Though a connection between the Celtic high priests and England's Stonehenge has never been reliably established, many people who identify as modern-day Druids still gather at the mighty monument every midsummer. (Credit: Andrew Dunn/Wikimedia Commons)

Ancient Romans
In the days leading up to the summer solstice, ancient Romans celebrated the Vestalia festival, which paid tribute to Vesta, the goddess of the hearth. Rituals included the sacrifice of an unborn calf remove from its mother’s womb. This was the only time of the year when married women were allowed to enter the sacred temple of the vestal virgins and make offerings to Vesta there.

Ancient Chinese
The ancient Chinese participated in a ceremony on the summer solstice to honor the earth, femininity and the force known as yin. It complemented the winter solstice ritual, which was devoted to the heavens, masculinity and yang. Ancient Northern and Central European Tribes Many Germanic, Slavic and Celtic pagans welcomed summer with bonfires, a tradition that is still enjoyed in Germany, Austria, Estonia and other countries. Some ancient tribes practiced a ritual in which couples would jump through the flames to predict how high that year’s crops would grow.

Vikings
Midsummer was a crucial time of year for the Nordic seafarers, who would meet to discuss legal matters and resolve disputes around the summer solstice. They would also visit wells thought to have healing powers and build huge bonfires. Today, “Viking” summer solstice celebrations are popular among both residents and tourists in Iceland.

Native Americans
Many Native American tribes took part in centuries-old midsummer rituals, some of which are still practiced today. The Sioux, for instance, performed a ceremonial sun dance around a tree while wearing symbolic colors. Some scholars believe that Wyoming’s Bighorn medicine wheel, an arrangement of stones built several hundred years ago by the Plains Indians, aligns with the solstice sunrise and sunset, and was therefore the site of that culture’s annual sun dance.

Maya and Aztecs
While not much is known of how exactly the mighty pre-Columbian civilizations of Central America celebrated midsummer, the ruins of their once-great cities indicate the great significance of that day. Temples, public buildings and other structures were often precisely aligned with the shadows cast by major astrological phenomena, particularly the summer and winter solstices.

Druids
The Celtic high priests known as the Druids likely led ritual celebrations during midsummer, but—contrary to popular belief—it is unlikely that these took place at Stonehenge, England’s most famous megalithic stone circle. Still, people who identify as modern Druids continue to gather at the monument for the summer solstice, winter solstice, spring equinox and autumn equinox.

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1. The flag’s original design remained the same from 1777 to 1795.
On June 14, 1777, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, passed the Flag Act of 1777, a resolution creating an official flag for a new nation still struggling to gain its independence from Britain. It stated, in part, that America’s flag “…be made of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.” And the design pretty much stayed that way for nearly two decades. The first significant change came in January 1794, when two stars and two stripes were added to reflect the recent admissions of Kentucky and Vermont to the Union. It was this 15-star, 15-stripe flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that later became known as the Star-Spangled Banner, after seeing it fly over Ft. McHenry during the War of 1812. In 1818, another design went into effect, permanently setting the number of stripes at 13 (in honor of the original colonies) and allowing for new stars to be added ceremonially each July 4 should a new state be admitted.

2. In American history, June 14 isn’t just a day to honor the flag.
While the 1777 resolution establishing a national flag was the impetus for the national holiday known as Flag Day, that date also holds great significance for the U.S. Army. Two years earlier, just weeks after the Battles of Lexington and Concord kicked off the American Revolution, the Congress formally authorized the enlistment of soldiers to fight in what became known as the Continental Army. So this Friday, remember to wish the U.S. Army a happy 238th birthday.

3. Only one state observes Flag Day as a legal state holiday.
It took more than a century after the creation of America’s flag for anyone to suggest a holiday to honor it. In 1885, a Wisconsin grade school teacher named Bernard Cigrand held what’s believed to be the first recognized Flag Day, which began a lifelong quest to establish a formal holiday. Woodrow Wilson issued a presidential proclamation calling for a June 14 commemoration in 1916, but it wasn’t until 1949, 16 years after the death of the Cigrand, the “father of Flag Day,” that Congress passed legislation as a national holiday. It is not, however, a federal holiday. In fact, it’s only an official holiday in any capacity in one state. Perhaps fittingly, it’s Pennsylvania, where the flag was officially created and legend holds (though it’s wholly unsubstantiated) that local seamstress Betsy Ross sewed the original flag.

4. The only casualties at Fort Sumter were flag-related.
More than 620,000 Americans lost their life during the Civil War, but only two of those fatalities occurred during the first battle of the war. When Confederate forces began a bombardment of Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861, Union commander Major Robert Anderson held out for more than 34 hours before finally surrendering the fort. One of Anderson’s conditions for surrendering was that his men be allowed to observe a 100-gun salute as the American flag was lowered from the fort. During the ceremony, a nearby pile of rifle cartridges exploded, killing two soldiers (the first fatalities of the war) and injuring four others. Anderson carried the flag, badly damaged during the bombardment, to the north where it was frequently displayed to boost morale. Four years to the day after Anderson’s surrender, he once again raised the flag over Sumter after the Union had recaptured the fort. Just a few hours later, Abraham Lincoln would be fatally shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre.

5. There are very specific colors used to create the flag.
It’s the Textile Color Card Association of the United States (TCCA) that creates the palate of colors used for both private and public institutions, and the U.S. Army that issues a reference guide of acceptable shades to be used in local, state and national flags. So if you’re trying to produce a truly authentic American flag, you’ll need to use the exact shades of white, “Old Glory Red” and “Old Glory Blue,” specified in the guide. Although mass-market flag manufacturers have been known to fudge a bit and use the more-easily processed Pantone Matching Shades of Dark Red (193 C) and Navy Blue (281 C).

6. If early politicians had their way, you would see a lot less of the American flag.
While the battle over perceived desecration of the flag remains a hot button issue today, some of the first anti-desecration measures had little to do with flag burning or other destructive measures. In fact, 19th century lawmakers were more concerned with the already rampant use of the flag as a promotional tool by advertisers, which they considered treating the banner with “contempt.” Many of the first statues passed by state and local governments aimed to restrict use of the flag’s image on commercial products. In 1907, the Supreme Court upheld these laws in the case of Halter v. Nebraska, and many of them remain on the books today.

Lower Manhattan's Five Points neighborhood.

One of Gotham’s earliest known criminal outfits, the Forty Thieves operated between the 1820s and 1850s in the Five Points neighborhood of Manhattan. This band of Irish thugs, pickpockets and ne’er-do-wells first came together in a grocery store and dive bar owned by a woman named Rosanna Peers. Under the leadership of Edward Coleman—a notorious rogue who was later hanged for beating his wife to death—what started as a motley group of petty criminals soon blossomed into a feared street gang with its own rules and organizational structure. Members of the Forty Thieves reportedly had quotas that required them to steal a certain amount of goods each day or face expulsion. What’s more, the gang even franchised itself in the form of the “Forty Little Thieves,” a collection of juvenile apprentices who served as pickpockets and lookouts.

2. The Bowery Boys

New York's Bowery in the late 19th century.

One of the most storied gangs of New York, the Bowery Boys were a band of lower Manhattan toughs who clashed with the Irish Five Points gangs during the 1840s, 50s and 60s. Unlike some of their criminal counterparts, most of the Bowery Boys dressed in elegant clothing and held legitimate employment as printers, mechanics and other apprentice tradesmen. But when they weren’t on the job, these young hoodlums haunted the saloons and back alleys of the Bowery and engaged in bloody turf wars with rival gangs like the Dead Rabbits.

The Bowery Boys often acted more as a political club than a mob, and many of their brawls were with supporters of rival politicians. The gang would sometimes even station its members at polling places to intimidate voters into supporting a particular candidate. In return, the gang’s home district would receive money and preferential treatment once the politician was in office.

3. The Dead Rabbits

Lower Manhattan c. 1845.

This crew of Irish immigrants was one of the most feared gangs to emerge from Five Points, so named for its location at the intersection of five crooked, narrow, downtown streets. For more than 60 years, Five Points (near modern-day Chinatown) was one of the city’s most notorious—and dangerous–neighborhoods. Throughout the 1850s, the Dead Rabbits excelled at robbery, pick-pocketing and brawling—particularly with their sworn enemies, the Bowery Boys. The group was made up mostly of young men, but it wasn’t unheard of for women to join in on the violence. According to legend, one of the most feared Dead Rabbits was “Hell-Cat Maggie,” a woman who reportedly filed her teeth to points and wore brass fingernails into battle. While the Rabbits mostly dabbled in petty crime, they were also famous for the events of July 4, 1857, when one of their street fights with the Bowery Boys turned into a bloody riot that killed a dozen people.

The Dead Rabbits supposedly began as an offshoot of another gang called the Roach Guards, but some historians have suggested the two were actually one and the same. In fact, one popular theory argues that the term “dead rabbit” was simply a pejorative used by the Bowery Boys and the New York press in reference to members of the Roach Guards and other Five Points gangs.

4. The Daybreak Boys

New York's East River, stomping grounds of the Daybreak Boys.

New York’s 19th-century gang activity wasn’t limited to the rough and tumble streets of Manhattan—it also extended into the waters of the East River. The Daybreak Boys were one of the most ruthless crews of “river pirates” who preyed on the city’s booming shipping industry during the late 1840s and 1850s. As their name suggests, the Daybreakers— whose leaders went by such colorful monikers as Cow-legged Sam McCarthy and Slobbery Jim —preferred to strike in the hours before dawn. Using small rowboats, these juvenile gangsters would silently row their way alongside anchored shipping vessels. Sneaking aboard, they would steal as much cargo as they could before returning to their dinghies and escaping to a rendezvous point at a gin mill in the Fourth Ward.

To prove their mettle, prospective members were reportedly required to have already killed at least once before joining the group, and the Daybreak Boys were supposedly responsible for more than 30 murders— it wasn’t unusual for an unlucky watchman to end up with a slit throat or a fractured skull during one of their robberies. The gang reportedly fell apart in the late 1850s after a police crackdown, but not before they had claimed thousands of dollars in booty.

5. The Whyos

Members of the Whyos Gang

Formed from the remnants of several defunct Five Points outfits, the Whyos were one of the most dominant New York street gangs from the 1860s to the 1890s. The group started out as a loose collection of petty thugs, pickpockets and murderers, but by the 1880s they had graduated to more high-class crime like counterfeiting, prostitution and racketeering. As their grip on Manhattan tightened, many of the gang even opened legitimate side businesses such as casinos and saloons.

They may have masqueraded as upstanding citizens, but the Whyos were still notoriously tough customers. One hood by the name of “Dandy” Johnny Dolan supposedly carried a copper eye gouger and wore shoes outfitted with axe blades. Another Whyo called Piker Ryan was once caught with a detailed price list of all the gruesome deeds he could be hired to perform. A simple punch to the face was only two bucks, chewing off an ear cost $15 and a murder—which Ryan’s catalogue described as “doing the big job”—went for the princely sum of $100.

6. The Five Points Gang

Paul Kelly, founder of the Five Points Gang.

This legendary mob came together in the 1890s, when the Italian gangster Paul Kelly united the remaining members of the Dead Rabbits, Whyos and other Five Points gangs under his own banner. From his headquarters in the New Brighton Dance Hall, Kelly marshaled an army of 1,500 thugs in bloody turf wars with his archrivals, a Jewish gang run by the famed hood Monk Eastman. The two groups engaged in constant brawls and once even squared off in a massive gun battle under the Second Avenue elevated train line.

When they weren’t participating in Wild West-style shootouts, the Five Pointers ran widespread robbery, racketeering and prostitution rings. They also dabbled in legitimate front businesses and worked as strong-arm men for the corrupt Tammany Hall political machine. The gang’s influence eventually waned in the 1910s, but not before they had helped train the next generation of mob bosses. Among others, the Five Pointers initiated thugs like Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and Johnny Torrio into a life of organized crime.

7. The Eastman Gang

Eastman Gang founder Monk Eastman.

Led by the Jewish mobster Edward “Monk” Eastman, the Eastman Gang rose to become one of New York’s most feared criminal organizations in the 1890s. As the kings of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the 1,200 “Eastmans” raked in huge profits running brothels, protection rackets, drug rings and even murder-for-hire operations. Like their rivals in the Five Points Gang, Eastman’s boys also teamed with corrupt politicians in voter fraud. In return, the city’s crooked lawmakers turned a blind eye to the gang’s illicit activities.

A career criminal, Monk Eastman delighted in violence and was known to personally dish out beatings to his enemies. This hands-on approach proved to be his undoing in 1904, when he was arrested and jailed for a simple street mugging. With their leader behind bars, the Eastmans splintered into several smaller, less powerful factions in the 1910s. Monk Eastman later enlisted in the armed forces and forged a legendary reputation fighting in the trenches of World War I. But while he returned to New York a war hero, the former gang boss’s old life ultimately caught up with him, and he was brutally gunned down on a city sidewalk in 1920.

