the work was a fake. The book, “Col. Crockett’s Exploits and Adventures in Texas, written by himself,” claimed to have been taken directly from Crockett’s personal journal, recovered after his death in Texas, and contained wild accounts of Crockett’s final months, including his last stand at the Alamo. Published shortly after Crockett’s death, the book was an instant bestseller. It wasn’t until 1884 that the hoax was discovered and the true author revealed. As it turned out it had taken Richard Penn Smith, a lawyer, newspaper editor and minor playwright, just 24 hours to concoct the tall tale, working from a variety of accurate and fictitious sources and filling in the rest himself.

The long lost work of a literary lion.
In 1794, William Henry Ireland, the teenaged son of British engraver and Shakespeare aficionado Samuel Ireland, presented his father with a starling new discovery—a mortgage deed supposedly signed by William Shakespeare himself. The elder Ireland was understandably thrilled; even today remarkably little of Shakespeare’s life has been documented. William claimed he had discovered the document in a friend’s collection and hinted that there was more to come. Soon, the Irelands were in possession of a cache of documents that ranged from the mundane to the remarkable: receipts and contracts; correspondence between Shakespeare and a patron; a letter from Queen Elizabeth I singing the Bard’s praises; a love poem William “wrote” to his wife Anne Hathaway; and, amazingly, two previously undiscovered plays, “Henry II” and “Vortigern and Rowena.” The Irelands quickly became London celebrities, but it didn’t last long. Eagle-eyed experts soon pointed out a number of inaccuracies, including the fact that the writing on many of the documents did not match the few existing examples of Shakespeare’s handwriting, and in March 1796 the most respected Shakespeare scholar of the 19th century weighed in, publishing his own scathing critique of Ireland’s documents. The final blow came just a few days later when the public got its first—and last—glimpse at “Vortigen.” The performance of the play was a disaster, and left nobody convinced it could have been written by Shakespeare. Shortly thereafter, William Ireland confessed to the whole thing, claiming he had created the documents in an effort to please his cold, distant father.

The “get” of the century goes awry.
By the early 1970s, it had been more than a decade since billionaire businessman, filmmaker and aviator Howard Hughes had slipped out of public view and into a life as the world’s most famous—and eccentric—recluse. So in 1971, when author Clifford Irving approached McGraw-Hill with the news that he had been hired by Hughes to co-author his memoirs, the publishers, sensing the potential for a massive bestseller, jumped at the chance. Irving’s claims that Hughes—a fan of his earlier work—had personally contacted him to ghostwrite his autobiography, were backed up by a series of letters and “interviews” between the two men, which Irving and an accomplice had forged after studying examples of Hughes’ handwriting. Irving might have gotten away with it all, if not for Howard Hughes himself. When news of the book began to leak, a number of Hughes’ associates voiced their doubt about their boss’s involvement in the project and an investigation was launched. Finally, in January 1972, Hughes broke his long media silence when, in a telephone interview with journalists, he denounced Irving and his book, making it clear that not only had he not hired Irving write his memoirs, he had never even met him. In the end, Irving, his wife and another accomplice were convicted of fraud and Irving spent 17 months in jail. Following his release from prison, he continued his writing career, penning his own account of the Hughes debacle, “The Hoax,” which was made into a 2006 film starring Richard Gere.

A Russian hoax with a deadly outcome.
Consisting of 24 chapters that claim to document a plot for Jewish world domination, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion might just be the most dangerous hoax in history. The document was created by a member of the Russian secret police around the turn of the 20th century and cobbled together from a variety of unrelated sources including a book by Jewish author Theodore Herzl, an anti-Semitic German novel and a French satire that was actually an attack on Napoleon III. The Protocols, it was claimed, were the top-secret records of a meeting of Zionist leaders in Basel, Switzerland in 1897, during which a conspiracy was launched for a socialist, Jewish-led takeover of the financial, cultural and governmental levers of power. The Protocols were used as the basis for violent anti-Semitic programs in czarist Russia and then again by Communist leaders in their successful battle against the supposedly Jewish-dominated Bolsheviks. This purported connected between Jews and the “Red” menace led to the Protocol’s popularity in America–it was disseminated by branches of the U.S. government and appeared in several newspapers, including the Dearborn Independent, owned by auto tycoon Henry Ford. Ford, who also published a series of anti-Semitic articles, paid to have 500,000 copies of the Protocols printed, before court orders forced him to cease. By then, a number of exposes revealing the Protocols’ true origins had appeared, but this did little to stem interest. Adolf Hitler quoted them in his book “Mein Kampf” and the document soon became a powerful Nazi propaganda tool and was required reading for German schoolchildren. Today, despite overwhelming evidence that the document is a forgery and numerous attempts to ban the work, the discredited Protocols remain in print in parts of the world.

