Category: Strange History

Before the name Uncle Sam became a familiar face in American cartoons, it was already a nickname people used for the United States government. A Library of Congress folklorist points to two records that push the name’s documented history earlier than the popular Samuel Wilson story: an 1803 letter from a government arms inspector and an 1810 journal entry by a U.S. Navy midshipman.

A nickname in an armorer’s letter

On June 7, 1803, Massachusetts master armorer Robert Orr wrote to his son about a planned trip to New Haven. Orr expected to inspect rifles being made by Eli Whitney “for Unkel Sam 500,” according to the letter quoted by Library of Congress folklife specialist Stephen Winick. The context identifies “Unkel Sam” with the United States government, which had contracted for the firearms.

Orr’s casual wording is the clue. He offered the phrase as something already understood, rather than explaining a new joke. The letter therefore gives researchers an early, dated example of the nickname in use. Winick notes that Orr regularly inspected batches of rifles and that surviving Whitney rifles carry his “US–ORR” inspection stamp.

A sailor’s journal adds another early example

Seven years later, Midshipman Isaac Mayo used the nickname in a private journal entry about a rough passage at sea. Writing in March 1810, Mayo joked that “Uncle Sam, as they call him” would lose the services of at least one sailor if Mayo could have reached shore. The phrase “as they call him” similarly presents the name as familiar language.

Newspaper references from 1812 and an 1816 explanation involving “Uncle Sam’s Lazy Dogs” add more pieces to the record. Together, these dated appearances show the name circulating before the familiar story tied it to Samuel Wilson, a meat supplier whose government contracts began in 1813.

How the later origin story took shape

The Wilson account remains one of America’s best-known nickname stories. In the familiar version, workers connected “U.S.” markings on government provisions to Wilson’s initials and began calling the supplies “Uncle Sam’s.” The earliest surviving published account linking the name to Wilson appeared in 1830, decades after the 1803 letter and the 1810 journal entry.

Winick offers a possible explanation: government inspectors and other workers may already have used “Uncle Sam” as occupational folklore. A later observer who heard an inspector use the phrase around Wilson’s supplies could have understood it as a fresh joke about the contractor. That interpretation is a hypothesis, Winick says, rather than a settled account of how the nickname began.

A name with room for an unfinished origin

The records give the nickname a firm early footprint while leaving its first moment open. Robert Orr’s letter places “Unkel Sam” in 1803; Isaac Mayo’s journal shows it in use in 1810; later accounts help explain how the Samuel Wilson story joined the tradition. The name’s history is a small example of folklore at work: a phrase can travel through everyday speech long before a printed story gives it a memorable origin.

Sources: The Library of Congress’s Folklife Today series traces the early references and compares the competing origin stories. The institution’s America 250 collection also summarizes the evidence for the nickname’s early use.

Outside Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, the Duke of Wellington rides through the city centre with a bright orange traffic cone balanced on his head. The scene is instantly recognizable: a bronze monument, a royal square, and one cheerful flash of street humor.

The statue was created by Carlo Marochetti and has stood at Royal Exchange Square since 1844. Its rider, Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, became a familiar Glasgow landmark long before the cone joined the picture. Today the gallery’s own team describes the cone-topped statue as a local landmark and a point of reference for visitors.

A custom with a hazy first chapter

The first cone’s identity remains an open question in Glasgow’s historical record. In a 2025 study for the Review of Scottish Culture, folklorist Joel Conn records accounts that reach back to the 1970s and 1980s, alongside firmer evidence that cones were appearing by the late 1990s. That careful distinction gives the custom its folk character: people remember different beginnings, while the traceable story grows clearer over time.

The cone drew public attention by 2000, when a regional tourism board removed it from a promotional photograph. Glasgow’s then-Lord Provost defended the image as an expression of the city’s mix of culture and humor. Other civic voices favored a more formal view of the monument. The exchange captured the custom’s central tension: a prank could also become a shared city symbol.

From street joke to civic emblem

As the cone appeared on postcards, shirts, and travel material, Glasgow’s relationship with it shifted. Conn’s study follows the practice through years of removal efforts, local debate, and official campaigns that began using the image themselves. A 2013 plan to raise the statue’s plinth to 1.8 meters prompted a public backlash, and the council withdrew the planning application within days.

In 2014, a glowing-cone version of the statue appeared in the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. Since then, the motif has found a place in city branding, artwork, and souvenirs. Glasgow Life’s museums even devoted a segment of their Curious City podcast to the question, “Why does the Duke of Wellington always wear a traffic cone?”

A landmark people make together

The cone’s appeal lies in its scale. It turns a grand monument into a small, repeatable joke that visitors can recognize and residents can claim as their own. Conn’s research describes how the image travelled from a folk act into a flexible emblem used across Glasgow’s public life.

