Stories: United States

Stories connected to United States.

Life on the Moon. According to a hoax.New York’s The Sun published a series claiming discoveries of lunar life and civilization. The reported obser…
Let’s table it. Discuss it—or set it aside?In British parliamentary usage, tabling puts a proposal forward for consideration. In American usage it suspe…
She raced a fictional round-the-world traveller.Journalist Nellie Bly travelled around the world in 72 days, inspired by the journey in Jules Verne’s novel.
Alone on an Arctic island. Then rescue.Ada Blackjack joined an expedition to Wrangel Island. After the other members left or died, she remained on t…
A misheard phrase that almost makes sense.An eggcorn replaces a word or phrase with a similar-sounding expression that seems plausible in context.
A giant in the ground. A hoax in the making.The Cardiff Giant, unearthed in New York in 1869, was promoted as a petrified man. It was a manufactured arch…
There is a name for those misheard lyrics.A mondegreen is a misheard phrase given a new meaning, often in a song or poem. Listeners substitute familiar…
A newspaper for a penny.Cheap mass-produced newspapers spread in the United States from the 1830s. Steam-powered printing helped make…
Three days across the Atlantic. A newspaper hoax by Poe.In 1844, a New York newspaper printed Edgar Allan Poe’s account of a three-day balloon crossing as fact. The…
Cleave can split. Cleave can cling.English cleave can mean to split apart or to adhere firmly. The senses come from different historical roots.
One pig. An international confrontation.The shooting of a pig helped trigger a confrontation between the United States and Britain in the disputed Sa…
Once outstanding. Now outrageously bad.Egregious commonly describes something conspicuously bad in modern English. Older usage could mean outstandin…
A dishwasher before the electric kitchen.Josephine Cochrane invented and manufactured a successful hand-powered dishwasher in the nineteenth century.
A film star with a second kind of invention.Hedy Lamarr was both an actress and an inventor. During World War II, she co-invented a radio-guidance system.
To learn to fly, she crossed an ocean.Bessie Coleman trained in France and earned her international pilot’s licence in 1921 after facing racial and…
The flood was made of molasses.A storage tank burst in Boston in 1919, sending molasses through the streets and causing deaths and injuries.
A round-the-world voyage. A crew of one.Joshua Slocum became the first person to sail around the world single-handedly. He later described the journe…
A tree-cutting operation backed by military force.After American officers were killed in the Korean Joint Security Area in 1976, Operation Paul Bunyan removed…
A plant trap waits for another signal.A Venus flytrap typically closes after repeated stimulation of its trigger hairs within a short interval.
A meteorite struck her inside her home.In Alabama in 1954, a meteorite fragment entered a house and struck Ann Hodges. She was injured but survived.
Someone broke into the television signal.In Chicago in 1987, broadcast signals were hijacked to show a person wearing a Max Headroom mask.
A pile of stones can carry a message.Arctic inuksuit are stone structures that can mark routes or places and serve other purposes. They do not all…
The Marine Corps dog was demoted.Chesty VI, a bulldog mascot of the U.S. Marines, tore up a military punching bag and disobeyed an order to st…
Dog food stolen: 23 short tons.Over several months in 1977, bags of dog food vanished from a California feed store. The losses added up to a…
A fairground stand makes about a million cookies a day.At the Minnesota State Fair, Sweet Martha's Cookies has capacity for 44,000 cookies every 12 minutes. Its ave…
A million tulips. Replaced after a month.The Netherlands donated a million tulip bulbs for the 1939 New York World's Fair. About a month after opening…
People kept falling ill at a TV-license hearing.During a 1950s U.S. hearing over a TV license, an engineer collapsed on the stand, another bidder had food po…
Cranberries vanished from the president's table.In 1959, an herbicide was detected in some U.S. cranberry shipments shortly before Thanksgiving, triggering a…
He disliked sprinklers, so the tower had none.Frank Lloyd Wright's research tower opened without a sprinkler system because he disliked its appearance. Fac…
An 11-year-old Prince was in a strike report.While revisiting footage of a 1970 Minneapolis teachers' strike, a TV station identified a child speaking in…
An ornate theater changed hands for $1.After New York's Valencia Theatre closed in 1977, its owner donated the building to a congregation for a nomi…