A Roman emperor gives unprecedented power to a pope—or does he?
As the conflict between the Catholic papacy and the crowned heads of Europe for control of the continent intensified in the Middle Ages, the church seemed to hold the upper hand thanks to a newly discovered (but ancient) document: The Donation of Constantine. In what turned out to be one of the most famous forgeries in European history, the church claimed that the “Donation” had transferred vast amounts of land and political control from Roman emperor Constantine I to Pope Sylvester I in the 4th century A.D. The gift was allegedly made after Sylvester cured the emperor of leprosy and converted him to Christianity. The “Donation” also declared the bishop of Rome the highest-ranking cleric in the empire, ceding him control of Rome and much of the western part of the empire. Supposedly, Constantine even offered Sylvester the crown as well, but the pontiff demurred. There’s just one problem with the story. Up until the 8th century—— nobody had ever heard of the “Donation.” Despite this, the church continued to insist that its power was legally valid. In the end, it was the Church itself who first admitted the document was a fake. Beginning in the 15th century, a number of clerics pointed out that the decree was riddled with linguistic inaccuracies and could not possibly date from the 4th century, though it took another 100 years for Rome to dismiss it entirely. It remains unknown just when and where the Donation of Constantine was created. The most likely theory is that it was written in the 8th century to support the gift of land given to Pope Stephen II by the newly crowned Frankish king, Pepin the Short—a valuable payoff for Stephen’s support.

Kevin Krigger riding Goldencents at the 2013 Santa Anita Derby. (Credit: Corbis)

On May 17, 1875, thousands of eager horse racing fans poured through the gates of Churchill Downs to get their first looks at Louisville’s sparkling new racetrack and cheer on the thoroughbreds in the featured race, the inaugural Kentucky Derby. Finely dressed gentlemen and ladies adorned in bright colors thronged the grandstand and hundreds of carriages filled the infield as the horses toed the line for the day’s second race. At the tap of a drum, fifteen horses thundered down the track. As excited shouts echoed across the oval, jockey Oliver Lewis spurred on his chestnut colt Aristides to a one-length victory in the fastest time ever recorded by a three-year-old horse.

That Lewis was a black man in the sport of horse racing was of little note. In fact, 13 of the 15 riders in that first Kentucky Derby were African-Americans. In the years following the Civil War, black jockeys dominated horse racing at a time when it was America’s most popular sport. African-American riders were the first black sports superstars in the United States, and they won 15 of the first 28 runnings of the Kentucky Derby.

For centuries, Southern plantation owners put slaves to work in their stables. Slaves cared for and raced their masters’ horses. They served as riders, grooms, and trainers and gained a keen horse sense from spending so much time in the stables. After emancipation, African-Americans continued to rule Southern race circuits while white immigrants from Ireland and England predominated in the North.

Former slaves and their sons starred at Churchill Downs in the 1800s. Not only was 1875 winner Aristides ridden by an African-American, he was trained by a former slave known for superb horsemanship, Ansel Williamson. Much like the equines he conditioned, Williamson was sold from owner to owner. In 1864, R.A. Alexander, proprietor of the famed Woodburn Stud Farm, purchased Williamson. After emancipation, the former slave continued to work with his former master as did a standout black jockey named Ed Brown who would train the 1877 Kentucky Derby winner Baden-Baden and eventually operate his own racing stable.

While the 1880s saw professional baseball draw the color line, not to be broken until the Brooklyn Dodgers called up Jackie Robinson in 1947, African-Americans continued to thrive on the track. No black riders, however, surpassed Isaac Murphy, considered by some to have been the greatest American jockey in history. The son of a former slave, Murphy won at an incredible clip, consistently winning more than a third of his mounts. In 1891, he became the first jockey to win successive runnings of the Kentucky Derby and the first rider to win three overall. A decade later, Jimmy Winkfield matched the back-to-back feat after riding Alan-a-Dale to victory in the 1902 Kentucky Derby.

Then, suddenly, the rich African-American tradition at Churchill Downs ended. The rising tide of institutional racism that swept across Gilded Age America finally seeped into the world of horse racing. Jim Crow was on the ascent, and the U.S. Supreme Court itself blessed segregation in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision. Emboldened by the societal changes, resentful white jockeys at northern raceways conspired to force blacks off the track, in some cases literally. During the 1900 racing season, white jockeys in New York warned trainers and owners not to mount any black riders if they expected to win. They carried out their threats by boxing in black jockeys and riding them into—and sometimes over—the rails. In a cruel irony, free sons of former slaves felt the sting of whips directed their ways during races. Race officials looked the other way. Owners realized that black riders had little chance of winning given the interference. Even Willie Simms, the only African-American jockey to win all three of the Triple Crown events, had to beg for a mount.