Preservation and visitor safety remain part of the story: placing anything on the statue involves a climb, and the bronze deserves careful stewardship. The custom’s most durable home is now the idea it carries—Glasgow’s willingness to meet civic grandeur with an unmistakably human wink.

Sources

• Joel Conn, “The Joke of Wellington: The Duke of Wellington’s cone from folk act to brand,” Review of Scottish Culture, 2025.
• Glasgow Life Museums, Curious City: On the Move, “Coneheid.”
• Glasgow Life, “GoMA has turned 30.”

Outside Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, the Duke of Wellington rides through the city centre with a bright orange traffic cone balanced on his head. The scene is instantly recognizable: a bronze monument, a royal square, and one cheerful flash of street humor.

The statue was created by Carlo Marochetti and has stood at Royal Exchange Square since 1844. Its rider, Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, became a familiar Glasgow landmark long before the cone joined the picture. Today the gallery’s own team describes the cone-topped statue as a local landmark and a point of reference for visitors.

A custom with a hazy first chapter

The first cone’s identity remains an open question in Glasgow’s historical record. In a 2025 study for the Review of Scottish Culture, folklorist Joel Conn records accounts that reach back to the 1970s and 1980s, alongside firmer evidence that cones were appearing by the late 1990s. That careful distinction gives the custom its folk character: people remember different beginnings, while the traceable story grows clearer over time.

The cone drew public attention by 2000, when a regional tourism board removed it from a promotional photograph. Glasgow’s then-Lord Provost defended the image as an expression of the city’s mix of culture and humor. Other civic voices favored a more formal view of the monument. The exchange captured the custom’s central tension: a prank could also become a shared city symbol.

From street joke to civic emblem

As the cone appeared on postcards, shirts, and travel material, Glasgow’s relationship with it shifted. Conn’s study follows the practice through years of removal efforts, local debate, and official campaigns that began using the image themselves. A 2013 plan to raise the statue’s plinth to 1.8 meters prompted a public backlash, and the council withdrew the planning application within days.

In 2014, a glowing-cone version of the statue appeared in the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. Since then, the motif has found a place in city branding, artwork, and souvenirs. Glasgow Life’s museums even devoted a segment of their Curious City podcast to the question, “Why does the Duke of Wellington always wear a traffic cone?”

A landmark people make together

The cone’s appeal lies in its scale. It turns a grand monument into a small, repeatable joke that visitors can recognize and residents can claim as their own. Conn’s research describes how the image travelled from a folk act into a flexible emblem used across Glasgow’s public life.

Preservation and visitor safety remain part of the story: placing anything on the statue involves a climb, and the bronze deserves careful stewardship. The custom’s most durable home is now the idea it carries—Glasgow’s willingness to meet civic grandeur with an unmistakably human wink.

Sources

• Joel Conn, “The Joke of Wellington: The Duke of Wellington’s cone from folk act to brand,” Review of Scottish Culture, 2025.
• Glasgow Life Museums, Curious City: On the Move, “Coneheid.”
• Glasgow Life, “GoMA has turned 30.”

Outside Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, the Duke of Wellington rides through the city centre with a bright orange traffic cone balanced on his head. The scene is instantly recognizable: a bronze monument, a royal square, and one cheerful flash of street humor.

The statue was created by Carlo Marochetti and has stood at Royal Exchange Square since 1844. Its rider, Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, became a familiar Glasgow landmark long before the cone joined the picture. Today the gallery’s own team describes the cone-topped statue as a local landmark and a point of reference for visitors.

A custom with a hazy first chapter

The first cone’s identity remains an open question in Glasgow’s historical record. In a 2025 study for the Review of Scottish Culture, folklorist Joel Conn records accounts that reach back to the 1970s and 1980s, alongside firmer evidence that cones were appearing by the late 1990s. That careful distinction gives the custom its folk character: people remember different beginnings, while the traceable story grows clearer over time.

The cone drew public attention by 2000, when a regional tourism board removed it from a promotional photograph. Glasgow’s then-Lord Provost defended the image as an expression of the city’s mix of culture and humor. Other civic voices favored a more formal view of the monument. The exchange captured the custom’s central tension: a prank could also become a shared city symbol.

From street joke to civic emblem

As the cone appeared on postcards, shirts, and travel material, Glasgow’s relationship with it shifted. Conn’s study follows the practice through years of removal efforts, local debate, and official campaigns that began using the image themselves. A 2013 plan to raise the statue’s plinth to 1.8 meters prompted a public backlash, and the council withdrew the planning application within days.

In 2014, a glowing-cone version of the statue appeared in the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. Since then, the motif has found a place in city branding, artwork, and souvenirs. Glasgow Life’s museums even devoted a segment of their Curious City podcast to the question, “Why does the Duke of Wellington always wear a traffic cone?”