An organ console went to the wrong theater.A pipe-organ console intended for Loew's Jersey Theatre was first installed at the Paradise Theatre by mistak…
The losing coach suited up and scored the winner.In a 1944 football game, coach Ed Storm came out of retirement mid-game. He intercepted a pass and eventually…
A sports team's name drew a demand to change it.The Green Bay Packers were named for the meat-packing business that backed the early team. In 2000, PETA call…
A flower thought lost was back in its old cave.A Colorado columbine variety had not been recorded in the wild since 1892 and was presumed extinct. In 2008,…
One plant name honors three Catherines.The fossil species Prunus cathybrownae was named for three generations of Catherine Brown, all connected with…
An emu kept knocking over the camera.At a Florida hobby farm, Emmanuel the emu repeatedly interrupted his caretaker's videos and pecked at the cam…
The team is named for sausages. And long-range goals.Portland Bangers FC uses a name that points both to British sausages and to spectacular long-distance soccer…
Before the music venue, there was a hot-dog factory.Brooklyn music venue Baby's All Right opened in 2013 inside a former production facility of the historic hot-…
He took over a hotel with a borrowed $20 fee.Wine entrepreneur Armand Ceritano took over a struggling Philadelphia hotel in 1976. The $20 filing fee was b…
He wrote their hit. He joined the band 30 years later.Jim Photoglo co-wrote “Fishin' in the Dark,” a hit for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in the 1980s. He joined the…
The show debated a resignation two days after it happened.An American public TV station initially could not receive live network programs. Its manager recalled airing…
Was this jazz bar won in a card game?New York's 55 Bar began in 1919. One account says its founder acquired the property in a card game; that rema…
A satellite dish went into an empty swimming pool.In 1977, Arizona's KUAT-TV began building a satellite dish inside a vacant university swimming pool. The inst…
The Queen's speech versus Snoop Dogg lyrics.In a book about Christmas and mathematics, Hannah Fry compared the vocabulary of the Queen's Christmas messag…
Beavers, Mario games and Jackie Chan.The slapstick film Hundreds of Beavers drew ideas from Mario games as well as silent comedy. Its lead perform…
Opera captions came from a film subtitler.After decades subtitling films, Sonya Friedman tried projecting translated words above the stage at a Canadia…
A cat-book illustrator lived with ten cats.Mary Chalmers wrote and illustrated children's books about cats. By 1967 she had ten cats and a Pomeranian at…
The Odyssey, arranged like game levels.The album musical Epic retells Homer's Odyssey in nine sagas. Its creator drew on video-game structure: each…
Her album cover misspelled her name.St. Louis singer Jeanne Trevor's 1965 album printed her name as “Jeannie.” The cover did not show her photogr…
The movie selection was bad. The host made it the joke.Florida's first TV station, WTVJ, had only a meager selection of old films in its early years. Host Alec Gibs…
Did the owners hide tables from their architect?A local paper reported a rumor that Fallingwater's owners hid tables Frank Lloyd Wright disliked whenever he…
Time bought Elvis photos. It printed the one with a dog.Photographer Alfred Wertheimer sold Time exclusive rights to his Elvis Presley work. The magazine used just o…
To film an eclipse, roll the studio camera outside.WFRV-TV claimed to be the first station to show a live lunar eclipse in 1959. Its method was direct: wheel a…
It missed New Year's Eve, but made Lunar New Year's Eve.An Indiana TV station promised to launch by December 31, 1983. Weather delayed construction, and it finally s…
Sixty-four Hawaiian bee species may trace to one arrival.The 64 known Hawaiian Hylaeus bee species are thought to descend from one ancestor that reached the islands a…
A joke during online poker became a TV series.During a 2020 online poker game, director Jeff Baena joked about re-dubbing old films. He began taking the id…
Copy the shoe? Then use the greener materials too.After criticizing an Amazon shoe for looking like its Wool Runner, Allbirds' founders publicly invited Amazon…
The theater burned three times. Each fire started elsewhere.Atlantic City's Academy of Music was destroyed by fire in 1892, 1898, and 1902. Rebuilt each time, it was rep…
Researchers call them “funny w” and “funny r.”In reconstructions of Proto-Siouan, scholars use the labels “funny w” and “funny r” for certain proposed soun…
His roster included cats, a dog, and a rainbow-trailing cat.Ben Lashes worked as a meme manager for Keyboard Cat, Grumpy Cat, Nyan Cat, Doge, and other internet phenomen…