By 1904, black riders had been virtually banned from the major racetracks, including Churchill Downs, and the complexion of the Kentucky Derby had been changed forever. Black participation dwindled, and no African-American rode the race between 1921 and 2000, when Marlon St. Julien guided Curule to a seventh-place finish.

Barred from the United States, African-American jockeys took their talents to Europe. Winkfield, for instance, starred in Czarist Russia, and after the Russian Revolution he raced in Poland, Germany, and France before retiring with some 2,600 wins in an incredible career. No black man has won the Run for the Roses since Winkfield’s 1902 triumph. Krigger hopes to end the drought at the 139th Kentucky Derby, and as a memento of a once-proud history, he keeps a photograph of Winkfield in his locker as a constant reminder.

Facial reconstruction of the girl, known as "Jane." (Photo: Don Hurlbert/Smithsonian, Art by StudioEIS)

Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in North America, was founded in May of 1607 by 104 settlers who arrived aboard three ships: the Susan Constant, the Discovery and the Godspeed. They founded their colony on a narrow peninsula in the James River, constructing a wooden fort, a storehouse, a church and a number of houses. The Jamestown settlers suffered greatly from hunger and disease, and struggled to grow crops due to the region’s drought and their inexperience. They relied on supplies brought by later ships of settlers, as well as trade with local Native American tribes established through Captain John Smith’s negotiations with Algonquian leader Chief Powhatan. In October 1609, Smith was accidentally burned by gunpowder and forced to return to England for treatment; he would never return to Virginia.

Over the winter that followed, the situation for the remaining Jamestown colonists grew desperate. Relations had turned increasingly hostile with members of Powhatan’s empire, and the punishing drought continued. George Percy, who served as governor of Jamestown during the Starving Time, wrote in 1625 that the colonists ate their horses to survive and later moved on to dogs, cats and vermin such as rats and mice. Eventually, Percy wrote, they resorted to cannibalism: “…Notheinge was Spared to mainteyne Lyfe and to doe those things which seame incredible, as to digge upp deade corpes outt of graves and to eate them. And some have Licked upp the Bloode which hathe fallen from their weake fellowes.” In addition to Percy’s, five other accounts also refer to cannibalism at Jamestown during that time.

Earlier excavations at the Jamestown site discovered carcasses of dogs, cats and horses consumed during the winter of 1609-10, but no evidence of cannibalized human remains. Then last August, archaeologists working as part of the Preservation Virginia Jamestown Rediscovery project (which began in 1994) found skeleton fragments belonging to a girl around the age of 14 buried in a debris-filled cellar in the Jamestown fort. After examining the bones, Douglas Owsley, a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, found that the girl’s skeletal remains—including a skull, lower jaw and leg bone—all bear marks of an ax or cleaver and a knife, which he characterized as telltale marks of cannibalism.

On Wednesday, Owsley and lead archaeologist William Kelso presented their findings at a press conference at the National Museum of Natural History. Using technology such as computer graphics and CT scanning, along with sculpture materials and demographics, they have been able to reconstruct what the girl’s head may have looked like. They believe she probably came to the colony on one of six supply ships that arrived in June of 1609. She might have been a maidservant, though an isotope analysis of her bones revealed that she had eaten a high-protein diet, suggesting that she was in fact a gentleman’s daughter, and one of the colonists. As the scientists found no evidence that she was murdered, it seems likely that her hungry fellows ate her after she died of natural causes.

1. Chicago had to beat out a number of other cities to get the fair.
In the late 1880s, Chicago, St. Louis, New York and Washington, D.C. all submitted bids to host the 1893 fair, but the race was soon narrowed to New York and Chicago. Big Apple financial titans including Cornelius Vanderbilt, William Waldorf Astor and J. P. Morgan pledged to raise $15 million to cover the city’s expenses, with Chicago’s mercantile and meatpacking millionaires Marshall Field, Philip Armour and Gustavus Swift following suit. But when Lyman Gage, president of one of the largest banks in the Midwest, arranged for millions more in financing, momentum swung Chicago’s way and the U.S. Congress, which was in charge of the selection, awarded the city the exposition.

2. The fair produced a number of firsts.
Among the well-loved commercial products that made their debut at the Chicago World’s Fair were Cream of Wheat, Juicy Fruit gum and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Technological products that would soon find their way into homes nationwide, such as the dishwasher and fluorescent light bulbs, had early prototype versions on display in Chicago as well. The U.S. government also got in on the act, issuing the country’s first postcards and commemorative stamps and two new commemorative coins: a quarter and half dollar. The half dollar featured Christopher Columbus, in whose honor the fair had been staged, while the quarter depicted Queen Isabella of Spain, who had funded Columbus’ voyages—making it the first U.S. coin to honor a woman.