2. Hatshepsut
The most prominent female pharaoh, Hatshepsut reigned over Egypt for roughly two decades, undertaking ambitious building projects and establishing valuable new trade routes until her death in 1458 B.C. The archaeologist Howard Carter discovered her royal tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings in 1902. When he located her sarcophagus some years later, however, it was found to be empty. Carter also unearthed a separate tomb, known as KV60, which contained two coffins: that of Hatshepsut’s wet nurse–identified as such by an inscription on its cover–and that of an unknown female. In 2006, a team led by Dr. Zahi Hawass set out to determine whether the anonymous woman in KV60 could be the missing queen herself. The vital piece of evidence was a molar tooth found in a wooden box bearing Hatshepsut’s name. When Hawass and his colleagues compared the tooth to a gap in the mummy’s upper jaw, it was a perfect fit, leading the researchers to conclude that the search for Hatshepsut was finally over.

3. King Tutankhamen
Ancient Egypt’s “boy king” became pharaoh at the age of nine and ruled for approximately 10 years (c. 1333-1324 B.C.). Relatively obscure during his lifetime, Tutankhamen–or “King Tut”–became a household name in 1922, when the archaeologist Howard Carter found his remarkable tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. Despite several apparent grave robberies, the tomb was crammed with a wealth of ancient treasures, including jewelry, gilded shrines and a solid gold funerary mask. The discovery prompted a worldwide fascination with Egyptology in general and Tutankhamen in particular. Carter’s partner and financier, Lord Carnarvon, died of an infected mosquito bite several months after the pair opened the tomb. His death inspired the myth of the mummy’s curse, according to which anyone who dared intrude upon King Tut’s grave would suffer his wrath.

4. Ramesses II
Regarded by many historians as Egypt’s most powerful pharaoh, Ramesses II reigned for six decades (c. 1279-1213 B.C.), lived to be over 90 years old and is said to have fathered upwards of 100 children. His body was originally entombed in the Valley of the Kings, as was customary for a pharaoh, but ancient Egyptian priests later moved it to thwart rampant looters. In 1881, Ramesses II’s mummy was discovered in a secret royal cache at Deir el-Bahri, along with those of more than 50 other rulers and nobles. In 1974, archeologists noticed its deteriorating condition and flew it to Paris, where it was treated for a fungal infection. Before the journey, Ramesses II was issued an Egyptian passport, which listed his occupation as “King (deceased).”

5. Valley of the Golden Mummies
Located in Egypt’s Western Desert, the Bahariya Oasis was a major agricultural center during ancient times and is now home to several archaeological sites, including a Greek temple dedicated to Alexander the Great. In 1996, an antiquities guard was riding his donkey on the temple’s grounds. Suddenly, the donkey’s leg stumbled into a hole, revealing an opening in the desert floor and the edge of a tomb. A team of archaeologists led by Dr. Zahi Hawass began excavations of the site, known as the Valley of the Golden Mummies. The first few expeditions have uncovered several hundred mummies that date back to Egypt’s Greco-Roman period, as well as a treasure trove of artifacts. The diversity of the mummies’ adornments suggests that the site served as the final resting place for every level of society, including wealthy merchants, members of the middle class and poorer inhabitants. Archeologists believe that as many as 10,000 additional mummies may be lying under the sand.

Anna Anderson and Grand Duchess Anastasia (Credit: Getty Images)

In 1918, Bolshevik revolutionaries murdered the Russian princess Anastasia, along with the rest of her family. However, rumors persisted of her alleged survival for decades and, over the years, several different impostors claimed to be Anastasia Romanova. None gained as much fame as Anna Anderson. The would-be royal first surfaced in the early 1920s in a Berlin mental asylum, where she announced that she was Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the deceased Czar Nicholas II. Although most of the surviving Romanovs dismissed her as a fraud, the girl bore a striking resemblance to the princess and even knew many personal details of her life. She soon won the support of a coterie of wealthy Russian emigrants, many of whom believed she was the legitimate heir to the throne.

The supposed princess eventually moved to America in 1968 and took the name Anna Anderson. But while her story inspired several books and even a Hollywood movie, she failed to win recognition in court due to a lack of evidence. Her story remained the source of much debate until 1994, when a posthumous DNA test finally proved she was not related to the Romanov family. Anderson likely a Polish factory worker who disappeared in 1920, but her true identity has never been confirmed.

2. Gregor MacGregor as the “Cazique of Poyais”

Dollar Bill from "Bank of Poyais"

In the early 1820s, a dashing Scotsman named Gregor MacGregor rose to the top of London’s high society on the basis of a most unusual claim. A former soldier and mercenary who had fought in South America, MacGregor presented himself as the “cazique,” or prince, of a small Central American country he called Poyais. As evidence, the faux royal produced several maps, drawings and even a book, all of which described the mysterious country as a fertile paradise with a working government and friendly native population. MacGregor’s tiny principality seemed the perfect destination for European settlers, except for one small detail: It didn’t exist.

Far from being a “cazique,” MacGregor was actually a con man who had cooked up a fairy tale country as a way of bilking investors out of huge sums of money. He eventually sold thousands of pounds worth of land rights for his phantom nation, and in 1822 the first would-be “Poyers” set sail across the Atlantic Ocean. Arriving in Central America and finding only unsettled jungle, the pioneers—many of whom had converted their life savings into phony Poyais currency—soon realized they had been swindled. The stranded colonists were eventually rescued, but not before some 180 people perished from disease. Not surprisingly, MacGregor fled the country soon after the news reached England. He later resurfaced in France, but was arrested after he tried to set up a second Poyais-related scheme.

3. False Dmitry I

Capture of False Dmitry

The man known as False Dmitry I not only successfully posed as a prince, he managed to con his way onto the royal throne of Russia. The pretender first became known to history in the early 1600s, when he appeared in Poland declaring himself to be Dmitry, the youngest son of the deceased Ivan the Terrible. The real Dmitry had supposedly been assassinated as a boy, but the imposter claimed he had escaped his would-be murderers and fled the country. The alleged royal went on to charm the Russian people, eventually riding a wave of public support all the way to Moscow.

False Dmitry was crowned czar in July 1605, but his rule was ultimately short-lived. The pretender’s policies proved too radical for Russia’s elites, and he was overthrown and assassinated less than a year later. Many have since speculated that his real name may have been Grigory Otrepyev, but this has never been proved. Amusingly, he was not the only impostor who claimed to be the real Dmitry. Two more pretenders emerged over the next decade, though neither succeeded in winning the throne.

4. Perkin Warbeck as Richard of York

Hanging of Perkin Warbeck (Credit: Getty Images)

Not only did young Perkin Warbeck masquerade as a prince, he nearly succeeded in overthrowing King Henry VII of England. In 1491, Warbeck appeared in Ireland claiming he was Richard of York, the youngest son of the former King Edward IV. The real Richard was most likely murdered in the Tower of London as a boy, but at the time there was still much speculation about his fate. Capitalizing on this mystery, Warbeck presented himself as the missing prince, and eventually won support among Henry VII’s political enemies, who included such powerful figures as James IV of Scotland and Maximilian I of Austria.

Warbeck landed in Cornwall in 1497, and he soon galvanized his supporters into a rebel army of several thousand men. But when faced with the possibility of a battle with the king’s forces, the pretender lost his nerve and fled to the coast. He was eventually captured, and later admitted he was an impostor before being executed by hanging in 1499. Warbeck is widely regarded as a famous fraud, but some historians have noted that Henry VII could have fabricated the pretender’s backstory in an attempt to discredit him. With this in mind, there remains at least a small possibility that Warbeck may have actually been Richard of York.

5. Mary Baker as “Princess Caraboo”

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For several months in 1817, the village of Almondsbury, England fell under the spell of a phony island princess. The young woman had first appeared in the town clad in a black turban and speaking a mysterious language. Through a Portuguese translator, she identified herself as Princess Caraboo, a member of the royal family of Javasu, a small Indian Ocean atoll. Even more astonishing, she claimed she had been kidnapped from her homeland by pirates, and had only escaped by plunging into the freezing Bristol Channel and swimming ashore.

The story of Princess Caraboo quickly took the town by storm. People flocked to get a look at the visiting royal, who slept on the floor, swam naked in a nearby lake and climbed trees to pray to a god called “Allah Tallah.” The fascination continued until a woman from a neighboring town noticed that her highness Princess Caraboo was in fact Mary Baker, an English girl who had previously been employed in her house as a servant. Baker later admitted that she had invented the princess and her bizarre language as part of an elaborate con, and the story of the hoax went on to become a minor sensation in the British press.

6. Yemelyan Pugachev as Peter III

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In 1773, a royal impostor sparked one of the largest revolts in Russian history. Capitalizing on his striking resemblance to the murdered Peter III, a former soldier named Yemelyan Pugachev took on the identity of the late emperor and incited a massive peasant uprising against Catherine the Great. As Peter III, Pugachev promised populist reforms including autonomy for Russia’s Cossack population an end to the feudal system, and soon thousands of serfs had rallied to his standard.

Initially catching the empress by surprise, Pugachev’s army laid siege to the city of Orenburg in late 1773, and then proceeded to raze Kazan the following year. But despite these early successes, by late 1774 Catherine’s generals had started to turn the tide of the conflict. Following a decisive defeat at Tsaritsyn, a group of Pugachev’s lieutenants betrayed him and turned him over to the empress. The impostor was executed in early 1775, and his revolt crumbled soon thereafter.

7. Karl Wilhelm Naundorff as Prince Louis-Charles

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Although he spent his life as a watchmaker and clock salesman, German swindler Karl Wilhelm Naundorff went to his grave insisting he was the rightful king of France. Naundorff arrived in Paris in the 1830s claiming to be Prince Louis-Charles, the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, both of whom were beheaded during the French Revolution. Naundorff was only one of several men who professed to be the long-dead dauphin, but he soon succeeded in winning the confidence of many high profile figures including the prince’s former governess.

Despite having several physical characteristics in common with the Prince Louis-Charles, Naundorff never provided sufficient evidence for his assertion, and he was eventually branded a fraud. Even Princess Marie Therese—his supposed sister—refused to meet with him. After being expelled from France, Naundorff lived out his later years in the Netherlands, where he was recognized as Louis-Charles until his death in 1845. The mystery of his true identity would endure for another 150 years, but Naundorff was finally exposed as an impostor in the early 21st century, when DNA evidence proved he was not related to Marie Antoinette.

Bombing of San Juan de Ulúa, Mexico during the 1838 Pastry War.

After the Americans reported the incident to the military, the U.S. Army dispatched Captain George Pickett—later a Confederate general during the Civil War—to San Juan with a small complement of troops. Pickett upped the ante by declaring the whole island U.S. property, and the British responded by sending a fleet of heavily armed naval vessels to the coastline. An absurd standoff ensued, and the situation remained on a knife-edge for several agonizing weeks. The two nations would finally negotiate a deal allowing for joint military occupation of San Juan Island in October 1859, ending the Pig War as a bloodless stalemate—save for one unfortunate hog.

2. The Nika Riot
In 532 AD, massive mobs flooded the streets of Constantinople, burning large parts of the city and nearly toppling the government of the Emperor Justinian—and all of it in the name of chariot racing. The races held at Constantinople’s hippodrome had soared in popularity during the sixth century, and fans had organized themselves into strict factions. These ancient hooligans acted more like street gangs than sports fans, and the most powerful groups—known as the Blues and the Greens—became notorious for their barbarism.

Conflict erupted in January 532, when Emperor Justinian refused to release two members of the Blues and Greens who had been condemned to death. In a rare instance of unity, the two factions banded together and began to riot. In a few short days, they had burned the headquarters of the city prefect, clashed with imperial guards and even attempted to crown a new emperor. Faced with a full-scale revolution, Justinian finally resolved to put down the rebellion by force. After bribing the Blues to gain their support, the emperor launched a devastating assault on the remaining hooligans. By the end of the attack, the riots had been quelled and some 30,000 members of the mob lay dead around the grounds of the hippodrome.

3. The War of the Stray Dog
In one of the most bizarre conflicts of the 20th century, a dog inadvertently triggered an international crisis. The incident was the culmination of a long period of hostility between Greece and Bulgaria, which had been at odds since the Second Balkan War in the 1910s. Tensions finally boiled over in October 1925, when a Greek soldier was shot after allegedly crossing the border into Bulgaria while chasing after his runaway dog.

The shooting became a rallying cry for the Greeks, who soon after invaded Bulgaria and occupied several villages. They were even set to commence shelling the city of Petrich when the League of Nations finally intervened and condemned the attack. An international committee later negotiated a ceasefire between the two nations, but not before the misunderstanding had resulted in the deaths of some 50 people.

4. The War of Jenkins’ Ear
In 1738, a British mariner named Robert Jenkins displayed a severed, decomposing ear before the members of Parliament. As part of a formal testimony, he claimed that a Spanish coastguard officer had sliced off his ear seven years earlier as punishment for smuggling. Spurred on by this stirring testimony, the British had soon declared war on the kingdom of Spain. Thus began the outlandish “War of Jenkins’ Ear.”

