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149 short, true stories behind the things you use every day. Each one names its source.
In 1943 the US banned sliced bread.
Answer to read the story.For seven weeks, partly to save on wrapping. Read the story
The oldest known recording of a song was made to be read
In 1860 someone in Paris sang a French folk song into a horn, and a bristle scratched it into sooty paper as a wavy line.
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He bet $50 he could drive across America, and he had no car
In May 1903, at a San Francisco club, a Vermont doctor named Horatio Nelson Jackson took a $50 bet that a car could cross America in under 90 days.
The telegraph that caught a killer in 1845 had no letter Q
On January 1, 1845, a man in Quaker clothes left a cottage near Slough, England, shortly before the woman there died of poison. He caught a train to London.
Motorists tore up a red flag the law had already dropped
Britain's 1865 Red Flag Act held self-propelled vehicles to 4 mph, behind a man on foot with a red flag.
A man who made postage cheap sold the first Christmas cards
In 1840 posting a letter anywhere in Britain began to cost one penny. Henry Cole had helped bring that in.
The woman who started Mother's Day later tried to abolish it
Anna Jarvis created Mother's Day in memory of her own mother and campaigned until it became a national holiday in 1914.
Britain's new coins face a judge and jury every year
Each year the Royal Mint sets aside thousands of new coins, and a jury from the goldsmiths' guild tests them before a judge. The head of the Mint is, in effect, on trial.
A ship's propeller counter became a saloon's cash register
James Ritty ran a saloon in Dayton, Ohio, and suspected his staff were pocketing customers' money.
A royal Christmas tree became American by losing a tiara
In 1848 a London paper showed Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their children around a decorated tree at Windsor Castle.
The first car to pass 100 km/h ran on batteries
In 1899, near Paris, a Belgian engineer and a French count kept taking the land speed record from each other. All their cars were electric.
149 stories. Ten free a day.
In the app these are the Learn cards.