3. A Ferris wheel saved the fair from financial ruin.
Despite the money raised by private investors and the U.S. government (through the sale of the commemorative coins and stamps), squabbling amongst the organizers and numerous construction delays resulted in a huge budget deficit. Another costly mistake was the refusal to allow showman William “Buffalo Bill” Cody and his troupe of sharpshooters, cowboys and Native American performers to appear at the fair. A disgruntled Cody brought his Wild West extravaganza to Chicago anyway, setting up shop right outside the fairgrounds and siphoning off visitors. The fair’s precarious finances received a boost in June 1893 with the long-awaited debut of a new invention from Pittsburgh-based bridge builder and steel magnate George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. Intended to rival the highlight of the 1889 fair in Paris (the Eiffel Tower), Ferris’ 264-foot-tall wheel was an engineering marvel. It could fit 2,160 people at a time, and cost 50 cents to ride—twice the price of a ticket to the fair itself. The world’s first Ferris wheel proved so popular it was moved to Chicago’s North Side, where it remained in operation for 10 years before it was sold to the organizers of the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri.

4. It was the first exposition to have national pavilions.
Nearly 50 foreign countries and 43 states and territories were represented in Chicago. American pavilions touted the country’s diverse history, food and culture with exhibits like Virginia’s replica of George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, a century-old palm tree from California, a massive stained glass display by Louis Comfort Tiffany and a full-service Creole restaurant from Louisiana. Philadelphia even sent the Liberty Bell, as well as two replicas: one in rolled oats and one made of oranges. Not to be outdone, Norway sailed a full-sized replica of a Viking ship across the ocean for the fair, and German industrial giant Krupp spent the equivalent of more than $25 million in today’s money to mount a massive artillery display including a number of weapons that would later be used in World War I.

5. Chicago was home to both a serial killer and a political assassin during the fair.
Unbeknownst to festivalgoers, there was a mass murderer in their midst. For several years before and during the exposition, Dr. Henry Howard Holmes was busily luring victims (including a number of fairgoers) to a three-story, block-long building called the “Castle,” where they were tortured, mutilated and killed. Although H. H. Holmes’ heinous crimes weren’t discovered until after the fair ended, it’s believed that he was responsible for dozens of deaths in Chicago. It was another murder, however, that made headlines during the fair. On October 28, just two days before the exposition was set to close, Chicago’s recently reelected mayor, Carter Harrison Sr., was shot and killed by a disgruntled—and deranged—office seeker, Patrick Eugene Prendergast, who believed he was owed a political appointment by the mayor. With the city in shock, the fair’s organizers quickly decided to cancel the lavish closing ceremony in favor of a public memorial to the city’s popular slain leader.

6. The Prendergast case was the first murder trial for famed lawyer Clarence Darrow.
Darrow, who defended Prendergast, would go on to build a career as one of the nation’s preeminent criminal lawyers, representing Chicago murderers Leopold and Loeb and famously sparring with William Jennings Bryan while acting as defense attorney in the Scopes Monkey Trial. He wasn’t so lucky in the Prendergast case, however, unsuccessfully arguing that his client should be declared mentally unfit to stand trial. After his insanity defense failed, Prendergast was hanged on July 14, 1894. It was the only murder case in Darrow’s career to end in his client’s execution.

7. The Chicago World’s Fair played a key role in the creation of the City Beautiful movement.
At the core of the fair was an area that quickly became known as the White City for its buildings with white stucco siding and its streets illuminated by electric lights. Buildings and monuments by Charles McKim, Daniel Burnham, Augusts Saint-Gaudens and Richard Morris Hunt and lush landscaping by Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of New York’s Central Park, left a lasting impression on municipal planners looking for a way to bring open spaces and grand public buildings into crowded cities. Chicago itself was one of the first cities to adopt aspects of the new City Beautiful movement. Dozens of other cities across the country followed its lead, most notably Washington, D.C., where by 1902 plans were in place for a redesign of the city center that would result in the creation of the National Mall and its surrounding monuments.

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1. France had just re-taken control of the Louisiana Territory.
French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle first claimed the Louisiana Territory, which he named for King Louis XIV, during a 1682 canoe expedition down the Mississippi River. France ceded the land to Spain 80 years later—and lost most of its other North American holdings to Great Britain—following its defeat in the French and Indian War. In 1800, however, French leader Napoleon Bonaparte pressured Spain to sign the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso, under which he received the Louisiana Territory and six warships in exchange for placing the Spanish king’s son-in-law on the throne of the newly created kingdom of Etruria in northern Italy. When word of the secret agreement leaked out, President Jefferson became extremely worried. French-controlled Louisiana would become “a point of eternal friction with us,” he wrote in April 1802, and would force us to “marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.”