In truth, a clash between the British and Spanish had been in the works since the beginning of the 1700s, and Jenkins’ missing ear merely served as a convenient catalyst. The conflict had its roots in territorial disputes over the border between Spanish Florida and British Georgia, as well as the Spanish of boarding and harassing English vessels like the one captained by Jenkins. Fighting began in late 1739, and continued for two years in Florida and Georgia, with neither side emerging as the clear victor. The conflict later merged with the more expansive War of the Austrian Succession, which would not end until 1748.

5. The Toledo War
Michigan and Ohio might now be known their longstanding football rivalry, but the two states once nearly went to war over a border dispute. The argument began in 1803, when the newly formed state of Ohio took ownership of a sliver of land containing the town of Toledo. Michigan territory later disputed Ohio’s claim on this “Toledo strip” in the 1830s, launching a heated debate that teetered on the edge of violence for several weeks.

In what became known as the Toledo War, both sides wrestled for political control of the territory, and both raised militias to defend against a possible invasion by the other. Desperate for Ohio’s valuable electoral votes, President Andrew Jackson finally intervened in 1835, and by 1836 a compromise was sealed. The détente saw Michigan territory relinquish its claim on the Toledo strip in exchange for statehood and a portion of the Upper Peninsula. Many viewed the decision as a grave injustice, but some residents of the disputed region were quick to accept their newfound status as Ohioans. When one woman learned of the decision, she is said to have quipped, “Thank the Lord, I never did like that Michigan weather anyway.”

6. The Pastry War
In 1828, angry mobs destroyed large parts of Mexico City during a military coup. One of the victims of the rioting was an expatriate French pastry chef named Remontel, whose small café was ransacked by looters. Mexican officials ignored his complaints, so Remontel petitioned the French government for compensation. His request sat unnoticed until a decade later, when it came to the attention of King Louis-Philippe. The king was already furious that Mexico had failed to repay millions in loans, and now he demanded they pay 600,000 pesos to compensate the pastry chef for his losses. When the Mexicans balked at handing over such an astronomical sum, Louis-Philippe did the unexpected: He started a war.

In October 1838, a French fleet arrived in Mexico and blockaded the city of Veracruz. When the Mexicans still refused to pay up, the ships began shelling the San Juan de Ulua citadel. A few minor battles followed, and by December as many as 250 soldiers had been killed. The famous general Santa Anna even came out of retirement to lead the Mexican army against the French, and he lost a leg after he was wounded by grapeshot. Fighting finally ended in March 1839, when the British government helped broker a peace deal. As part of the treaty, the Mexicans were forced to shell out the 600,000 pesos—no doubt a large sum for a pastry shop at the time.

Part of the Isaiah Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. (Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)

1. Teenage shepherds accidentally stumbled upon the first set of Dead Sea Scrolls.
In late 1946 or early 1947, Bedouin teenagers were tending their goats and sheep near the ancient settlement of Qumran, located on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in what is now known as the West Bank. One of the young shepherds tossed a rock into an opening on the side of a cliff and was surprised to hear a shattering sound. He and his companions later entered the cave and found a collection of large clay jars, seven of which contained leather and papyrus scrolls. An antiquities dealer bought the cache, which ultimately ended up in the hands of various scholars who estimated that the texts were upwards of 2,000 years old. After word of the discovery got out, Bedouin treasure hunters and archaeologists unearthed tens of thousands of additional scroll fragments from 10 nearby caves; together they make up between 800 and 900 manuscripts.

2. Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were sold in the classifieds section.
Athanasius Yeshue Samuel, a Syrian Orthodox archbishop of Jerusalem, bought four of the original Dead Sea Scrolls from a cobbler who dabbled in antiquities, paying less than $100. When the Arab-Israeli War broke out in 1948, Samuel traveled to the United States and unsuccessfully offered them to a number of universities, including Yale. Finally, in 1954, he placed an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal—under the category “Miscellaneous Items for Sale”’—that read: “Biblical Manuscripts dating back to at least 200 B.C. are for sale. This would be an ideal gift to an educational or religious institution by an individual or group.” Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin, whose father had obtained the other three scrolls from the initial collection in 1947, secretly negotiated their purchase on behalf of the newly established State of Israel. Unfortunately for Samuel, much of the $250,000 he received went to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service since the bill of sale had not been properly drawn up.

3. Nobody knows for sure who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written between 150 B.C. and 70 A.D., remains the subject of scholarly debate to this day. According to the prevailing theory, they are the work of a Jewish population that inhabited Qumran until Roman troops destroyed the settlement around 70 A.D. These Jews are thought to have belonged to a devout, ascetic and communal sect called the Essenes, one of four distinct Jewish groups living in Judaea before and during the Roman era. Proponents of this hypothesis note similarities between the traditions outlined in the Community Rule—a scroll detailing the laws of an unnamed Jewish sect—and the Roman historian Flavius Josephus’ description of Essene rituals. Archaeological evidence from Qumran, including the ruins of Jewish ritual baths, also suggests the site was once home to observant Jews. Some scholars have credited other groups with producing the scrolls, including early Christians and Jews from Jerusalem who passed through Qumran while fleeing the Romans.

4. Almost all of the Hebrew Bible is represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Dead Sea Scrolls include fragments from every book of the Old Testament except for the Book of Esther. Scholars have speculated that traces of this missing book, which recounts the story of the eponymous Jewish queen of Persia, either disintegrated over time or have yet to be uncovered. Others have proposed that Esther was not part of the Essenes’ canon or that the sect did not celebrate Purim, the festive holiday based on the book. The only complete book of the Hebrew Bible preserved among the manuscripts from Qumran is Isaiah; this copy, dated to the first century B.C., is considered the earliest Old Testament manuscript still in existence. Along with biblical texts, the scrolls include documents about sectarian regulations, such as the Community Rule, and religious writings that do not appear in the Old Testament.

5. Hebrew is not the only language of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Hebrew, with some fragments written in the ancient paleo-Hebrew alphabet thought to have fallen out of use in the fifth century B.C. But others are in Aramaic, the language spoken by many Jews—including, most likely, Jesus—between the sixth century B.C. and the siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. In addition, several texts feature translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, which some Jews used instead of or in addition to Hebrew at the time of the scrolls’ creation.

6. The Dead Sea Scrolls include a guide to hidden treasure.
One of the most intriguing manuscripts from Qumran is the Copper Scroll, a sort of ancient treasure map that lists dozens of gold and silver caches. While the other texts are written in ink on parchment or animal skins, this curious document features Hebrew and Greek letters chiseled onto metal sheets—perhaps, as some have theorized, to better withstand the passage of time. Using an unconventional vocabulary and odd spelling, the Copper Scroll describes 64 underground hiding places around Israel that purportedly contain riches stashed for safekeeping. None of these hoards have been recovered, possibly because the Romans pillaged Judaea during the first century A.D. According to various hypotheses, the treasure belonged to local Essenes, was spirited out of the Second Temple before its destruction or never existed to begin with.

The shooting of Stonewall Jackson at the Battle of Chancellorsville.

1. Robert E. Lee’s “perfect battle” went against all military convention.
Chancellorsville is widely considered Lee’s greatest—and most improbable—victory. Despite being outnumbered by nearly 2-to-1, Lee decided on a risky and highly unusual tactic. He elected to divide his smaller forces—not once, but twice—to take on Hooker’s army, including a daring raid by Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson on the Union general’s right flank. Caught completely unawares, Hooker did not press his advantage, instead falling back to defensive positions before finally retreating across the Rappahannock River.

2. A recent overhaul of the Union Army may have played a role in its defeat.
In January 1863, following the disastrous Union defeat and subsequent retreat from Fredericksburg by Ambrose Burnside, President Abraham Lincoln chose as his new commander Major General Joseph Hooker, one of Burnside’s fiercest critics. Soon after, two other senior Union generals resigned, leaving Hooker short on experienced field officers. When he set about reorganizing and streamlining the unwieldy Army of the Potomac, several of his key decisions backfired on him. He created a centralized cavalry unit—unusual for its time—and named Brigadier General George Stoneman to lead it. Stoneman performed poorly at Chancellorsville, continually failing to slow Lee’s advance. Another Hooker move, the reorganization of the 11th Corps under Major General Oliver Howard and the unpopular and cruel Brigadier General Francis Barlow, proved equally disastrous. The demoralized men of the 11th, many of them immigrants from the Midwest with poor English and little training, were completely unprepared to protect the Union’s right flank from Jackson’s assault and soon retreated, suffering significant casualties in the process.

3. Lee won the battle—but at a high cost.
On the night of May 2, while returning from a reconnaissance mission, Jackson was accidentally shot by his own men, members of the 18th North Carolina Infantry, who had mistaken his group for Union cavalry. Jackson was hit three times—twice in the left arm and once in the right hand—and several of his men were killed by the friendly fire. When Lee learned of Jackson’s injuries, he wrote to his trusted lieutenant, stating that he wished he had been injured in Jackson’s place. After Jackson’s left arm was amputated, he seemed to be recovering well, but he soon developed pneumonia and died eight days after he was shot. Lee was devastated, reportedly saying that in losing Stonewall, he had lost his “right arm.” The death of Jackson, one of the South’s brightest stars and ablest generals, was a crushing blow to the Confederate cause.

4. Stonewall Jackson’s body is buried in two different places.
Following Jackson’s death, his body was transported to Richmond, where it lay in state for several days before his burial in Lexington, Virginia. But not all of the celebrated general made that final journey. Beverly Tucker Lacy, Jackson’s personal chaplain, had been well aware of Jackson’s fervent religious beliefs and arranged a proper burial for his amputated left arm in his family’s nearby cemetery. The following year, marauding Union soldiers reportedly dug up and reburied the limb. For nearly 40 years, the location of Stonewall’s arm remained unmarked, until one of his former officers, a member of the Lacy family, erected a stone monument—the only one in the plot—that reads “Arm of Stonewall Jackson May 3, 1863.” The location has become a pilgrimage site of sorts, drawing thousands of visitors every year.

5. Its 30,764 casualties made Chancellorsville the bloodiest battle in American history—briefly.
Nearly two-thirds of the battle’s casualties occurred on a single day—May 3, which produced more dead and wounded than the entire First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas). When the war ended in 1865, Chancellorsville ranked as the fourth deadliest clash of the Civil War, surpassed only by the battles at Gettysburg, Chickamauga and Spotsylvania Court House. Lee won the battle, but his 13,000 casualties equaled 22 percent of his fighting force—a number nearly impossible for the Confederacy to replace. When Lincoln learned of the Union’s losses (nearly 17,200 men) he was shocked, as was the rest of the North. Sadly, Chancellorsville maintained its grisly title for only a few short weeks before being eclipsed by the horrific casualties at Gettysburg.

6. Hooker became the latest in a long line of short-lived Union commanders.
By May 7, the last of Hooker’s men, including Stoneman’s cavalry, had withdrawn from Chancellorsville. Almost immediately, fingers began pointing at who should take responsibility for the disastrous defeat. Hooker, like Burnside before him, cast much of the blame on his junior officers, and relieved Stoneman from his command. Several other officers quit in anger or were reassigned, leading to dissension in the Union ranks. To make matter worse, Hooker continued to clash with Lincoln and the army’s general in chief, Henry Halleck. With Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia now moving in on Northern territory, Lincoln was forced to make yet another leadership change. On June 28, just three days before the Battle of Gettysburg began, he accepted Hooker’s resignation and named Major General George Meade to lead the Army of the Potomac. Hooker became the fourth Union general to be relieved from command after losing just one major battle, while Meade, who had performed admirably at both Antietam and Fredericksburg, became the third man to command the army in 1863 alone.

7. “The Red Badge of Courage” is based on Chancellorsville.
Though its author, Stephen Crane, was born nearly six years after the war’s end and did not serve in battle, his novel is widely considered to be one of the most realistic portrayals of the Civil War. The book, which depicts the traumatic wartime experience of an 18-year-old Union private named Henry Fleming, was initially serialized in dozens of periodicals in 1894 and published as a novel the following year. Crane, who was only 24 when the book came out, based the battle scenes and troop movements on those at Chancellorsville, and is believed to have interviewed veterans of the campaign: the men of the 124th New York Volunteer Regiment, a group popularly known as the Orange Blossoms. The book met with mostly positive reviews, but did have its detractors, including former Union officers Alexander McClurg and Ambrose Bierce. Nonetheless, “The Red Badge of Courage” made Crane an overnight sensation; it has remained in print ever since and been adapted for the screen several times. Just a few years later, Crane witnessed the horrors of battle firsthand, serving as a war correspondent during the Spanish-American War and elsewhere. After suffering a series of personal and financial setbacks, he died of tuberculosis at the age of 28.