A music duo named itself after its delivery habit.The American duo Food House got its name from how often its members used Uber Eats, rather than from a plan t…
They built sailing warships. Steam had arrived by launch.The U.S. Navy's Potomac-class frigates were designed to sail without engines. Construction took so long that…
Hit the hippo; the ducks stay safe.In Ducks Ahoy!, the hippo knocks the gondola back but does not hurt the ducks. Its creators deliberately avoi…
Farm, fish, mine— and marry the town leader.Sun Haven mixes farming, fishing, mining, and romance. Among its marriage candidates is Lucia, the leader of…
He beat a team, joined it, then faced his old team.In 1934 Red Weiner starred for the Eagles against the Reading Keys. After leaving the Eagles in November, he…
Return to your Jeep. Find a rubber duck.Jeep ducking is the custom of leaving a small rubber duck on someone else's Jeep. It spread after a 2020 gest…
He built a cathedral, then said he had none.Saint Paul's second cathedral opened in Minnesota in 1851, with worship space on the second floor of a shared…
Coat the ship in metal that pushes against gravity.In the 1827 novel A Voyage to the Moon, a fictional anti-gravity metal lifts an airtight craft toward the Moo…
A Pizza Hut–Taco Bell song met an ancient Roman rhetorician.The 2008 Das Racist song has two people repeatedly trying to find each other at a combined Pizza Hut and Taco…
The bishop studied in Gaming. Not video games.Artur Bubnevych earned a theology degree at an institute in Gaming, Austria. The place name looks like the En…
An early women's-rights speech at a quilting gathering.Nineteenth-century quilting bees in the United States doubled as places to talk and debate. As a teenager, Su…
A farm store began teaching people how to raise chickens.As cities in the U.S. Northwest allowed more urban chicken keeping, Coastal Farm & Ranch held seminars for su…
Why add night officers? Chicken theft.During the Great Depression, chicken theft became a serious problem in Baltimore County in 1931. Police chief…
A fight over signs temporarily shut four stores.Video Update disputed payment to a company hired to replace store signs after an acquisition. The sign maker…
New York's $1 pizza began near shelters.99 Cent Fresh Pizza opened in 2001 as New York's first dollar-slice shop. Its owner priced slices to serve pe…
Two NFL players. The same name.Two men named Allen DeGraffenreid played in the NFL in the 1990s. One, born in 1970, was a wide receiver catc…
An architectural landmark changed hands for $10.Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower transferred to new owners in 2023 for a nominal $10. The deal also came with…
From a bomb laboratory to a pipe-organ workshop.Charles Fisk worked as an electronics technician at Los Alamos during World War II, initially unaware of the…
Texas's highest waterfall holds a flower's wild home.Capote Falls drops up to about 53 metres in dry western Texas. Its damp bank supports Hinckley's columbine, k…
He acted like a game character and found a live audience.After a period of homelessness, Malik Ambersley began public livestreams in 2023 dressed as Miles Morales. He…
Fifty hours of cartoons. Fourteen old films. Repeat.In the early 1980s, Rhode Island station WSTG stayed on the air while its owner sought a buyer by rerunning 5…
Her first reporting assignment was a riot.Bea Hines became the Miami Herald's first Black woman reporter in 1970. On her first day in the role, she was…
A venomous cave crustacean needed a new class name.Cave diver and zoologist Jill Yager discovered a venomous, centipede-like crustacean in a Bahamas underwater…
An Alaska TV newsroom once used home-movie cameras.Anchorage station KIMO once shot its newsfilm on home-movie cameras. It later overhauled its news operation a…
Ballpark massages. About 7,000 by 2006.Sister Rosalind Gefre began offering massages at St. Paul Saints baseball games in Minnesota in 1993. Initial…
A famous house built for her. She left after a year.Aline Barnsdall commissioned Los Angeles's Hollyhock House from Frank Lloyd Wright. Early leaks and flooding…
No whole dragonfly. Just a fossil wing.An early Eocene fossil from Washington state preserves a single dragonfly hindwing. Researchers used its vein…
She feared childbirth. Then taught 17,000 couples.Facing her first delivery, Flora Hommel worried about childbirth. She studied the Lamaze method in Paris in 1…
They ran out to celebrate. It was only offside.Near the end of the 2024 MLS Cup final, LA Galaxy led 2–1. Bench players and staff mistook a whistle for a Re…
A tornado carried a photograph 353 kilometres away.During the 2011 Hackleburg–Phil Campbell tornado, a photograph was lifted from Phil Campbell, Alabama, and fo…