2. The United States nearly went to war over Louisiana.
Under a 1795 treaty with Spain, U.S. merchants and farmers could send their goods down the Mississippi River and store them in New Orleans without paying export duties. For many Americans, this so-called right of deposit was important enough that talk of war began proliferating when it was revoked in October 1802. Former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, using the pen name Pericles, wrote that the United States should “seize at once on the Floridas and New Orleans and then negotiate.” Meanwhile, the governor of the Mississippi Territory claimed that 600 militiamen would be enough to grab hold of New Orleans, and Federalist Senator James Ross of Pennsylvania advocated taking possession of the city with 50,000 men. Even Jefferson’s own party, the Democratic-Republicans, supported a resolution that would keep 80,000 men ready to march at a moment’s notice. This bravado arose largely because Napoleon’s powerful army had yet to arrive in Louisiana. Several thousand troops slated for the territory were instead being decimated by a slave rebellion and yellow fever in Saint Domingue (now Haiti), and additional troops were stuck in a Dutch port waiting for the winter ice to clear.

3. The United States never asked for all of Louisiana.
On the advice of a French friend, Jefferson offered to purchase land from Napoleon rather than threatening war over it. He instructed his two chief negotiators, special envoy James Monroe and minister Robert Livingston, to pay up to $9.375 million for New Orleans and Florida (the later of which remained under Spanish control). If that failed, they were to try to get back the right of deposit. Livingston also floated a plan for the United States to take over the two-thirds of Louisiana located north of the Arkansas River, which he argued would serve as a crucial buffer between French Louisiana and British Canada. But although the Americans never asked for it, Napoleon dangled the entire territory in front of them on April 11, 1803. A treaty, dated April 30 and signed May 2, was then worked out that gave Louisiana to the United States in exchange for $11.25 million, plus the forgiveness of $3.75 million in French debt .

4. Even that low price was too steep for the United States.
Napoleon wanted the money immediately in order to prepare for war with Great Britain. But despite landing Louisiana for less than three cents an acre, the price was more than the United States could afford. As a result, it was forced to borrow from two European banks at 6 percent interest. It did not finish repaying the loan until 1823, by which time the total cost for the Louisiana Purchase had risen to over $23 million.

5. The Louisiana negotiations helped put James Monroe in the proverbial poor house.
After spending three years as governor of Virginia, Monroe purportedly hoped to retire from politics and make some money opening a law practice and developing his landholdings. Barely a month went by, however, before Jefferson nominated him as a special envoy to help Livingston with the Louisiana Purchase negotiations. “Were you to refuse to go, no other man could be found who does this,” Jefferson wrote to him in January 1803, adding that “all eyes, all hopes, are now fixed on you.” In order to raise money for the passage to France, a cash-strapped Monroe sold off his silver flatware, porcelain plates and a white-and-gold china tea set. The future president, who served from 1817 to 1825, remained in debt for the rest of his life, even after receiving a $30,000 congressional appropriation for “public losses and sacrifices.”

6. Napoleon’s brothers tried to talk him out of it.
A few days before Monroe arrived in Paris, Napoleon’s brothers Joseph and Lucien found out about his plans to sell off Louisiana. According to Lucien’s memoirs, the two of them visited Napoleon at Tuileries Palace, where they found him bathing in rose-scented water. When Joseph intimated that he would lead the opposition to the deal, Napoleon accused him of being “insolent.” He then purposely soaked his brothers by falling backwards in the tub. The argument allegedly continued after Joseph went home to change. Lucien declared that “if I were not your brother I would be your enemy,” and Napoleon responded by smashing a snuffbox on the floor.

7. Many Americans likewise opposed the Louisiana Purchase.
Members of the Federalist Party, already a significant minority in both houses of Congress, worried that the Louisiana Purchase would further reduce their clout. In summing up the feelings of his cohorts, former congressman Fisher Ames wrote, “We are to give money of which we have too little for land of which we already have too much.” Only one Federalist senator supported ratification of the Louisiana Purchase treaty, which passed by a 24-7 vote. Jefferson himself had doubts about the legality of the Louisiana Purchase, saying he had “stretched the Constitution until it cracked.”

8. The treaty did not state specific boundaries.
When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark departed from St. Louis in May 1804 to explore the northern portion of Louisiana, the exact boundaries of the newly acquired territory had yet to be hashed out. Based on an analysis of old French maps, the United States claimed West Florida, an area along the Gulf Coast in present-day Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Spain disputed this until 1819, when the Adams-Onís Treaty gave the United States all of Florida in exchange for surrendering its claim to Texas. In the north, Great Britain and the United States agreed in 1818 to establish the 49th parallel as the border between them from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains.