Horatio Nelson peers through a telescope with his blind eye. (Time Life Pictures/Mansell/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

1. Turn a blind eye
The phrase “turn a blind eye”—often used to refer to a willful refusal to acknowledge a particular reality—dates back to a legendary chapter in the career of the British naval hero Horatio Nelson. During 1801’s Battle of Copenhagen, Nelson’s ships were pitted against a large Danish-Norwegian fleet. When his more conservative superior officer flagged for him to withdraw, the one-eyed Nelson supposedly brought his telescope to his bad eye and blithely proclaimed, “I really do not see the signal.” He went on to score a decisive victory. Some historians have since dismissed Nelson’s famous quip as merely a battlefield myth, but the phrase “turn a blind eye” persists to this day.

2. White elephant
White elephants were once considered highly sacred creatures in Thailand—the animal even graced the national flag until 1917—but they were also wielded as a subtle form of punishment. According to legend, if an underling or rival angered a Siamese king, the royal might present the unfortunate man with the gift of a white elephant. While ostensibly a reward, the creatures were tremendously expensive to feed and house, and caring for one often drove the recipient into financial ruin. Whether any specific rulers actually bestowed such a passive-aggressive gift is uncertain, but the term has since come to refer to any burdensome possession—pachyderm or otherwise.

3. Crocodile tears
Modern English speakers use the phrase “crocodile tears” to describe a display of superficial or false sorrow, but the saying actually derives from a medieval belief that crocodiles shed tears of sadness while they killed and consumed their prey. The myth dates back as far as the 14th century and comes from a book called “The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.” Wildly popular upon its release, the tome recounts a brave knight’s adventures during his supposed travels through Asia. Among its many fabrications, the book includes a description of crocodiles that notes, “These serpents sley men, and eate them weeping, and they have no tongue.” While factually inaccurate, Mandeville’s account of weeping reptiles later found its way into the works of Shakespeare, and “crocodile tears” became an idiom as early as the 16th century.

Scene from the Battle of Albuera, where the term “diehard” may have originated. (The British Library/Robana via Getty Images)

4. Diehard
While it typically refers to someone with a strong dedication to a particular set of beliefs, the term “diehard” originally had a series of much more literal meanings. In its earliest incarnation in the 1700s, the expression described condemned men who struggled the longest when they were executed by hanging. The phrase later became even more popular after 1811’s Battle of Albuera during the Napoleonic Wars. In the midst of the fight, a wounded British officer named William Inglis supposedly urged his unit forward by bellowing “Stand your ground and die hard … make the enemy pay dear for each of us!” Inglis’ 57th Regiment suffered 75 percent casualties during the battle, and went on to earn the nickname “the Die Hards.”

5. Resting on laurels
The idea of resting on your laurels dates back to leaders and athletic stars of ancient Greece. In Hellenic times, laurel leaves were closely tied to Apollo, the god of music, prophecy and poetry. Apollo was usually depicted with a crown of laurel leaves, and the plant eventually became a symbol of status and achievement. Victorious athletes at the ancient Pythian Games received wreaths made of laurel branches, and the Romans later adopted the practice and presented wreaths to generals who won important battles. Venerable Greeks and Romans, or “laureates,” were thus able to “rest on their laurels” by basking in the glory of past achievements. Only later did the phrase take on a negative connotation, and since the 1800s it has been used for those who are overly satisfied with past triumphs.

6. Read the riot act
These days, angry parents might threaten to “read the riot act” to their unruly children. But in 18th-century England, the Riot Act was a very real document, and it was often recited aloud to angry mobs. Instituted in 1715, the Riot Act gave the British government the authority to label any group of more than 12 people a threat to the peace. In these circumstances, a public official would read a small portion of the Riot Act and order the people to “disperse themselves, and peaceably depart to their habitations.” Anyone that remained after one hour was subject to arrest or removal by force. The law was later put to the test in 1819 during the infamous Peterloo Massacre, in which a cavalry unit attacked a large group of protestors after they appeared to ignore a reading of the Riot Act.

The Marquis of Waterford, whose bender may have inspired the expression “painting the town red.”

7. Paint the town red
The phrase “paint the town red” most likely owes its origin to one legendary night of drunkenness. In 1837, the Marquis of Waterford—a known lush and mischief maker—led a group of friends on a night of drinking through the English town of Melton Mowbray. The bender culminated in vandalism after Waterford and his fellow revelers knocked over flowerpots, pulled knockers off of doors and broke the windows of some of the town’s buildings. To top it all off, the mob literally painted a tollgate, the doors of several homes and a swan statue with red paint. The marquis and his pranksters later compensated Melton for the damages, but their drunken escapade is likely the reason that “paint the town red” became shorthand for a wild night out. Still yet another theory suggests the phrase was actually born out of the brothels of the American West, and referred to men behaving as though their whole town were a red-light district.

8. Running amok
“Running amok” is commonly used to describe wild or erratic behavior, but the phrase actually began its life as a medical term. The saying was popularized in the 18th and 19th centuries, when European visitors to Malaysia learned of a peculiar mental affliction that caused otherwise normal tribesmen to go on brutal and seemingly random killing sprees. Amok—derived from the “Amuco,” a band of Javanese and Malay warriors who were known for their penchant for indiscriminate violence—was initially a source of morbid fascination for Westerners. Writing in 1772, the famed explorer Captain James Cook noted that “to run amok is to … sally forth from the house, kill the person or persons supposed to have injured the Amock, and any other person that attempts to impede his passage.” Once thought to be the result of possession by evil spirits, the phenomenon later found its way into psychiatric manuals. It remains a diagnosable mental condition to this day.

9. By and large
Many everyday phrases are nautical in origin— “taken aback,” “loose cannon” and “high and dry” all originated at sea—but perhaps the most surprising example is the common saying “by and large.” As far back as the 16th century, the word “large” was used to mean that a ship was sailing with the wind at its back. Meanwhile, the much less desirable “by,” or “full and by,” meant the vessel was traveling into the wind. Thus, for mariners, “by and large” referred to trawling the seas in any and all directions relative to the wind. Today, sailors and landlubbers alike now use the phrase as a synonym for “all things considered” or “for the most part.”

10. The third degree
There are several tales about the origin of “the third degree,” a saying commonly used for long or arduous interrogations. One theory argues the phrase relates to the various degrees of murder in the criminal code; yet another credits it to Thomas F. Byrnes, a 19th-century New York City policeman who used the pun “Third Degree Byrnes” when describing his hardnosed questioning style. In truth, the saying is most likely derived from the Freemasons, a centuries-old fraternal organization whose members undergo rigorous questioning and examinations before becoming “third degree” members, or “master masons.”

2. A silversmith by trade, he sometimes worked as an amateur dentist.
Revere used his skills as a craftsman to wire dentures made of walrus ivory or animal teeth into his patients’ mouths. In 1776 he unwittingly became the first person to practice forensic dentistry in the United States: He identified the body of his friend Joseph Warren nine months after the well-known revolutionary died during the Battle of Bunker Hill by recognizing wiring he had used on a false tooth. Contrary to popular legend, Revere did not fashion a set of wooden dentures for George Washington.

A political engraving depicting the Boston Massacre, created by Paul Revere.

3. He was also known for his art.
When he wasn’t smithing or dabbling in dentistry, the multitalented Paul Revere produced some of the era’s most sophisticated copper plate engravings, creating illustrations used in books, magazines, political cartoons and tavern menus. One of his most famous engravings is a sensationalized and propagandist depiction of the 1770 Boston Massacre, based on a painting by the Bostonian artist Henry Pelham. Its widespread distribution helped to fuel growing resentment toward the British army and government.

4. He led a spy ring.
According to the Central Intelligence Agency, Paul Revere founded the first patriot intelligence network on record, a Boston-based group known as the “mechanics.” Prior to the American Revolution he had been a member of the Sons of Liberty, a political organization that opposed incendiary tax legislation such as the Stamp Act of 1765 and organized demonstrations against the British. Beginning in 1774, the mechanics, also referred to as the Liberty Boys, spied on British soldiers and met regularly (in the legendary Green Dragon Tavern) to share information.

5. The well-known poem about him is inaccurate.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1861 poem about Paul Revere’s ride got many of the facts wrong. For one thing, Revere was not alone on his mission to warn John Hancock, Samuel Adams and other patriots that the British were approaching Lexington on the evening of April 18, 1775. Two other men, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, rode alongside him, and by the end of the night as many as 40 men on horseback were spreading the word across Boston’s Middlesex County. Revere also never reached Concord, as the poem inaccurately recounts. Overtaken by the British, the three riders split up and headed in different directions. Revere was temporarily detained by the British at Lexington and Dawes lost his way after falling off his horse, leaving Prescott—a young physician who is believed to have died in the war several years later—the task of alerting Concord’s residents.

6. His most famous quote was fabricated.
Paul Revere never shouted the legendary phrase later attributed to him (“The British are coming!”) as he passed from town to town. The operation was meant to be conducted as discreetly as possible since scores of British troops were hiding out in the Massachusetts countryside. Furthermore, colonial Americans at that time still considered themselves British; if anything, Revere may have told other rebels that the “Regulars”—a term used to designate British soldiers—were on the move.

7. A borrowed horse served as his worthy steed on the night of April 18, 1775.
Not only is it unlikely Revere owned a horse at the time, but he would not have been able to transport it out of Boston across the Charles River. It is believed that the Charlestown merchant John Larkin loaned him a horse, which was later confiscated by the British. According to a Larkin family genealogy published in 1930, the name of the lost mare was Brown Beauty.

8. His military record was less than stellar.
Four years after his midnight ride, Paul Revere served as commander of land artillery in the disastrous Penobscot Expedition of 1779. In June of that year, British forces began establishing a fort in what is now Castine, Maine. Over the next few weeks, hundreds of American soldiers converged on the outpost by land and sea. Although the outnumbered British were initially prepared to surrender, the Americans failed to attack in time, and by August enough British reinforcements had arrived to force an American retreat. Charged with cowardice and insubordination, Revere was court-martialed and dismissed from the militia. (He was acquitted in 1782, but his reputation remained tarnished.)

Paul Revere in his later years.

9. He went on to become a successful businessman.
After the American Revolution, Revere opened a hardware store, a foundry and eventually the first rolling copper mill in the United States. He provided materials for the historic frigate USS Constitution, which played an important role in the War of 1812 and is the world’s oldest floating commissioned naval vessel. He also produced more than 900 church bells, one of which still rings every Sunday in Boston’s King’s Chapel. Revere Copper Products, Inc., is still in operation today.

10. He had a lot of kids.
Revere fathered 16 children—eight with his first wife, Sarah Orne, and eight with Rachel Walker, whom he married after Sarah’s death in 1773. He raised them in a townhouse at 19 North Square that is downtown Boston’s oldest building, first constructed in 1680 after the Great Fire of 1676 destroyed the original home on the site. Eleven of Revere’s children survived to adulthood, and at the time of his death at the ancient (for that time) age of 83, five were still living.

11. He may be a beer mascot.
When the Boston Beer Company introduced a new brand of lager to the American market in 1985, they chose a name that honored Samuel Adams, the Boston patriot whose family produced brewer’s malt for generations. It is rumored that the portrait of a colonial-era drinker featured on most bottles is actually Paul Revere, allegedly because the beer’s namesake was deemed too unattractive.

The storming of Fort Wagner in 1863. Calcium floodlights would be used in the siege that followed. (Library of Congress)

1. Hand grenades
Civil War soldiers were known to make jury-rigged explosives using assortments of fuses and gunpowder, but the conflict also saw advances in the design and manufacture of hand grenades. The most popular model was the Union-issued Ketchum grenade, a projectile explosive that was thrown like a dart. The grenades came in one-, three- and five-pound models equipped with stabilizer fins and a nose-mounted plunger. Upon impact, the plunger would detonate a percussion cap and ignite a deadly supply of gunpowder.

A Ketchum hand grenade used during the Civil War. (Minnesota Historical Society)

While a novel idea, the explosives didn’t always work as intended. In fact, when they were bombarded with Ketchum grenades during an 1863 siege at Port Hudson, Louisiana, Confederate soldiers reportedly used blankets to catch the explosives before throwing them back at their hapless attackers.

2. Rockets
Rocket launchers might seem like a 20th-century phenomenon, but they made a few appearances on Civil War battlefields. Confederate forces reportedly experimented with Congreve rockets, a British-designed explosive that had previously seen action in the War of 1812. These weapons resembled large bottle rockets and were so inaccurate that they never saw widespread use.

Meanwhile, Union forces employed the Hale patent rocket launcher, a metal tube that fired seven- and 10-inch-long spin stabilized rockets up to 2,000 yards. While a vast improvement on the Congreve, these projectiles were still quite unwieldy, and were only generally used by the U.S. Navy.

3. Machine guns
Colt revolvers and Springfield muskets were the Civil War’s most popular firearms, but the era also gave rise to some of the earliest machine guns. Of these, perhaps none is more infamous than the Gatling gun, a six-barreled piece that was capable of firing up to 350 rounds a minute. The U.S. government never ordered the Gatling in bulk, but Union General Benjamin Butler privately purchased several of the intimidating weapons in 1863 and later used them during the Petersburg Campaign.