The American-sounding song was Brazilian. The Brazilian song was American.On his 2004 English-language album, Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso recorded both Feelings and Carioca. The…
Forced from Ohio. Back 22 years later to protect her culture.Wyandot woman Margaret Grey Eyes Solomon was forced from Ohio to Kansas in 1843. She returned near her former…
A landing called Pig's Eye. Then a chapel changed the name.Near today's Saint Paul, Minnesota, a river landing was known as Pig's Eye. After a log chapel dedicated to S…
About 10,000 notes a year. Each with a red-pencil greeting.American magazine publisher Arthur Motley clipped news about people he knew and mailed it to them with a brie…
A Frank Lloyd Wright house went up. The owner called it a pickle factory.Westhope, a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Oklahoma, was completed in 1931. As neighbours puzzled over its unusu…
Just 34 seconds long. It reached number nine in Britain.Jack Black's Steve's Lava Chicken, from A Minecraft Movie, runs about 34 seconds in its original version. In…
Budget cuts threatened a newscast. Students offered their own time.At university station KRWG-TV in New Mexico, the student-produced News22 faced budget cuts in 1997. Students…
He opposed slavery and secession. Then was drafted by the Confederacy.German-born Dethloff Willrodt moved to Texas and opposed slavery and secession, yet was conscripted into the…
A gale sent a tree into the studio. The radio stayed on air.During Oregon's Great Coastal Gale of 2007, a large elm tree crashed into the building housing community radi…
Science Fiction Chronicle became simply Chronicle.Around 2002, the US science-fiction magazine Science Fiction Chronicle shortened its name to Chronicle. One a…
Japan's first female college graduate. Her great-granddaughter wrote the biography.Ōyama Sutematsu graduated from Vassar after studying in the United States in the 19th century. Her great-gran…
About 4,000 tiny newspaper portraits. Sorted into a yearbook for 2008.In 2008, US artist Rutherford Chang collected about 4,000 ink-dot portraits from The Wall Street Journal and…
At some shows, the band asks fans to sit down instead of stand.US band Racing Mount Pleasant tailors its shows to each venue and uses projections synchronized with the musi…
A backward K means a called strikeout. Even the Hall of Fame cannot name its inventor.Baseball writer Henry Chadwick used K for strikeouts in 1859. But a National Baseball Hall of Fame reference…
Tooth pain halted the session. The singer went for emergency treatment.My Chemical Romance was recording a demo of Vampires Will Never Hurt You in 2002 when singer Gerard Way's too…
A private game beta leaked. The official release came early.Terraria launched on Steam for Windows on May 16, 2011, earlier than its creators had planned. A beta from a…
The first US Congress met there. Later, the building sold for $425.New York's original Federal Hall hosted the first US Congress and George Washington's 1789 inauguration. Afte…
Born in the U.S.A. became the first commercial CD made in the US.Bruce Springsteen's 1984 album was the first compact disc manufactured in the United States for commercial re…
A Tokyo silversmith travelled to the US. A Lakota family welcomed him as kin.Goro Takahashi travelled through the United States to learn silversmithing. In 1979, while spending time at P…
He found the cake bland. He published its recipe anyway.American chef James Beard considered red velvet cake bland and uninteresting. Even so, he included a recipe f…
That green Windows XP hill was only briefly so bare.The Bliss wallpaper was photographed in California in 1996 after vineyards had been cleared following a phyll…
A Google account was shut down. A Google game version was cancelled—then restored.In February 2021, Re-Logic said its Google account had been suspended without an explanation and cancelled th…
A guide-dog program could not take him. So he trained his own dog.John Boyer was born blind and lost his hearing before age ten. After college, he trained his own guide dog be…
AI predicts the next frame. The scenery and inventory may change.Released in 2024, Oasis is an unofficial Minecraft-like experiment driven by AI. It generates the next image…
He became a successful actor. His high-school diploma came at 34.Jeremy Allen White studied ballet, jazz and tap dance as a child before pursuing acting. He often missed afte…
Correct answers, almost no steps. The mystery lasted about a decade.An account called Cleo posted 39 answers to difficult integrals on a mathematics forum between 2013 and 2015,…
New York sent aid with one condition: give it out regardless of race.A fire destroyed nearly 500 buildings in Savannah, Georgia, in 1820. New York City sent relief money on the c…
