Useless History
Professor Knowledge welcomes you into his classroom for History lessons you never knew you needed.
Episodes
January 3, 2025 • 5 mins
The Captain Morgan rum brand is named after a real person: the legendary Welsh privateer and buccaneer Captain Henry Morgan, who terrorized Spanish ships in the 17th century.
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December 27, 2024 • 5 mins
The Voynich manuscript is a 15th-century codex that has never been deciphered, and
"Frankenstein" was originally published anonymously.
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December 2, 2024 • 5 mins
Did George Washington know about dinosaurs? Most likely, no. Today, the existence of dinosaurs may seem like an immutable fact, but our knowledge of these ancient creatures is a relatively modern development.
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November 27, 2024 • 8 mins
Family dinner has been a mainstay of U.S. households since the mid-19th century, when men increasingly began to work and eat lunch — once considered the main meal of the day — outside the home. By the 1920s, the food rationing of World War I was a thing of the past, and the “Roaring ’20s” brought economic prosperity for many Americans.
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September 10, 2024 • 6 mins
In weddings around the world, exchanging rings is a crucial part of the ceremony, a moment in which a couple’s promises are sealed with a tangible token. This simple piece of jewelry does a lot of heavy lifting: It acts as a symbol of love, unity, and eternity, while also making our relationship status clear to the world.
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August 12, 2024 • 5 mins
The statue of David is among Michelangelo’s greatest masterpieces, but the sculpture isn’t without detractors. One such critic was none other than Queen Victoria, who reigned over England from 1837 until 1901, centuries after the original David was sculpted in 1504. In 1857, a plaster replica of the David was shipped to Great Britain as a gift to Victoria from Leopold II, the grand duke of Tuscany.
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July 23, 2024 • 5 mins
It’s been dubbed the “noble experiment,” a name that came from then-President Herbert Hoover calling Prohibition “a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.” In January 1920, the United States banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of “intoxicating liquors,” a move made in the wake of temperance movements that sought moral and social reform throughout the 1800s — in spite of some ...
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July 9, 2024 • 7 mins
Britain is a nation of many strange old traditions, from cheese rolling and wife carrying to mayor weighing and possibly the world’s most brutal ball game. Then there’s the British royal family, an almost endless source of quirky behavior and bizarre rituals.
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July 2, 2024 • 8 mins
The first list of the wonders of the world was compiled by the ancient Greek writer and poet Antipater of Sidon in the second century BCE, and it included seven extraordinary landmarks around the Mediterranean and modern-day Middle East. Since then, these ancient marvels have been a subject of study, fascination, and awe.
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July 1, 2024 • 6 mins
Alongside their eternal nemeses cats, dogs are the most popular pets in the world. They have been humans’ most faithful friends for at least 12,000 years, hunting with us, protecting us, and accompanying us in our everyday lives. In fact, dogs were the first domesticated animals, predating chickens, cows, goats, pigs, sheep, and even agriculture itself.
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June 4, 2024 • 10 mins
Imagine trying to pass through border security when all you have to prove your identity is a piece of paper that says “brown hair and freckles.” While that wouldn’t fly today, it’s typically how things worked before passports had photographs. Early passports simply included details such as the holder’s name and the location they were traveling; photography wasn’t invented until the 1820s, and it took many more years for the technol...
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At 1 a.m. on March 10, 1879, the arena at Gilmore’s Garden in New York City (later renamed Madison Square Garden) was absolutely packed with screaming fans of America’s latest sports craze: pedestrianism. That’s right, competitive walking. At the venue, fans outside tried to shove themselves in, breaking windows and scaling the roof. It was no less chaotic inside, where ticketholders scrambled on top of tables, chairs, and each oth...
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May 28, 2024 • 5 mins
When the United States government detonated the first atomic bomb, nicknamed Gadget, near Los Alamos, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, they did it in secret — or as secretly as you can test something that creates an explosion reaching 40,000 feet into the air. It was known as the Trinity Test, but as far as the public knew, an Air Force weapons stash had accidentally exploded. Soon after, Kodak started getting complaints that its X-ra...
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May 27, 2024 • 5 mins
As the American Civil War came to an end in 1865, communities across the U.S. honored fallen soldiers through local ceremonies at burial sites. On May 30, 1868, the first national ceremony of this kind took place on a day that would come to be known as Memorial Day — though at the time, it was called “Decoration Day.”
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May 14, 2024 • 6 mins
Timekeeping technology has come a long way from ancient Egyptian sundials, and with it, so has the ability to wake up at whatever precise time might be needed for work, school, or appointments — even if we often ignore a ringing alarm in favor of snoozing for just 10 more minutes.
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May 12, 2024 • 10 mins
Being a parent has been a demanding job since the dawn of humanity. While modern-day parents have access to a plethora of parenting resources and tools across social media, blogs, and podcasts, well-meaning — if not entirely well-informed — figures have offered advice about child-rearing for centuries.
Parenting advice became more widespr
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May 2, 2024 • 5 mins
Though it’s nearly ubiquitous today, wearing pants was considered highly uncivilized in ancient Greece and ancient Rome, where tunics and cloaks, such as togas and chitons, were the norm. The anti-pants sentiment had little to do with clothes themselves, and was more a result of xenophobia toward the cultures that traditionally wore them. Ancient Greek texts deride pants on Persians and Scythians, two groups who were frequently at ...
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May 2, 2024 • 7 mins
Many English monarchs are buried inside ornate tombs located at sites of great reverence. The same can’t be said for Richard III, whose long-lost remains were found and excavated underneath a parking lot in Leicester, England.
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April 16, 2024 • 8 mins
Ancient Roman history is usually dominated by larger-than-life rulers such as Julius Caesar and eloquent senators such as Cicero. However, these men led an empire of millions of everyday citizens who were usually less concerned with conquering the world than they were with putting bread on the table and simply enjoying life. A look at the lives of typical Roman citizens reveals a culture that in many fundamental ways is not so diff...
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March 26, 2024 • 8 mins
In 1558, Elizabeth Tudor assumed the throne of England and Ireland and began her reign as Queen Elizabeth I. From the moment she was crowned, Elizabeth was an unconventional ruler.
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