Illustration of a Gatling gun. (Illustrated London News/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Other rapid-fire guns included the Williams gun—a Confederate breechloader first unveiled at the Battle of Seven Pines in 1862—and the Billinghurst-Requa battery gun, which consisted of 25 rifle barrels arranged side by side. Viewed as too inefficient and unwieldy for infantry combat, these weapons were generally used for guarding bridges and other strategic locations.

4. Landmines
Mines—or “torpedoes,” as they were then known—were largely a Confederate weapon. Originally developed by General Gabriel J. Rains, these antipersonnel explosives were typically iron containers rigged with gunpowder, a fuse and a brass detonation cap. Rains first used the subterranean booby traps in 1862 during the Peninsula Campaign, and later buried thousands more around Richmond and in various parts of the Deep South. In fact, some of these still-active landmines were only recovered in Alabama as recently as the 1960s.

While they proved an intimidating method of psychological warfare, landmines were often viewed as an unethical form of combat. Union General George B. McClellan denounced them as “barbarous,” and Confederate General James Longstreet briefly banned their use. Perhaps their most vociferous critic was Union General William T. Sherman, who lost several troops to underground landmines during his famous March to the Sea. Decrying the use of mines as “not warfare, but murder,” Sherman reportedly forced his Confederate prisoners to march at the head of his column so that they might trigger any hidden “land torpedoes.”

5. Underwater mines
Along with landmines, the Civil War was also a major testing ground for underwater mines. Both sides mined harbors and rivers with torpedoes, but the Confederacy enjoyed greater success. Starting in 1862 with the sinking of the ironclad Cairo, Confederate torpedoes destroyed dozens of Union ships and damaged several others. Union torpedoes, meanwhile, only sank six Confederate Navy vessels.

The rebels owed their skill at underwater warfare in part to Matthew Fontaine Maury, an oceanographer who first demonstrated the use of mines in 1861. Maury’s “infernal machines” made the James River virtually impassable, and mines later terrorized the Union Navy during battles at Mobile Bay and Charleston Harbor. The Confederacy also succeeded in using submarines to turn mines into offensive weapons. In 1864 the H.L. Hunley destroyed the Union sloop-of-war Housatonic after ramming it with a pole-mounted torpedo, becoming the first combat submarine to successfully sink an enemy ship.

Thaddeus Lowe ascends in his balloon. (Library of Congress)

6. Calcium floodlights
During an 1863 operation to retake Charleston Harbor, General Quincy Adams Gillmore laid siege to the Confederate stronghold at Fort Wagner. Gillmore’s Union guns bombarded the fort day and night with the help of a strange invention: the calcium light. Better known as “limelights,” these chemical lamps used superheated balls of lime, or calcium oxide, to create an incandescent glow. The lights had been used in lighthouses and theaters since the 1830s, but Gillmore’s engineers were the first to adapt them for combat. By shining calcium lights on Fort Wagner, Union forces were able to illuminate their artillery target while simultaneously blinding Confederate gunners and riflemen.

Also called “Drummond lights,” these calcium floodlights were later used as searchlights to spot Confederate warships and blockade runners. In early 1865, a Union light even helped detect a Confederate ironclad fleet as it tried to move along the James River under cover of darkness. A Southern officer later noted that a planned sneak attack was made impossible in part because of the Union’s “powerful calcium light.”

7. Hot air balloons
Because they allowed generals to get an aerial view of the battlefield, Civil War balloons were primarily used in a reconnaissance capacity. The Union even had an official Balloon Corps headed by “Chief Aeronaut” Thaddeus Lowe. Under his direction, balloons were launched for scouting purposes at several famous engagements, including the First Battle of Bull Run and the Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. In a balloon tethered to the ground with a telegraph line, Lowe was able to give real-time updates on troop movements, and once even directed Union artillery fire from the sky.

Illustration of the Winans steam gun.

The Confederacy also tried their hand at military ballooning, although with considerably less success. The South lacked the resources to make good balloons, and their one operational airship—reportedly made from a colorful patchwork of silk—was captured after the tugboat carrying it ran aground on the James River.

8. Winans steam gun
The Civil War produced a number of experimental cannons, machine guns and rifles, but perhaps none was more unusual than the Winans steam gun. Built by Ohio inventors William Joslin and Charles Dickinson, this massive automatic weapon sat on an armored train carriage and used steam to fire projectiles—supposedly at a rate of 200 a minute.

Newspapers hailed the mysterious gun as a super weapon, but it was never actually used in combat. When Dickinson headed for Harper’s Ferry in May 1861—most likely to sell the gun to the Confederacy—Union forces intercepted him and confiscated his invention. The steam gun was later transferred to Fortress Monroe in Virginia before being sent to Massachusetts, where it was eventually scrapped. The Union Army never attempted to deploy the contraption in the field, which suggests the steam gun probably failed to live up to its deadly reputation.

Tasha1111/iStockphoto.com

1. They didn’t die young.
People lived to an average age of just 40 in 19th-century England, but that number is deceiving. Certainly, infants and children died of disease, malnutrition and mishaps at much higher rates than they do today. But if a girl managed to survive to adulthood, her chance of living to a ripe old age of 50, 60, 70 or even older was quite good. These odds only increased as the century progressed and improvements in sanitation, nutrition and medical care lengthened Victorian lifespans.

2. They didn’t marry young.
At the end of the 18th century, the average age of first marriage was 28 years old for men and 26 years old for women. During the 19th century, the average age fell for English women, but it didn’t drop any lower than 22. Patterns varied depending on social and economic class, of course, with working-class women tending to marry slightly older than their aristocratic counterparts. But the prevailing modern idea that all English ladies wed before leaving their teenage years is well off the mark.

3. They didn’t marry their cousins.
Marrying your first cousin was perfectly acceptable in the early 1800s, and the practice certainly offered some benefits: Wealth and property were more likely to remain in the same hands, and it was easier for young women to meet and be courted by bachelors within the family circle. Later in the 19th century, though, marriage between cousins became less common. Increased mobility due to the growth of the railroad and other widespread economic improvements vastly broadened a young lady’s scope of prospective husbands. Meanwhile, the Victorian era saw a rise in awareness of birth defects associated with reproduction among relatives. Cousin marriages remained popular among the upper class, however. Charles Darwin married his first cousin Emma Wedgwood, for instance, and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were themselves first cousins.

4. They didn’t wear tight corsets.
The popular image of young ladies lacing themselves into corsets drawn up as tight as their maids could make them is a bit misleading. While the Victorian era did feature fashions that emphasized a tiny waist only achievable through the careful application of whalebone and ribbon, most women wore their daily corsets with a healthy dose of moderation—not to the point of swooning on the divan. Also, at the time, corsets weren’t simply a fashion statement: They were actually thought to encourage good, healthful posture and to keep the internal organs in proper alignment. And the extreme practice of removing ribs to slim the waist, rumored to have flourished in the Victorian era, simply didn’t exist

5. They didn’t wear pink.
Today’s approach to gender-specific colors would confuse—and likely amuse—our 19th-century counterparts. White was the preferred color for babies and children of any sex until they reached the age of about 6 or 7, mainly because white clothes and diapers could be bleached. As they grew older, children were dressed in paler versions of the colors adults wore. Red was considered a strong, virile, masculine shade, while blue was dainty, delicate, feminine. So young boys were more frequently seen in pink, while young girls favored pale blue. It wasn’t until the early 20th century—quite possibly as late as the 1940s—that pink began to be universally assigned to girls and blue to boys.

2. He had reason to hate his original name.
The product of an affair between Robert I, duke of Normandy, and a woman called Herleva, William was likely known to his contemporaries as William the Bastard for much of his life. His critics continued to use this moniker (albeit behind his back) even after he defeated the English at the Battle of Hastings and earned an upgrade to William the Conqueror.

3. His future bride wanted nothing to do with him at first.
When William asked for the hand of Matilda of Flanders, a granddaughter of France’s King Robert II, she demurred, perhaps because of his illegitimacy or her entanglement with another man. According to legend, the snubbed duke tackled Matilda in the street, pulling her off her horse by her long braids. In any event, she consented to marry him and bore him 10 children before her death in 1083, which plunged William into a deep depression.

4. He couldn’t bear any disrespect toward his mother.
During William’s siege of Alençon, a disputed town on the border of Normandy, in the late 1040s or early 1050s, residents are said to have hung animal hides on their walls. They mocked him for being the grandson of a tanner, referring to the occupation of his mother’s father. To avenge her honor, he had their hands and feet cut off.

5. He made England speak Franglais.
William spoke no English when he ascended the throne, and he failed to master it despite his efforts. (Like most nobles of his time, he also happened to be illiterate.) Thanks to the Norman invasion, French was spoken in England’s courts for centuries and completely transformed the English language, infusing it with new words.

6. His jester was the first casualty of the Battle of Hastings.
William’s jester rode beside him during the invasion of England, lifting the troops’ spirits by singing about heroic deeds. When they reached enemy lines, he taunted the English by juggling his sword and was promptly killed, initiating the historic skirmish.

7. He was touchy about his weight.
Described as strapping and healthy in his earlier years, William apparently ballooned later in life. It is said that King Philip of France likened him to a pregnant woman about to give birth. According to some accounts, the corpulent conqueror became so dismayed with his size that he devised his own version of a fad diet, consuming only wine and spirits for a certain period of time. It didn’t work.

8. His body exploded at his funeral.
William died after his horse reared up during a 1087 battle, throwing the king against his saddle pommel so forcefully that his intestines ruptured. An infection set in that killed him several weeks later. As priests tried to stuff William into a stone coffin that proved too small for his bulk, they pushed on his abdomen, causing it to burst. Mourners supposedly ran for the door to escape the putrid stench.

9. He is an ancestor of millions of people.
Every English monarch who followed William, including Queen Elizabeth II, is considered a descendant of the Norman-born king. According to some genealogists, more than 25 percent of the English population is also distantly related to him, as are countless Americans with British ancestry.

10. He’s responsible for scores of British Wills.
William, an Old French name composed of Germanic elements (“wil,” meaning desire, and “helm,” meaning protection), was introduced to England by William the Conqueror and quickly became widespread. By the 13th century, it was the most common given name among English men. Today it still ranks in the top 10, and some have predicted that the future crowning of another King William will propel the name even higher.

The unforgiving Amazon jungle has claimed the lives of more than one adventurer, but perhaps none so famous as Colonel Percy Fawcett, who disappeared in 1925 while on the trail of a mythical lost city. One of the most colorful figures of his era, Fawcett had made his name during a series of harrowing mapmaking expeditions to the wilds of Brazil and Bolivia. During these travels, he formulated a theory about a lost city called “Z,” which he believed existed somewhere in the unexplored Mato Grosso region of Brazil.

In 1925 Fawcett, his son oldest son Jack and a young man named Raleigh Rimmell set off in search of the fabled lost city. But following a final letter in which Fawcett announced he was venturing into unmapped territory, the group vanished without a trace. Their fate remains a mystery. While conventional wisdom suggests the explorers were killed by hostile Indians, other theories blame everything from malaria to starvation to jaguar attacks for their demise. Some have even speculated that the men simply went native and lived out the rest of their lives in the jungle. Whatever its cause, the group’s disappearance captured the imaginations of people around the world. In the years after Fawcett vanished, thousands of would-be adventurers mounted rescue missions, and as many as 100 people eventually died while searching for some sign of him in the darkness of the Amazon.

2. George Bass

The British mariner George Bass is remembered for discovering the strait between Australia and Tasmania, but he is even more famous for vanishing during an 1803 voyage to South America. Bass began his career as a ship’s surgeon in the Royal Navy and gained a reputation as a bold explorer after he surveyed the eastern coast of Australia in a tiny ship called the Tom Thumb.

Hoping to strike it rich as a private trader, Bass returned to Australia in the early 1800s on a merchant ship called the Venus. When his cargo failed to fetch a respectable price, Bass hatched an audacious plan to travel to South America—then a Spanish territory—on a rogue trading mission. He set sail in February 1803 but soon disappeared with his crew in the Pacific Ocean, never to be seen again. While the Venus was most likely lost at sea, another theory argues that Bass and his men made it to the coast of Chile, only to be arrested as smugglers and forced to spend the rest of their lives toiling in a Spanish silver mine.

3. Gaspar and Miguel Corte-Real

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In a chilling coincidence, the Portuguese brothers Gaspar and Miguel Corte-Real both vanished during separate voyages to the coastline of modern-day Canada. In 1501 Gaspar led a three-ship fleet on an expedition to the shores of Newfoundland. After claiming some 60 natives as slaves, he tasked his brother Miguel with ferrying them back to Portugal. Gaspar was expected to follow shortly thereafter, but both he and his ship were never seen again.

Miguel Corte-Real returned to the New World in 1502 on a quest to rescue his beloved brother. After arriving in Newfoundland, his three caravels split up and began a frantic search of the coastline. But while the other two vessels later returned to their rendezvous point, Miguel’s ship vanished without a trace. The fate of the two Corte-Reals remains a mystery, but there is some evidence that Miguel may not have perished immediately after his disappearance. In 1918 a Brown University professor discovered an inscription on a boulder in Dighton, Massachusetts. Dated 1511, the message read: “Miguel Corte-Real, by the will of God, here leader of the Indians.” If genuine, these markings would suggest that Miguel managed to survive in the New World for at least nine years. Even more amazing, they imply that he eventually joined and perhaps even led a tribe of natives.