His family name was Carlsen. A teacher wrote Carlson; he kept it.American football player Wes Carlson grew up with the family name Carlsen. A primary-school teacher misspelle…
A car park covered an old church site. Builders found about 190 burials below.After New York's Spring Street Presbyterian Church closed, a car park was built over its burial vaults. Const…
Almost no budget. One hotel room. Seven days of recording.My Chemical Romance recorded and produced its 2002 debut album I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your…
He borrowed a college star's identity. After one NFL game, he vanished.In 1923, a man claiming to be a celebrated Princeton player joined a St. Louis team and was later sold to Gre…
To stop cars blocking his restaurant, he planted a fake fire hydrant.New York restaurateur P. J. Moriarty placed a theatrical prop hydrant outside his restaurant in 1955 to deter…
Near the seabed, two squid meet. The male grips on belly-up.A remotely operated vehicle filmed mating behaviour in the deep-sea squid Pholidoteuthis adami. The male face…
A spider bite appeared on an actor's face. Editors removed it from the scene.For the television episode Future Days of The Last of Us, a spider bite on Kaitlyn Dever's face was digitally…
Evening riders were disappearing. The company pointed at TV.A transit company in Worcester, Massachusetts, cut off-peak service on 22 of 33 routes in 1952. It claimed pe…
A diner lobster became a musical joke. An animal-rights group gave it a prize.The 2018 Saturday Night Live sketch Diner Lobster turns a customer's order into an elaborate musical number.…
Its white flowers appear above ground. Its seed capsules develop below.Common starlily is a small wildflower of western North America, only about 5 to 10 centimetres tall. Its flor…
He trained to become a teacher. Then he chose to pave streets.Born in Minsk, in present-day Belarus, in 1862, Shmuel Hurvits trained as a teacher but left the field becaus…
A TV station faced a tax bill. Its staff held up inside the studio.In 1977, WHCT in Connecticut disputed a $77,000 tax bill on its studio building. Station officials refused en…
A pastor watched a movie. Then he asked to buy the theater.After watching a film at New York's 175th Street Theatre in 1969, Reverend Ike was taken with the building an…
Viewers emailed a TV newscast. The anchor read them live on air.In the 1990s, Indiana station WSJV introduced a 5 p.m. newscast that invited audience feedback by phone and e…
A desert plant glows red. The color is mostly not from its flowers.Desert paintbrush in the western United States appears to have vivid red or orange flowers. Much of that colo…
Frank Ocean sang on stage. Brad Pitt acted out a phone call nearby.At a US music festival in 2017, Frank Ocean performed Close to You while actor Brad Pitt, seated offstage, ac…
Scrat was meant to die early. The trailer changed his fate.The acorn-chasing Scrat was initially set to be killed in the opening of Ice Age. Audiences responded well to…
He played one pro game that season. A writer still named him All-Pro.Obe Wenig played just one game for the Rock Island Independents in 1920. Sportswriter Bruce Copeland neverthe…
A brewer was kidnapped in 1933. A ransom note changed the investigation.After US brewery executive William Hamm Jr. was kidnapped and released, FBI investigators used silver nitrate…
His name moved on and off rosters. At last, he reached an NFL game.Wide receiver Brandon Smith signed and was waived by several teams after 2021, repeatedly returning on practi…
The governor locked his office and left. A senator came in through the window.In Oregon in 1913, Governor Oswald West shut his office to avoid receiving bills. Senate president Daniel Mal…
It hides ads from you. Then it simulates clicks on them.Created in 2014, the browser extension AdNauseam blocks ads from view while automatically simulating clicks o…
A dog retrieved baseball bats. A camera rode on his back.Ripken the Labrador collected discarded bats during US baseball games. A GoPro mounted on his back filmed his…
The sonata was finished in 1939. Its score appeared in 1945.Paul Creston completed his saxophone sonata in 1939, with publication planned for 1940. Wartime staffing shor…
The players wore 70, 73 and 77. Their line got a TV-show nickname.Los Angeles Kings forwards Tanner Pearson, Tyler Toffoli and Jeff Carter all wore numbers in the 70s. Their 2…
He interviewed a writer. He was accidentally high during it.One episode of the American Longform podcast featured host Max Linsky interviewing writer Sam Fragoso while u…
The programme tapes arrived. The broadcast rights had not.Former staff recalled that, during financial trouble in the early 1990s, US station WTVX received programmes…
