TouchéGet the appFun facts with the full story
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 Night Watch was cut down to fit a wall in 1715
Rembrandt's militia portrait went into Amsterdam's Town Hall, and the canvas was trimmed there, most likely to fit between two columns.
Read the story
A dying man said only he knew where the stolen van Eyck was
In April 1934 someone took The Just Judges, one panel of the Ghent Altarpiece, and left a note in its place.
Madame X's shoulder strap was first painted slipping off
At the 1884 Paris Salon, John Singer Sargent showed the socialite Virginie Gautreau in a black gown with one strap fallen from her shoulder.
A diver saved Winchester Cathedral, working in the dark
In 1905 the cathedral was sinking into soft ground, with cracks a child could crawl into. Its repair trenches kept flooding, and pumping them made it sink faster.
Citicorp Center was secretly reinforced at night in 1978
Less than a year after the tower was finished, its engineer, William LeMessurier, learned that his welded joints had been swapped for bolted ones, and that wind hitting a corner could strain them badly.
Chicago jacked up its buildings while people shopped inside
Central Chicago in the 1850s sat barely above Lake Michigan and could not drain.
Britain's first registered trademark appears in a Manet
On January 1, 1876, Britain began registering trademarks, and the first one entered was the red triangle of Bass pale ale.
The HMV dog was first painted listening to the wrong machine
Francis Barraud painted his late brother's dog, Nipper, staring into the horn of a cylinder phonograph.
In 5,000 snowflake photos, a Vermonter found no two alike
Wilson Bentley got an old microscope from his mother at 15, on a farm in Jericho, Vermont. In 1885 he fixed a camera to it and photographed his first snowflake.
The oldest surviving aerial photo shows Boston, not Paris
The photographer Nadar took the first aerial photographs from a balloon over Paris in 1858, once he had stopped gas from the balloon spoiling his plates. None of them survive.
149 stories. Ten free a day.
In the app these are the Learn cards.