4. Jean-Francois de Galaup Lapérouse

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In 1785 France’s King Louis XVI dispatched the explorer Jean-Francois de Galaup Lapérouse on a grand around-the-world mapmaking expedition. After setting sail from Brest, the navigator rounded Cape Horn and spent the next few years surveying the coastlines of California, Alaska, Russia, Japan, Korea and the Philippines. Lapérouse reached Australia in 1788, but after leaving Botany Bay his fleet disappeared. A rescue expedition arrived in 1791, but it found no trace of Lapérouse, his two ships or his 225 crewmembers.

It was nearly 40 years before any evidence of the explorer’s fate emerged. In 1826 an Irish sea captain named Peter Dillon learned from natives that a pair of ships had once sunk near the island of Vanikoro. After sailing to the site, Dillon recovered anchors and other wreckage later confirmed to belong to Lapérouse’s two ships. In a bizarre twist, the locals also claimed that some of the men—including the group’s “chief”—had survived on Vanikoro for some time before building a ramshackle boat and heading out to sea. If this mysterious “chief” was indeed Lapérouse, it would mean the doomed navigator survived for several years longer than was originally believed.

5. Sir John Franklin and Francis Crozier

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Sir John Franklin and Francis Crozier were among the most renowned polar explorers of the 19th century, and their disappearance triggered a decades-long series of rescue missions. In 1845 the duo led two ships on an expedition to discover the elusive Northwest Passage—the sea route linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. But after passing Baffin Island that July, the expedition vanished without a trace.

It was two years before a search party arrived from England, and only then did some of the terrifying details of the explorers’ fate finally come to light. The investigations revealed that Franklin and Crozier’s vessels had become trapped in pack ice during the winter of 1846-1847. While the expedition had three years’ worth of supplies, all the provisions had been sealed with lead, which almost certainly contaminated the sailors’ food. The crew soon became weakened and delirious from lead poisoning, and at least 20 men—including Franklin—perished by mid-1848. Natives who came in contact with the expedition later claimed that Crozier tried to lead the survivors south in search of help. Most if not all of the men are believed to have died during the journey, and recent evidence shows some even resorted to cannibalism. Spurred on by Franklin’s widow, as many as 50 ships would later travel to Canada in an attempt to locate the lost expedition, but the bodies of Franklin and Crozier—along with the wrecks of their two ships—have never been recovered.

6. Peng Jiamu

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Perhaps the most famous example of a modern lost explorer is Peng Jiamu, a Chinese biologist who vanished during a desert expedition in 1980. One of China’s most beloved adventurers, Peng began his travels in the late 1950s. He participated in multiple scientific expeditions to northwestern China’s Lop Nor desert, often described as one of the driest places in the world. In 1980 Peng led a team of biologists, geologists and archeologists to Lop Nor to conduct new research. But several days into the journey, he abruptly disappeared from his camp after leaving a note saying he was going out to find water.

The Chinese government launched a massive search of the desert, but no sign of Peng was ever found. According to those familiar with the dangers of Lop Nor, the famed biologist was most likely buried alive by a freak sandstorm or crushed by an avalanche of loose soil. But while as many as six skeletons have been recovered from Lop Nor since his disappearance, none has been proven to be Peng.

An 18th-century depiction of Marco Polo. (De Agostini/Getty Images)

1. Marco Polo’s famous travelogue was penned in prison.
Marco Polo is remembered thanks to a colorful and popular narrative about his eastward voyage, known simply as “The Travels of Marco Polo.” Ironically, this record of Polo’s freewheeling years as an explorer was written while he languished behind bars. In 1298, three years after he returned from his journey, Polo was captured after leading a Venetian galley into battle against the rival Italian city-state of Genoa. While in prison he encountered Rustichello of Pisa, a fellow captive who was known as a talented writer of romances. Eager to document his years as a traveler, Polo dictated his life story to Rustichello, who acted as a kind of ghostwriter. By the time of their release in 1299, the two men had completed the book that would make Marco Polo a household name.

2. Marco Polo was not the first European to travel to Asia.
Marco Polo may be the most storied Far East traveler, but he certainly was not the first. The Franciscan monk Giovanni da Pian del Carpini reached China in the 1240s—over 20 years before Polo left Europe—and gained an audience with the Great Kahn of the Mongol empire. Other Catholic emissaries would later follow, including William of Rubruck, who traveled east in the 1250s on a quest to convert the Mongols to Christianity. These early missionaries were largely inspired by the myth of Prester John, a legendary king who was believed to rule over a Christian empire in the East. Polo would later mention the fictional monarch in his book, and even described him as having fought a great battle against the Mongol ruler Genghis Kahn.

3. Marco Polo barely knew his father and uncle when they began their expedition.
A few months before Marco Polo was born in 1254, his father Niccolo and uncle Maffeo left Italy on a trading excursion to Asia. The brothers returned to Venice in 1269, and it was only then that 15-year-old Marco finally met Niccolo, the father he never knew he had. Although he was essentially a stranger to the elder Polos, Marco joined them when they left on their more extensive second trip in 1271. While they originally planned only a brief stay in the Far East, the three men would eventually travel Asia together for more than 20 years.

Kublai Khan presents the Polos with a gold paiza in a 15th-century manuscript of Marco Polo’s travelogue. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

4. Marco Polo spent much of his journey as an envoy for the Mongol ruler Kublai Kahn.
The Polos were merchants who dealt in rare items like silk, gems and spices, but their extensive travels were more than just a trading mission. Marco, Maffeo and Niccolo were also employed as emissaries for the Mongol emperor Kublai Kahn, whom the elder Polos had met and befriended on an earlier journey east. Young Marco would forge an especially strong bond with the Great Kahn, who later dispatched him to China and Southeast Asia as a tax collector and special messenger. Kublai Kahn’s trust and protection allowed the Polos to move freely within the borders of the Mongol Empire. Marco was even provided with a “paiza”—a gold tablet that authorized him to make use of a vast network of imperial horses and lodgings. Thanks to this official passport, the Polos traveled through Asia not merely as wandering merchants, but as honored guests of the Great Kahn himself.

5. Marco Polo mistook some of the animals he saw for mythical creatures.
After his return from Asia, Marco Polo thoroughly documented his encounters with unfamiliar animals such as elephants, monkeys and crocodiles. He described the latter, for instance, as giant, sharp-clawed “serpents” that could “swallow a man … at one time.” But the traveler often confused these strange faunae with creatures from myth and legend. One of the first Europeans to glimpse an Asian rhinoceros, Polo thought the horned beasts were unicorns.

Mythical animals in a 15th-century manuscript of Marco Polo’s travelogue. (De Agostini/Getty Images)

6. Marco Polo was among the first Europeans to describe many of the advanced technologies found in China.
It is a common misconception that Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy—in truth, the dish had already existed in Europe for centuries—but there’s little doubt he made Westerners aware of many Chinese inventions. Among other things, Marco familiarized many of his readers with the concept of paper money, which only caught on in Europe in the years after his return. Polo also described coal—not widely used in Europe until the 18th century—and may even have introduced eyeglasses to the West. Meanwhile, he offered one of the historical record’s most detailed accounts of the Mongol post system, a complex network of checkpoints and couriers that allowed Kublai Kahn to administrate his vast empire.

7. The Polos barely made it out of Asia alive.
After enduring decades of travel and surviving several brushes with death, the Polos encountered their biggest hurdles when they tried to return to Italy. Worried that their departure would make him appear weak, the elderly Kublai Kahn initially refused to release his favorite envoys from service. The Polos were only allowed to leave the Great Kahn’s realm in 1292, when they agreed to escort a Mongol princess to Persia by sea. While they succeeded, the mission apparently proved to be the most perilous leg of the Polos’ journey. Marco later wrote that the members of his company were among the only survivors of a deadly sea voyage that claimed hundreds of lives.

Seafarers use a compass in a 15th-century manuscript of Marco Polo’s travelogue. (De Agostini/Getty Images)

8. The Polos lost much of their fortune while returning home.
Once they moved out of Mongol territory, Marco, Niccolo and Maffeo could no longer rely on Kublai Kahn’s protection. As the travelers passed through the kingdom of Trebizond, in modern-day Turkey, the local government robbed them of some 4,000 Byzantine gold coins. Despite this significant loss, the Polos retained enough of their cargo to arrive home in 1295 as wealthy men. According to one account, the Venetians concealed most of their gems by sewing the precious stones into the linings of their coats.

9. Many of Maro Polo’s contemporaries dismissed his stories as lies—and some modern historians still do.
Marco Polo’s elaborate descriptions of the royal palace at Xanadu, the metropolis of Quinsai (modern-day Hangzhou) and the many wonders of the Orient were simply too much for some readers to believe. In fact, by the time he was an old man, Polo’s fellow Venetians had largely branded him as a teller of tall tales. Readers had some reason to be skeptical: Polo and his ghostwriter, Rustichello, were prone to exaggeration and flights of fancy. For instance, the famous traveler often fictitiously inserted himself into battle scenes and court intrigues. While most modern historians still believe the bulk of his book to be factual, others have dismissed it as an outright fabrication and claim that Polo never even made it to China. For his part, Marco never admitted to a single lie. Even on his deathbed he is said to have remarked, “I did not tell half of what I saw.”

Fourteenth-century illustration of Marco Polo and his caravan. (Imagno/Getty Images)

10. Marco Polo’s route became largely impassable after his return to Venice.
Kublai Kahn died during the Polos’ return to Venice, sending the Mongol empire into decline and crushing any chance that Marco would ever return to the Far East. Tribal groups had soon reclaimed land along the once-prosperous trading route known as the Silk Road, effectively cutting off a vital artery connecting East and West. With the land route to China growing increasingly dangerous, few travelers dared set out on wide-ranging journeys for several years. In fact, Polo reportedly never left Venetian territory for the last two decades of his life.

11. Marco Polo was a major influence on other explorers, including Christopher Columbus.
Marco Polo never saw himself as an explorer—he preferred the term “wayfarer”—but his do-or-die approach to travel helped inspire a whole generation of globetrotting adventurers. Among his acolytes was Christopher Columbus, who carried a well-thumbed copy of the “The Travels of Marco Polo” on his voyages to the New World. Not realizing that the Mongol empire had already fallen by the time of his voyage, Columbus even planned to follow in Polo’s footsteps by making contact with Kublai Kahn’s successor.

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1. Spartans had to prove their fitness even as infants.
Infanticide was a disturbingly common act in the ancient world, but in Sparta this practice was organized and managed by the state. All Spartan infants were brought before a council of inspectors and examined for physical defects, and those who weren’t up to standards were left to die. The ancient historian Plutarch claimed these “ill-born” Spartan babies were tossed into a chasm at the foot of Mount Taygetus, but most historians now dismiss this as a myth. If a Spartan baby was judged to be unfit for its future duty as a soldier, it was most likely abandoned on a nearby hillside. Left alone, the child would either die of exposure or be rescued and adopted by strangers.

Babies who passed inspection still didn’t have it easy. To test their constitutions, Spartan infants were often bathed in wine instead of water. They were also frequently ignored when they cried and commanded never to fear darkness or solitude. According to Plutarch, these “tough love” parenting techniques were so admired by foreigners that Spartan women were widely sought after for their skill as nurses and nannies.

2. Spartan children were placed in a military-style education program.
At the age of 7, Spartan boys were removed from their parents’ homes and began the “agoge,” a state-sponsored training regimen designed to mold them into skilled warriors and moral citizens. Separated from their families and housed in communal barracks, the young soldiers-in-waiting were instructed in scholastics, warfare, stealth, hunting and athletics. At age 12, initiates were deprived of all clothing save for a red cloak and forced to sleep outside and make their own beds from reeds. To ready them for a life in the field, the boy soldiers were also encouraged to scavenge and even steal their food, though if detected they were punished with floggings.

Just as all Spartan men were expected to be fighters, all women were expected to bear children. Spartan girls were allowed to remain with their parents, but they were also subjected to a rigorous education and training program. While boys were readied for a life on campaign, girls practiced dance, gymnastics and javelin and discus throwing, which were thought to make them physically strong for motherhood.

3. Hazing and fighting were encouraged among Spartan children.
Much of the Spartan agoge involved typical school subjects like reading, writing, rhetoric and poetry, but the training regimen also had a vicious side. To toughen the young warriors and encourage their development as soldiers, instructors and older men would often instigate fights and arguments between trainees. The agoge was partially designed to help make the youths resistant to hardships like cold, hunger and pain, and boys who showed signs of cowardice or timidity were subject to teasing and violence by peers and superiors alike.

Even Spartan girls were known to participate in this ritualized hazing. During certain religious and state ceremonies, girls would stand before Spartan dignitaries and sing choral songs about the young men of the agoge, often singling out specific trainees for ridicule in order to shame them into stepping up their performance.