2. Hearst helped pioneer “yellow journalism.”
Modeling his business on that of his idol-turned-rival Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, Hearst filled his papers with increasingly sensationalistic headlines and lurid stories of sex, murder and other vices—many of which had little basis in reality. Sometimes the correspondents themselves were entirely fictitious. As the circulation war between the two media titans intensified, they turned their attention to a sure-fire newsstand bonanza—war. When rebellion broke out in Spanish-controlled Cuba in 1895, both Hearst and Pulitzer seized the moment, printing page after page of anti-Spanish propaganda accusing the European nation of committing heinous crimes. When the naval vessel USS Maine, sent to maintain a peaceful transition to Cuban autonomy, exploded and sank in Havana Harbor in February 1898, Hearst and Pulitzer openly railed against Spain, and by April, the Spanish-American War was underway. While many historians believe that the United States entered the conflict to protect its financial interests in the region, and not because of headlines in New York City, there is little doubt that Hearst helped fan the flames of war.

3. But he also championed the cartoon.
In fact, the term “yellow journalism” likely has its origins in a comic-strip war. One of Hearst’s first moves when he set up shop in New York was to poach a Pulitzer cartoonist who had created the “Hogan’s Alley” series, which featured a character nicknamed the “Yellow Kid.” Not to be outdone, Pulitzer hired another artist to continue the series at his paper, resulting in dueling Yellow Kids in the city. Hearst was deadly serious about the “funnies.” Over the next three decades, he introduced hundreds of new comic strips, many of them starring iconic characters such as Krazy Kat, Blondie, Prince Valiant, Beetle Bailey and Flash Gordon. He even published the first cartoon featuring Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse. Today, the Hearst-founded King Features Syndicate continues to distribute cartoons to more than 5,000 newspapers nationwide.

4. He founded his own political party.
In 1903, Hearst began the first of two terms as a Democratic congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives. Hearst, who considered himself a populist reformer, created the Municipal Ownership League in 1904 in an effort to combat the rampant corruption and graft in New York politics. The League fielded dozens of candidates for state and location offices, but the ticket largely went down to defeat when faced with opposition from the Tammany Hall political machine and Hearst’s fellow New York publishers (who were more than eager to teach him a lesson). Hearst himself narrowly lost the race for New York City mayor to incumbent George B. McClellan Jr., in one of the most tainted elections in the city’s history. The Municipal Ownership League soon dissolved, and Hearst would make two more failed attempts for office.

5. Hearst lost control of his own company.
Hearst’s career reached its zenith in the 1920s, but his fall was swift and painful. Rampant expansion may have bolstered his power and reputation, but few of his papers actually made money, and the onset of the Great Depression hit the company hard. After a series of loans failed to stabilize it, Hearst was forced to sell off many of the papers, shutter his film studio and even auction off parts of his enormous collection of art and antiques. He was eventually removed from power and forced to report to a board of directors who maintained control of his once-sprawling empire.

6. When Hearst hit rock bottom, his longtime mistress bailed him out.
The married Hearst first met Marion Davies when she was a teenage showgirl in New York. In 1918, he formed a movie studio, Cosmopolitan Pictures, to produce and promote Davies’ films. She quickly became a screen favorite, starring in lush period pieces as well as comedies. Davies and Hearst, who would remain together until his death in 1951 (though they never married), entertained lavishly in their many homes. Davies may have made a name for herself as the ditzy star of lightweight fare, but off screen she was a savvy businesswoman who amassed a fortune through shrewd investments in California real estate. When Hearst’s empire began to crumble in the 1930s, it was Davies who came to the rescue of the man she affectionately called Pops, writing him a check for $1 million.

7. Hearst Castle once housed the world’s largest private zoo.
Located on a parcel of land that at one point was nearly half the size of Rhode Island, Hearst’s lavish spread in San Simeon, California was an all-consuming passion for the publisher. In 1919, he hired Julia Morgan, a civil engineer and the first woman licensed to practice architecture in California, to work on the project. Together, Hearst and Morgan would spend nearly three decades designing the main house, dozens of outbuildings and even a private zoo—the largest in the world at one point. The compound’s eclectic style, which mixed Spanish Revival with older Renaissance and Baroque elements, was constantly in flux. Buildings were repeatedly torn down and rebuilt to suit Hearst’s ever-changing demands; the famed Neptune Pool was rebuilt at least three times. Construction continued for 28 years until Hearst, in ill health, left the compound in 1947, but it was never fully completed. While most of the hundreds of animals in Hearst’s menagerie were resettled elsewhere, others remained on site, and their descendants can be seen roaming the grounds and nearby lands today.