A Baltimore Christmas wish: crabs. It became a local song.David DeBoy recorded the humorous Crabs for Christmas in 1980, building the song around Baltimore's local fla…
He began with hair clips. Then he sold records others avoided.Korean immigrant Wan Joon Kim started trading at Los Angeles swap meets and opened a stall at the Compton Swa…
The crew tried to make eerie dialogue. The first redo sounded like Yoda.For the Reservation Dogs episode Deer Lady, the sound team tried rearranging the nuns' words in new recording…
People kept misspelling his surname. He legally changed it.American football player Ray Jennison was born with the surname Jenison. He said people repeatedly added an e…
She recorded the new season. The screams came from the archive.While pregnant during recording for Phineas and Ferb's fifth season, Ashley Tisdale chose not to record new s…
He signed with the Packers. Then he played against them.George Seeman signed with the Green Bay Packers in April 1940. Before joining their training camp that August…
The river's first bridge opened in 1855. Walking across cost five cents.Minnesota's Hennepin Avenue Bridge opened in January 1855 and is described as the first bridge across the Mis…
A college worked on wartime uranium. The overhead helped build a TV station.Iowa State College received a five-percent overhead allowance for wartime research connected with uranium pro…
You visit two friends in a game. Soon they ask you to fix their marriage.In the 2005 interactive drama Façade, players type freely to speak with Grace and Trip. Their conversation tu…
New York, 1917. The marchers were silent; drums were not.An estimated 8,000 to 15,000 African Americans marched down Fifth Avenue in 1917 to protest lynching and disc…
The new team went 8–0. Two seasons later, it was shut down.Gannon College began its football programme in 1949 and finished the first season unbeaten, shutting out six…
Its title says 2024. The video came in 2023; streaming in 2025.Playboi Carti put the video for 2024 on YouTube in December 2023. The track did not reach major streaming pla…
The station aired local youth baseball. The field was on its own grounds.In its early years, Ohio television station WLIO broadcast Little League games from a ballfield on its studio…
A megacity has wild big cats nearby. Los Angeles is one such place.Mountain lions live in the Santa Monica Mountains near Los Angeles. The area is cited as one of two cases of…
A cozy game took years to make. The label began to grate on its director.Development of Wanderstop began around 2018. Director Davey Wreden joked it took so long that cozy game had b…
The FBI's acting director? A website listed the wrong man.In 2025, Brian Driscoll was expected to serve as acting deputy director. The White House website instead list…
Blocked parking space? Carl Zoll picked up the car.Former wrestler and Packers player Carl Zoll was remembered for reportedly lifting his Ford Model T out of ti…
SZA named a song after Scorsese. A day later, he heard it.SZA released 'Scorsese Baby Daddy' on 20 December 2024. The next day, Martin Scorsese's daughter played it fo…
The name says Raleigh. The address says Zebulon.North Carolina's Olde Raleigh Distillery opened in 2021 in nearby Zebulon, not Raleigh itself. Moving to its…
He practised tricks after an online video. Then a baseball star followed him.Shlomo Levinger began practising magic after watching a card-trick video. In 2021, baseball star Mike Trout f…
A tower ready to send signals upward. Old tunnels lay underneath.While building a Pittsburgh TV station in the 1960s, crews found abandoned mine shafts beneath planned tower…
Army transport, circus, early film. All on one camel's résumé.Topsy was among camels brought to the United States for a military transport experiment in the 1850s. After t…
A developer posted a red box. The crowd turned it into a sports game.#IDARB began with a 2014 post showing a simple red box. Developer Mike Mika asked followers what to do with i…
Taylor Swift released 'Fortnight'. Americans looked up the word.'Fortnight' means two weeks. On the day Taylor Swift released a song with that title, US Google searches for…
Meet the pope at the White House? The priest clicked delete.American priest James Shea received an email inviting him to meet Pope Benedict XVI at the White House. Think…
Months after the tornado, corn appeared around town.Following the 2024 tornado in Greenfield, Iowa, maize grew in and around the town. The storm is thought to ha…
A joke about his family? They get a say first.American comedian Dustin Nickerson often jokes about parenting and marriage. He says his family members can v…