4. All Spartan men were expected to be lifelong soldiers.
As grueling as Sparta’s martial education system could be, the soldier’s life was the only option for young men who wished to become equal citizens, or “Homoioi.” According to the edicts of the Spartan lawmaker and reformer Lycurgus, male citizens were legally prevented from choosing any occupation other than the military. This commitment could last for decades, as warriors were required to remain on reserve duty until the age of 60.

Because of their preoccupation with the study of warfare, Sparta’s manufacturing and agriculture were left entirely to the lower classes. Skilled laborers, traders and craftsmen were part of the “Perioeci,” a class of free non-citizens who lived in the surrounding region of Laconia. Meanwhile, agriculture and food production fell to the enslaved Helots, a servile class that made up the majority of Sparta’s population. Ironically, constant fear of Helot revolts and uprisings was a major reason why the Spartan elite became so devoted to building a strong military in the first place.

5. Spartan youths were ritualistically beaten and flogged.
One of Sparta’s most brutal practices involved a so-called “contest of endurance” in which adolescents were flogged—sometimes to the death—in front of an altar at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia. Known as the “diamastigosis,” this annual practice was originally used as both a religious ritual and a test of the boys’ bravery and resistance to pain. It later devolved into an outright blood sport after Sparta went into decline and fell under control of the Roman Empire. By the third century A.D. there was even an amphitheater constructed so that scores of tourists could cheer on the grisly ordeal.

6. Food was intentionally kept scarce, and poor fitness was cause for ridicule.
When a Spartan man completed the main phase of the agoge at around age 21, he was elected to a “syssitia”—a military-style mess where citizens gathered for public meals. To prepare soldiers for the strain of war and discourage poor fitness, the rations doled out at these communal dining halls were always bland and slightly insufficient. Spartans were renowned for their devotion to physical fitness and proper diet, and they reserved a special loathing for overweight citizens, who were publicly ridiculed and risked being banished from the city-state.

Wine was a staple of the Spartan diet, but they rarely drank to excess and often cautioned their children against drunkenness. In some cases, they would even force Helot slaves to get wildly inebriated as a way of showing young Spartans the negative effects of alcohol.

7. Spartan men were not allowed to live with their wives until age 30.
Spartan society didn’t discourage romantic love, but marriage and childrearing were both subject to some peculiar cultural and governmental constraints. The state counseled that men should marry at age 30 and women at 20. Since all men were required to live in a military barracks until 30, couples who married earlier were forced to live separately until the husband completed his active duty military service.

The Spartans saw marriage primarily as a means for conceiving new soldiers, and citizens were encouraged to consider the health and fitness of their mate before tying the knot. In fact, husbands who were unable to have children were expected to seek out virile substitutes to impregnate their wives. Likewise, bachelors were seen as neglecting their duty and were often publically mocked and humiliated at religious festivals.

8. Surrender in battle was the ultimate disgrace.
Spartan soldiers were expected to fight without fear and to the last man. Surrender was viewed as the epitome of cowardice, and warriors who voluntarily laid down their arms were so shamed that they often resorted to suicide. According to the ancient historian Herodotus, two Spartan soldiers who missed out on the famous Battle of Thermopylae returned to their homeland disgraced. One later hanged himself, and the other was only redeemed after he died fighting in a later engagement.

Even Spartan mothers were known for their do-or-die approach to military campaigns. Spartan women are said to have sent their sons off to war with a chilling reminder: “Return with your shield or on it.” If a Spartan trooper died in battle, he was viewed as having completed his duty as a citizen. In fact, the law mandated that only two classes of people could have their names inscribed on their tombstones: women who died in childbirth and men who fell in combat.

Hiroo Onoda in 1975. (Keystone/Getty Images)

Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda is the most famous of the so-called Japanese holdouts, a collection of Imperial Army stragglers who continued to hide out in the South Pacific for several years after World War II had ended. An intelligence officer, Onoda was dispatched to the Philippine island of Lubang in 1944 with orders not to surrender under any circumstances. When Allied forces captured Lubang in 1945, he and three other soldiers stole away to the island’s densely forested hills. They would continue to wage their own guerilla war for several years, eventually killing some 30 Filipinos during raids and shootouts.

One of Onoda’s companions surrendered to Philippine forces in 1950, and by 1972 police had killed the other two. But despite being left alone, Onoda refused to surrender and went on to evade dozens of Philippine army and police patrols. The Japanese government attempted to track him down with search parties and even dropped leaflets over the jungle telling him the war was over, but Onoda dismissed these attempts as trickery. He would not surrender until March 1974—nearly 30 years after the war had ended—when his former commanding officer traveled to the island and ordered him to stop fighting. Amazingly, the 51-year-old Onoda was not the last Japanese straggler to surrender. Teruo Nakamura, a Taiwan-born infantryman, held out on the Indonesian island of Morotai until November 1974.

2. Operation Haudegen

The island of Spitsbergen. (Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

World War II’s Operation Haudegen was a German expedition to establish a meteorological station on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. In September 1944, an 11-man crew journeyed to the blustery island of Spitsbergen to gather data on North Atlantic weather patterns. Their mission was top-secret—so top-secret, in fact, that after the collapse of the Nazi government the men were accidentally abandoned on the island. While the crew received a message in May 1945 telling them the war had ended, they subsequently lost all contact with German forces.

Marooned in the Arctic Circle with no sign of help, the men of Operation Haudegen spent the next four months battling subzero temperatures, high winds and the constant threat of polar bear attacks. Rescue finally came in September 1945, when the Norwegians overheard one of the expedition’s distress calls and dispatched a seal hunting boat to the island. In laying down their weapons, the weather technicians became the last armed German soldiers to capitulate during World War II. By all accounts, the surrender was a friendly affair—the Germans were reportedly so relieved to be rescued that they treated their captors to a celebratory feast.

3. James Waddell and CSS Shenandoah

CSS Shenandoah in Australia in 1865. (Chicago History Museum/UIG/Getty Images)

The Confederate raiding vessel CSS Shenandoah had the dubious distinction of accidentally firing the final shots of the Civil War. Purchased from the British, the ship was commissioned in October 1864 and dispatched to “seek out and utterly destroy” Union commerce on the high seas. Under the command of Captain James Waddell, Shenandoah journeyed halfway around the world from Madeira to Australia before entering the Pacific Ocean. Sailing north to the Bering Sea, the ship spent the summer of 1865 wreaking havoc on the American whaling fleet. In total, Shenandoah seized six vessels, burned 32 others and captured over 1,000 prisoners.

Unbeknownst to Shenandoah’s crew, almost all of this raiding took place after the collapse of the Confederacy. It was August 2, 1865, before Captain Waddell learned the war had ended, and he quickly realized that his men would be tried as pirates if apprehended by the U.S. Navy. In order to avoid arrest, he elected to voyage around the tip of southern South America and sail for England. In the process, Shenandoah became the only Confederate vessel to complete a circumnavigation of the globe. Waddell and his raiders would finally turn themselves in to British authorities on November 6, 1865—almost a full seven months after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

4. Hermann Detzner

Hermann Detzner circa 1919.

World War I combat may have ended with the armistice on November 11, 1918, but at least one German colonial officer managed to avoid capture until the following January. Hermann Detzner was a land surveyor who was sent to present-day Papua New Guinea—then partially controlled by Germany—in January 1914 with orders to map the dense jungle. His small band of explorers was deep in the forest when World War I broke out in the summer of 1914, and Detzner was unaware there was even a conflict until after Australian troops had captured German New Guinea.

Upon learning of the war, Detzner refused to surrender and retreated into the jungle with a small force of German officers and natives. Aided by Lutheran missionaries, who gave him food and supplies, he spent the next four years hiding out in the jungle—all the while continuing to fly the Imperial German flag. During this time he made a series of abortive attempts to cross into Dutch-occupied New Guinea, and in doing so became the first European to explore several parts of the island’s interior. After learning that the war had ended, Detzner finally emerged from the bush and surrendered to Australian forces in January 1919. He would later write a popular, partly fictionalized account of his time playing cat and mouse with enemy patrols.

5. Joseph O. Shelby

Joseph O. Shelby. (State Historical Society of Missouri)

Confederate General Joseph O. Shelby was so reluctant to surrender to Union forces that his unit earned the nickname “the Undefeated.” Shelby had spent the Civil War commanding a bushwhacking band of cavalry on a series of raids through Missouri and Arkansas. By the end of the conflict, his “Iron Brigade”—so named for its legendary grit—had caused millions of dollars in damages to Union supplies and property.

Announcing that they chose “exile over surrender,” Shelby and roughly 600 soldiers rode south to Mexico after the collapse of the Confederacy. Following a three-month journey through the desert, they offered their services to Maximilian I, an Austro-Hungarian who had been installed as emperor of Mexico in 1864. While the emperor balked at including rebel soldiers in his army, he allowed Shelby’s émigrés to help found the Carlota Colony, a small settlement of Confederate expats. The upstart community enjoyed a brief period of prosperity but eventually dissolved after Emperor Maximilian was overthrown. Having never surrendered to federal forces, Shelby and most of his comrades returned to the United States in 1867 and resumed civilian life.

6. Spanish troops at the Siege of Baler

Survivors of the Siege of Baler after their return to Spain.

The Siege of Baler came during the confusion of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Revolution, in which Filipino freedom fighters revolted against Spanish colonial rule. The bizarre episode began in late June of 1898 when 800 Filipino insurgents descended upon the town of Baler, then occupied by just a small detachment of 57 Spanish infantrymen.

Faced with the Filipinos’ superior numbers, the Spaniards took refuge inside a stone church. Filipino forces promptly laid siege to the building, but the Spanish battalion stubbornly refused to lay down its arms. Although racked by disease and starvation, the troops would hold out in their makeshift fort until well after the official end of Spanish-Philippine hostilities in December 1898. During this time, the Filipinos repeatedly tried to convince the men that the war was over by sending them newspapers and other messages, but the Spanish dismissed these attempts as lies. The turning point in the standoff came when a Spanish officer noticed the wedding announcement of someone he knew in a newspaper sent by the Filipinos. Convinced of the document’s authenticity, the surviving Spaniards finally surrendered on June 2, 1899—nearly six months after their war had ended.

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1. Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets.
Forget almost every Viking warrior costume you’ve ever seen. Sure, the pugnacious Norsemen probably sported headgear, but that whole horn-festooned helmet look? Depictions dating from the Viking age don’t show it, and the only authentic Viking helmet ever discovered is decidedly horn-free. Painters seem to have fabricated the trend during the 19th century, perhaps inspired by descriptions of northern Europeans by ancient Greek and Roman chroniclers. Long before the Vikings’ time, Norse and Germanic priests did indeed wear horned helmets for ceremonial purposes.

2. Vikings were known for their excellent hygiene.
Between rowing boats and decapitating enemies, Viking men must have stunk to high Valhalla, right? Quite the opposite. Excavations of Viking sites have turned up tweezers, razors, combs and ear cleaners made from animal bones and antlers. Vikings also bathed at least once a week—much more frequently than other Europeans of their day—and enjoyed dips in natural hot springs.

3. Vikings used a unique liquid to start fires.
Clean freaks though they were, the Vikings had no qualms about harnessing the power of one human waste product. They would collect a fungus called touchwood from tree bark and boil it for several days in urine before pounding it into something akin to felt. The sodium nitrate found in urine would allow the material to smolder rather than burn, so Vikings could take fire with them on the go.

4. Vikings buried their dead in boats.
There’s no denying Vikings loved their boats—so much that it was a great honor to be interred in one. In the Norse religion, valiant warriors entered festive and glorious realms after death, and it was thought that the vessels that served them well in life would help them reach their final destinations. Distinguished raiders and prominent women were often laid to rest in ships, surrounded by weapons, valuable goods and sometimes even sacrificed slaves.

5. Vikings were active in the slave trade.
Many Vikings got rich off human trafficking. They would capture and enslave women and young men while pillaging Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Slavic settlements. These “thralls,” as they were known, were then sold in giant slave markets across Europe and the Middle East.

6. Viking women enjoyed some basic rights.
Viking girls got hitched as young as 12 and had to mind the household while their husbands sailed off on adventures. Still, they had more freedom than other women of their era. As long as they weren’t thralls, Viking women could inherit property, request a divorce and reclaim their dowries if their marriages ended.

7. Viking men spent most of their time farming.
This may come as a disappointment, but most Viking men brandished scythes, not swords. True, some were callous pirates who only stepped off their boats to burn villages, but the vast majority peacefully sowed barley, rye and oats—at least for part of the year. They also raised cattle, goats, pigs and sheep on their small farms, which typically yielded just enough food to support a family.

8. Vikings skied for fun.
Scandinavians developed primitive skis at least 6,000 years ago, though ancient Russians may have invented them even earlier. By the Viking Age, Norsemen regarded skiing as an efficient way to get around and a popular form of recreation. They even worshipped a god of skiing, Ullr.