8. “Citizen Kane,” the film based on Hearst’s life, was initially a flop—thanks to Hearst himself.
Directed by 24-year-old Hollywood wunderkind Orson Welles and co-written by Welles and screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, “Citizen Kane” offered up a not-so-thinly veiled look at the life (and loves) of the Hearst-like media magnate Charles Foster Kane. While many critics now consider the movie a cinematic masterpiece, the reaction was far different when it first came out in 1941. Well aware of Hearst’s power, influence and temper, the filmmakers completed “Citizen Kane” in secret—on the lot it was simply known as project RKO 281. When Hollywood got wind of the film’s contents, the response was swift and furious. It wasn’t Welles’ portrayal of the ruthless Kane that truly infuriated Hearst; rather, it was the negative characterization of the Marion Davies stand-in that really sent him over the edge. He forbade his newspapers from running promotional ads for the film (dooming it at the box office) and pressured his fellow studio moguls to rally to his cause. The executives—no fans of the brash, arrogant Welles—happily complied. In fact, MGM head Louis B. Mayer offered to pay RKO Studios $842,000 if they would agree to burn the film’s negative. Luckily for film buffs, the studio refused, but the damage had already been done. “Citizen Kane” was shown in just a few theaters and barely broke even. While it was nominated for nine Academy Awards, it won just a single statue, and it would be more than two decades before the film’s reputation recovered.

President Barack Obama congratulates host Jimmy Kimmel at the 2012 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner as WHCA chief Caren Bohan looks on. (Credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/GettyImages)

1. Even an assassination attempt couldn’t stop the Gipper from (sort of) showing up.
The Correspondents’ Dinner has long been a unique mix of politics and entertainment, so it’s perhaps not surprising that when a Hollywood actor became president, nothing could keep him entirely away. In April 1981, less than a month after John Hinckley’s assassination attempt, Ronald Reagan, recently released from the hospital and recuperating at Camp David, phoned in to the festivities to deliver his remarks. Joking with WHCA president and longtime CBS White House correspondent Bob Pierpoint, the president thanked the press for their warm wishes and offered up a bit of sage advice, quipping, “when somebody tells you to get in a car quick, do it.” The men also poked fun at the “suspicious” absence from the dinner of Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who had received criticism for his declaration that it was he, and not Vice President George H.W. Bush, who had been in charge following Reagan’s shooting.

2. The dinner has been canceled only a handful of times.
The first cancellation occurred in 1930, when former president and recently retired Chief Justice William Howard Taft died on the morning of the WHCA dinner, followed hours later by the unexpected death of another Supreme Court justice, Edward Terry Sanford. The dinner was canceled again in 1942 after America’s entry into World War II. When it returned the following year, strict rationing was already in place and even President Franklin Roosevelt was asked to pay for his own ticket. The last time the event was canceled was in 1951—at the request of President Harry Truman—due to the “uncertainty of world events” during the Korean War.

3. A former All-American football player-turned president was a pretty good sport.
In 1975, Gerald Ford, who had been the butt of many a joke about his supposed physical clumsiness, decided to (literally) turn the tables on his tormenter-in-chief, Saturday Night Live star Chevy Chase. At that year’s Radio and Television Correspondents’ dinner, Ford—a University of Michigan gridiron standout who had turned down professional offers from both the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions—rose to deliver his remarks and purposely stumbled, grabbing a tablecloth and sending dishes and silverware tumbling into the nearby Chase’s lap. He then pretended to trip and scatter his notes on the way to the podium, before righting himself and making a play on one of the comedian’s trademark phrases, stating, “I’m Gerald Ford. And you’re not.” Ford continued to be game for a laugh at his own expense the following year when, at his request, Chevy Chase was asked to perform at the WHCA dinner itself.

4. Even the White House correspondents liked Ike.
Comedian Bob Hope, who had spent much of World War II entertaining the troops with the USO and who considered Dwight Eisenhower his personal hero, was invited to emcee one of the first WCHA dinners of the Eisenhower administration. In 1954, composer Irving Berlin unveiled a new song, written in the president’s honor, called “I Still Like Ike.” And five years later the dinner, traditionally held in late April, had a one-time only date shift, moving to October to coincide with Eisenhower’s 69th birthday.

5. Richard Nixon personally requested a Disneyland band one year.
A wide array of artists have entertained guests over the years, including Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Milton Berle, Nat King Cole and Benny Goodman. During Lyndon B. Johnson’s years in office a bit of 1960s counterculture crept in via edgy comedians like Richard Pryor and the Smothers Brothers. In 1969, however, with the country divided over the Vietnam War, southern California native Nixon asked for more family friendly fare—the Disneyland-based Golden Horseshoe Revue. In fact, it wasn’t until 1983 that the current tradition of hiring a stand-up comedian as host was established.