Film school, then alchemy classes. Suddenly: a medieval studies minor.While studying film at New York University, director Jeff Baena took several classes related to his interest…
This is the entire park. Five square metres of granite.Chicago's Park No. 474 consists of a 54-square-foot granite slab with a sculpture. Funding rules required the…
Herbert Hoover attended the dedication. Decades later came Trump World Tower.The United Engineering Center opened in New York in 1961, with former president Herbert Hoover attending its…
'Maybe I'm a jinx. Send me to the other team.'American football player Tom Farris told the Packers coach that he might be a jinx because he had never playe…
The characters communicate by whistling. The show consulted the game's sound crew.In season two of The Last of Us, the Seraphites use a whistled language. For episode five, the television tea…
The ancient cone decayed. Its hollow shape survived in mud.Sequoites dakotensis was first described in 1935 from North Dakota fossils. The original cones had decayed, l…
Record a song in a rented house. Shoot the video that same day.Musicians Glaive and Ericdoa recorded 'Cloak n Dagger' in one day at a short-term rental in North Carolina in…
Two games in, he boarded a bus home. The coaches drove to the next stop.In 1995, Xavier basketball player Lenny Brown felt he did not fit in and boarded a bus to leave. University s…
'Back in two to four weeks.' The signal returned in 1994.Oregon television station KEBN went off the air in October 1992 while moving operations. A spokesperson expec…
Its body is unknown. Its footprints are about 20 cm across.In Alaska's Denali National Park, researchers found roughly 70-million-year-old bird tracks averaging about 2…
He watched anime on American TV. Then helped build a studio in Japan.The US technology channel TechTV aired an anime block called Anime Unleashed. Arthell Isom, later a co-founde…
He was close to giving up. Then the call came before the final game.Kicker Curtis Burrow heard from Green Bay several times during the 1988 NFL season without joining the team.…
Two drum kits. Two basses. First, the producer needed lessons.Jorge Ben's 1976 Brazilian album África Brasil used an unusually large lineup, including two drum kits and tw…
The nearest bank was seven miles away. He opened one in town.Sheldon Toomer of Auburn, Alabama, grew tired of making an almost full-day round trip to a bank seven miles a…
A sprint at the 1972 Olympics. Its image traveled on Voyager.A photograph of Motsapi Moorosi, Lesotho's first Olympian, running at the Munich Games was included on the Vo…
He thought it was This Is Us. It was The Last of Us.When actor Joe Pantoliano heard about a role in The Last of Us, he initially thought it was for This Is Us, a…
The referees were snowed in. Two players took their places.At a January 1983 NHL game in Hartford, a snowstorm kept a referee and linesman from arriving. Active players…
Someone posted a photo on lettuce. The store was found in 15 minutes.In 2012, a Burger King worker in the United States anonymously posted a photo of someone standing on lettuce.…
Designed in 1952. Opened in 2022.Mies van der Rohe designed a building for Indiana University in 1952, but funding ended the plan. The drawing…
The stadium stands were coming down. The field was still in use.Marquette Stadium in Milwaukee began removing its aging grandstand after a 1976 decision. Demolition continue…
The rubbish was not collected. Residents piled it in the streets.In East Harlem in 1969, residents and the Young Lords protested neglected rubbish collection. After organizin…
GOAT now means the greatest. A goat once meant the one who blew it.Today sports fans use GOAT for 'greatest of all time'. Historically, lowercase goat could mean the athlete wh…
A new game's announcement date. Printed on a pizza receipt.In 2022, Activision sent influencers pizza boxes with receipts attached. A message at the bottom teased a Dec…
A Santa Claus special counts as education? One station said yes.Under 1990s US children's television rules, stations had to report educational programs. At least one station…
Pigeons in the fur coat sleeves. Customers tried them on.John Morris later described hiding pigeons in the sleeves of fur coats during a sale at a Philadelphia depart…
The song was recorded. The borrowed music was not cleared.Frank Ocean's 2011 track 'American Wedding' used the instrumental from the Eagles' 'Hotel California'. After…
No catch for 402 days. Then an NFL team called.After being cut, Don Summers sold cars. A local paper reported that he went 402 days without catching a footb…
Its score was lost at sea. The reconstruction was lost in war.Kōsaku Yamada composed Japan's first symphony in 1912. He said the score was lost in a maritime accident afte…