9. Viking gentlemen preferred being blond.
To conform to their culture’s beauty ideals, brunette Vikings—usually men—would use a strong soap with a high lye content to bleach their hair. In some regions, beards were lightened as well. It’s likely these treatments also helped Vikings with a problem far more prickly and rampant than mousy manes: head lice.

10. Vikings were never part of a unified group.
Vikings didn’t recognize fellow Vikings. In fact, they probably didn’t even call themselves Vikings: The term simply referred to all Scandinavians who took part in overseas expeditions. During the Viking Age, the land that now makes up Denmark, Norway and Sweden was a patchwork of chieftain-led tribes that often fought against each other—when they weren’t busy wreaking havoc on foreign shores, that is.

Cleopatra VII of Egypt is often remembered for her legendary powers of seduction and mastery at building shrewd alliances. Still, her final political and romantic partnership—with the Roman general Mark Antony—brought about the deaths of both lovers and toppled the centuries-old Ptolemaic dynasty to which she belonged. In 41 B.C., Antony took up the administration of Rome’s eastern provinces, and he summoned Cleopatra to answer charges that she had aided his enemies. Hoping to woo Antony as she had Julius Caesar before him, Cleopatra arrived on a magnificent river barge dressed as Venus, the Roman god of love. A besotted Antony followed her back to Alexandria, pledging to protect Egypt and Cleopatra’s crown. The next year he returned to Rome to prove his loyalty by marrying the half-sister of his co-ruler, Octavian; Cleopatra, meanwhile, gave birth to Antony’s twins and continued to rule over an increasingly prosperous Egypt.

Antony returned to Cleopatra several years later and declared her son Caesarion—believed to be Caesar’s child—as Caesar’s rightful heir. This launched a war of propaganda with the furious Octavian, who claimed that Antony was entirely under Cleopatra’s control and would abandon Rome to found a new capital in Egypt. In 32 B.C. Octavian declared war on Cleopatra, and in 31 B.C. his forces trounced those of Antony and Cleopatra in the Battle of Actium. The following year, Octavian reached Alexandria and again defeated Antony. In the aftermath of the battle, Cleopatra took refuge in the mausoleum she had commissioned for herself. Antony, falsely informed that Cleopatra was dead, stabbed himself with his sword. On August 12, 30 B.C., after burying Antony and meeting with the victorious Octavian, Cleopatra closed herself in her chamber with two of her female servants and committed suicide. According to her wishes, Cleopatra’s body was buried with Antony’s, leaving Octavian (later Emperor Augustus I) to celebrate his conquest of Egypt and his consolidation of power in Rome.

2. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn

While historians recognize that a combination of factors transformed England into a Protestant nation, Henry VIII’s fleeting but intense infatuation with a charismatic young woman named Anne Boleyn clearly had a hand in it. By 1525, the middle-aged monarch had soured on his first wife, the devoutly Catholic and immensely popular Catherine of Aragon, who had failed to bear him a male heir. His notoriously wandering eye came to rest on Anne, a cunning and beautiful lady-in-waiting whose father was an ambitious knight and diplomat. Unlike her sister Mary, one of his former conquests, Anne snubbed the king’s elaborate overtures and refused to be seduced without a promise of matrimony. In 1527 Henry asked Pope Clement VII for an annulment of his marriage to Catherine and was refused. Encouraged by advisors critical of the papacy, he secretly wed Anne in 1533, breaking with the Roman Catholic Church and appointing himself head of the Church of England shortly thereafter.

Henry’s enchantment with his second queen quickly began to fade, particularly when she too proved incapable of producing him the male heir he so desperately desired. In 1536 the king had Anne arrested and beheaded on plainly false charges of witchcraft, incest and adultery; he married Jane Seymour, the third of his six wives, 11 days later. In the decades that followed, questions surrounding the official state religion would continue to fracture and weaken the kingdom, and it was not until the 44-year reign of Elizabeth I, Henry’s daughter with Anne, that a permanent English Protestant church was established.

3. Pierre and Marie Curie

When Marie Sklodowska wed Pierre Curie in 1895, the couple embarked on an extraordinary partnership that would earn them international renown and influence generations of scientists. Born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1867, the brilliant Marie received degrees in physical sciences and mathematics from the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1894 she met Pierre Curie, a noted French physicist and chemist eight years her senior. The pair immediately bonded over their mutual interest in magnetism and fondness for cycling, and a year later they were married. Looking for a subject for her doctoral thesis and intrigued by the physicist Henri Becquerel’s accidental discovery of radioactivity in 1896, Marie Curie began studying uranium rays; soon, Pierre joined her in her research. In 1898, a year after the arrival of their daughter Irène, the Curies discovered polonium—named after Marie’s homeland—and radium. In 1902 they successfully isolated radioactive radium salts from the mineral pitchblende. The following year, the couple shared the Nobel Prize in physics with Becquerel for their groundbreaking work on radioactivity.

In 1904 Marie gave birth to a second daughter and Pierre was appointed to the chair of physics at the Sorbonne. Two years later, he was killed in an accident on a Paris street. Although devastated, Marie vowed to continue her work and was appointed to her husband’s seat at the Sorbonne, becoming the university’s first female professor. She later grew interested in the medical applications of radioactive substances, including the potential of radium as a cancer therapy, and directed the Radium Institute at the University of Paris, a major center for chemistry and nuclear physics. Marie died in 1934 from leukemia caused by four decades of exposure to radioactive substances. Irène Curie carried on the family tradition, sharing the 1935 Nobel Prize for chemistry with her own husband for their discovery of artificial radioactivity.

4. Czar Nicholas II and Alix of Hesse

Set against the backdrop of revolutionary turmoil, featuring an opportunistic mystic and hinging on an incurable bleeding disease, their tale had all the melodramatic elements of a sensational opera. (Indeed, it has inspired at least two.) The granddaughter of England’s Queen Victoria, Alix Victoria Helena Louise Beatrice—later known as Alexandra Feodorovna Romanov—rejected an arranged marriage to her first cousin, Prince Albert Victor, after falling in love with Nicholas, heir to the Russian throne, as a teenager in 1889. Equally smitten, her lover convinced his reluctant, ailing father to agree to the union, and the pair wed in November 1894, just several weeks after the czar’s death and Nicholas’ coronation.

Though forged amid great sadness, the marriage was a happy and passionate one, producing four daughters and a son, Alexei. From his father the young czarevitch inherited the claim to the Russian throne, but his mother bequeathed him a more burdensome legacy: the mutant gene for the clotting disorder hemophilia, of which both Alexandra and her grandmother Victoria were carriers. Terrified of losing Alexei, his parents became increasingly reliant on the controversial “mad monk” Grigori Rasputin, whose hypnosis treatments seemed to slow the boy’s hemorrhages. Rasputin’s political influence over the czar and czarina undermined the Russian public’s confidence in the Romanov dynasty and contributed to its overthrow during the February Revolution in 1917. Nicholas, Alexandra and their children were executed on July 16, 1918, on orders from Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. Indirectly, at least, the royal couple’s romance had opened a new and bloody chapter in Russia’s history.

5. Mildred and Richard Loving

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Richard Loving, a white man, met Mildred Jeter, a family friend who was of African and Native American descent, when both were teenagers, and their relationship quickly blossomed into romance. In June 1958 the couple drove 80 miles from their native Virginia, where so-called “anti-miscegenation” laws made interracial unions illegal, to exchange their vows in Washington, D.C. Five weeks later, police officers walked through their unlocked front door and awakened the newlyweds in the middle of the night. When a sheriff asked what he was “doing in bed with this lady,” 24-year-old Richard simply pointed at the marriage certificate hanging on the wall. Arrested and charged with “cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth,” the Lovings were sentenced to one year in prison or a 25-year exile from their home state.

The couple relocated to Washington, where they lived for five years and had three children. Missing their family and friends back home, in 1963 they contacted U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who referred them to the American Civil Liberties Union. Volunteer lawyers ultimately took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which in the landmark Loving v. Virginia decision of 1967 unanimously ruled that bans on racial intermarriage in Virginia and 15 other states were unconstitutional. Richard was killed in a car crash in 1975, and Mildred remained in the Virginia house he had built her until her death in 2008.

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1. Theagenes of Thasos

One of the towering figures of ancient sports, Theagenes was a Greek pugilist who supposedly won 1,300 bouts over the course of a 22-year career. His most significant achievements came at the Olympics in 480 and 476 B.C., when he became the first athlete to win the wreath in both boxing and pankration, an ancient form of mixed martial arts. He would win another 21 championships at the Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian games, and even won a crown as a long distance runner during a competition in the city of Argos.

Theagenes remained undefeated as a boxer for over two decades, and he continued to be a formidable presence even after his death. According to legend, when a vandal later attempted to deface a statue honoring Theagenes, the giant bronze carving fell on the man and crushed him to death.

2. Leonidas of Rhodes

Little is known about Leonidas of Rhodes, a runner who won the wreath in three categories at the 164, 160, 156 and 152 Olympic Games. Leonidas is notable not only for his long career—he won his final championships at the age of 36—but also for his versatility. He won sprint races like the stadion and diaulos, but was also victorious in the hoplitodromos, a strength-based race in which contestants ran in a helmet and armor while carrying a shield.

In total, Leonidas of Rhodes achieved a staggering 12 Olympic victories, a feat that has never been equaled in either the ancient or modern competitions. Even modern swimming star Michael Phelps has only earned 11 individual Olympic wins.

3. Gaius Appuleius Diocles

It’s easy to marvel at the astronomical salaries eared by modern athletes, but these riches are a mere pittance compared to the winnings of Gaius Appuleius Diocles, a Roman chariot racer in the second century A.D. During a 24-year career, Gaius competed in over 4,200 races, winning 1,462 and finishing second 861 times.

While there were other chariot jockeys with better records, Gaius had a knack for winning big money events, and his earnings saw him become one of the richest men in ancient Rome. According to University of Pennsylvania professor Peter Struck, Gaius Appuleius Diocles’ career winnings of 36 million Roman sesterces was enough to pay the salary of the entire Roman army for over two months—a sum that calculates to over $15 billion in modern-day cash.

4. Diagoras of Rhodes

Diagoras of Rhodes was a champion boxer and the patriarch of one of the most famous sporting families of ancient Greece. He claimed the crown at the Olympics in 464 B.C., an achievement that was later immortalized in verse by the lyric poet Pindar. He went on to win boxing titles at the Pythian games at Delphi, the Nemean games and the Isthmian games. These victories saw Diagoras become a periodonikes—an honor bestowed upon sportsmen who won at all four major festivals.

Diagoras is perhaps most famous for the achievements of his three sons, all of whom won championships in boxing or pankration. When his sons Damagetus and Acusilaus won both events at the 448 B.C. Olympics, they are said to have celebrated by carrying Diagoras through the arena on their shoulders.

5. Chionis of Sparta

A versatile track and field athlete, Chionis of Sparta swept two events during three separate Olympics in 664, 660 and 656 B.C. He specialized in the stadion and diaulos races, a pair of sprints that were among the festival’s oldest events, and his record of three consecutive victories was not replicated for nearly 200 years.

Chionis was also an accomplished jumper, and is remembered for having executed a 52-foot leap. Most historians discredit this accomplishment as an embellishment, but others have suggested that the measurement refers to the triple jump, which has its origin in the ancient Olympics. If it was indeed a triple jump, then Chionis of Sparta’s 52-foot hop was not equaled in the modern Olympics until as recently as 1936.

6. Arrichion of Phigalia

One of the ancient Olympics’ most legendary tales concerns Arrichion of Phigalia, a champion fighter whose career was tragically cut short during a title bout. According to the ancient writer Philostratus, Arrichion had claimed the wreath in pankration at the 572 and 568 B.C. Olympic games, and in 564 B.C. he reached the final for a third time in a row.

During the bout, Arrichion’s opponent placed him in a painful chokehold using his forearm. As the life was being squeezed out of him, Arrichion succeeded in dislocating his rival’s ankle—though some accounts say it was his toe—forcing the other man to tap out of the fight. While he’d won the title, it was quickly discovered that Arrichion had perished from the chokehold only moments before the fight was called. Some accounts say he died of asphyxiation, while others claim it was a broken neck or cardiac arrest. Arrichion was posthumously declared pankration champion for a third straight time, and was hailed as a hero in his hometown of Phigalia.

7. Milo of Croton

One of the true athletic superstars of antiquity, Milo of Croton was a wrestler known for his larger-than-life feats of strength and prodigious appetite. Milo won the Olympic title an astonishing six times in a row between 536 and 520 B.C., and claimed another 27 championships at the Nemean, Pythian and Isthmian games.

Milo is equally famous for his activities outside of the ring. He was a notorious glutton and reportedly could eat over 40 pounds of meat and bread and drink eight quarts of wine in one sitting He is also said to have led the Crotoniates to a military victory over the Sybarites in 510 B.C., and once saved the philosopher Pythagoras’ life by holding a collapsing roof in place until Pythagoras could escape to safety. According to legend, it was this superhuman strength that ultimately cost Milo his life. A famous tale states that as an old man he attempted to split a tree with his bare hands, but he became stuck and was eaten by wolves.