6. It was an all-male affair until 1962.
Despite the fact that some of its dues-paying members were women, it took more than 40 years to integrate the dinner. Efforts had been made earlier, and in 1950 Undersecretary of the Navy Dan Kimball had hosted an event for female reporters unable to attend the WHCA party. In 1961, Helen Thomas, a UPI reporter and the first woman to cover the White House, publicly protested the continued exclusion of women. The following year, she pressured President John F. Kennedy into agreeing to boycott that year’s festivities unless women were invited. Kennedy agreed, and the WCHA (which Thomas herself became president of in 1975) allowed female journalists to attend for the first time.

7. It’s a pretty important night for the organization.
While many people think of it as simply a party, the WHCA uses the event (and its pricey tickets) as a fundraiser for a series of scholarships it provides to aspiring journalists. It’s also an opportunity for them to reward their fellow writers with a series of awards for regional and national journalistic excellence in print, broadcast and digital media.

The neutron’s companion, the white dwarf, is the remains of an aging star that lost its atmosphere and is gradually cooling down. White dwarfs are typically very dense as well (packing about half the sun’s mass into an object slightly larger than Earth) but this particular one is relatively lightweight: At seven times the size of Earth, it has only 17 percent of the sun’s mass.

This rare binary pair, identified as PSR J0348+0432, has such an extreme gravitational relationship that it provides a rare opportunity to test Einstein’s general theory of relativity. General relativity holds that massive objects warp space-time around them, so that objects (and even light) will travel along curved paths when they pass nearby. The theory also predicts that a close binary system such as this one will radiate gravitational energy, forming ripples in space-time (or gravitational waves) that cause the length of the orbit system to change over time.

Since the neutron star in PSR J0348+0432 generates so strong a gravitational field, scientists thought they might see deviations from Einstein’s predictions in the motion of the orbiting white dwarf. Yet after taking extraordinarily precise measurements with both optical and radio telescopes, a team from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany announced this week that the orbital change of the binary pair—a slowdown of 8 millionths of a second per year—precisely matches Einstein’s predictions. By contrast, their findings did not match slightly different predictions of the white dwarf’s motion offered by competing models of gravity.

The team’s conclusions, published in today’s issue of the journal Science, won’t help physicists solve the still-existing contradictions between general relativity and quantum theory. However, they do suggest that ongoing efforts to detect elusive gravitational waves based on Einstein’s predictions seem to be on the right track. Scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), a pair of observatories in Louisiana and Washington State, have been searching the cosmos for these waves, which happen from cataclysmic events like neutron star collisions and cannibalistic black holes, but have yet to find them.

Like most other Federal Reserve notes, the $100 bill was introduced in 1914, featured a small profile shot of Benjamin Franklin on the front and included figures meant to represent America, peace, labor and commerce on the reverse. These early bills were about 30% larger than today’s versions, measuring around 7.4 x 3.1 inches. The first series of redesigns took place in 1929 and introduced a number of changes: Alexander Hamilton, America’s first treasury secretary, replaced Andrew Jackson on the $10 bill; Jackson himself replaced President Grover Cleveland on the $20 bill; Cleveland, alas, was shoved over to the $1,000 bill, which was discontinued soon thereafter; the bills were reduced to their current size of 6.1 x 2.6 inches; and the overall design of the notes, which had previously varied significantly, was standardized.

With a few exceptions, such as small tweaks to the text on existing bills and the introduction of the $1 bill in 1963, the 1929 designs remained in place for more than 65 years, until the next significant wave of changes was released beginning in 1996. Commonly known as the “large portrait” series due to the increased size of the individuals’ images, they also included a series of anti-counterfeit measures, including watermarks and embedded security threads.

Almost as soon as the last of these bills hit the streets, however, the Treasury was hard at work on yet another round of tweaks. Launched in the wake of the September 11th attacks, these latest designs include additional “symbols of freedom” on the fronts: the Great Seal of the United States ($5); the Statue of Liberty’s torch ($10);  an eagle ($20); ; the American flag ($50); and the Declaration of Independence ($100). The most significant changes to these bills, or at least the most visually obvious, were the removal of ovals surrounding the portraits and primary figures on the reverse sides of the bills, as well as the introduction of a background color unique to each denomination, putting an end to the predominantly drab, green and black color scheme. America’s new currency now more closely resembles the visually distinctive money used in the rest of the world. Abe Lincoln is surrounded by splashes of purple and yellow; Mr. Hamilton features orange, yellow and red; “Old Hickory” Jackson is flanked by green, peach and blue; and President Grant’s facelift includes shades of blue, red and yellow. Despite the fact that it is by far the most highly circulated note, there are currently no plans to redesign the $1 bill.