A landmark people make together

The cone’s appeal lies in its scale. It turns a grand monument into a small, repeatable joke that visitors can recognize and residents can claim as their own. Conn’s research describes how the image travelled from a folk act into a flexible emblem used across Glasgow’s public life.

Preservation and visitor safety remain part of the story: placing anything on the statue involves a climb, and the bronze deserves careful stewardship. The custom’s most durable home is now the idea it carries—Glasgow’s willingness to meet civic grandeur with an unmistakably human wink.

Sources

• Joel Conn, “The Joke of Wellington: The Duke of Wellington’s cone from folk act to brand,” Review of Scottish Culture, 2025.
• Glasgow Life Museums, Curious City: On the Move, “Coneheid.”
• Glasgow Life, “GoMA has turned 30.”

In 1920, Idaho outdoorsman Robert Limbert set out to cross one of the most unusual landscapes in the American West. He and a companion, W. Cole, carried bedding, a cook kit, a camera, binoculars and two weeks of supplies across the Craters of the Moon lava field. Their camp dog came, too.

The trek covered 80 miles over 17 days. The rough basalt quickly made the dog’s journey difficult, so Limbert and Cole carried him or waited while he picked his way over the rock. Limbert photographed the terrain along the route, recording a place that had drawn few visitors and little public attention. The National Park Service recounts the expedition in its history of the monument.

A taxidermist with a field notebook

Limbert came west in 1911, aged 26, and worked as a taxidermist while building a life as an outdoorsman and photographer. His first major exploration of the lava field came nine years later. The expedition gave him a firsthand map of the area’s craters, cinder cones and rugged flows—and a story he would keep sharing.

Limbert and Cole’s trip also gave the landscape memorable place names. Features they encountered became Big Cinder, Echo Crater, Trench Mortar Flat and Yellowjacket Water Hole. Those names helped make a vast volcanic field easier for readers and future visitors to picture.

How a moonlike name reached Washington

People in the region had already compared the terrain to the Moon, and some called it the Valley of the Moon. Limbert helped popularize “Craters of the Moon” through writing and photographs. His 1924 article in National Geographic brought the name and landscape to a national audience.

The name describes an impression, while the geology tells a distinctly earthly story. The National Park Service describes Craters of the Moon as a basaltic lava field along Idaho’s Great Rift. The field formed in eight eruptive periods between about 15,000 and 2,000 years ago, leaving a landscape of lava flows and cinder cones.

From expedition story to protected place

After his 1920 journey, Limbert continued to build support for the area. In 1921, he guided 10 scientists and civic leaders into the lava fields and argued for protecting their volcanic features. He sent President Calvin Coolidge a scrapbook of photographs and trip notes. On May 2, 1924, Coolidge established Craters of the Moon National Monument.

The expedition’s legacy is part landscape story and part act of attention: Limbert went far enough into the lava country to document it, then brought others along through his images and words. The National Park Service dedicated the monument’s visitor center to his memory in 1990.

The monument also holds a much longer human history. The National Park Service recognizes Craters of the Moon as part of the ancestral homelands of the Shoshone-Bannock people, who maintain a connection to the land today.

Sources: National Park Service history of Craters of the Moon; National Park Service questions about the monument’s name and geology; National Park Service geology overview of the Craters of the Moon volcanic field.

In Paris, a small bronze circle can turn an ordinary walk into a hunt for a line that exists on maps, in astronomy, and beneath the city’s pavement. The Arago medallions—part of Dutch artist Jan Dibbets’ public artwork Hommage à Arago—trace the Paris meridian through streets, courtyards, and gardens.

A memorial spread across the city

The Paris Observatory describes a route of 135 medallions bearing François Arago’s name. In 1994, the city commissioned Dibbets to create an artwork marking the imaginary line of the Paris meridian, turning a tribute to the 19th-century astronomer and geometer into a work people encounter at street level.

The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris likewise identifies Dibbets’ Hommage à Arago as a 1994 work made from bronze disks that materialize the Paris meridian. Rather than gather one large statue in a single square, the artwork disperses small markers along the city’s north–south line. Finding them means looking down as well as looking around.

Who was François Arago?

Arago (1786–1853) was an astronomer, physicist, and public figure who worked at the Paris Observatory. The Observatory’s account notes that he helped calculate and map the Paris meridian. The line itself is an abstract north–south reference; Dibbets gave it a physical presence through repeated bronze disks set into paving.

The installation’s scale changes how a memorial works. A monument normally asks a visitor to arrive at one point and look up. These markers invite a longer kind of attention: spot one in a sidewalk, continue through a garden, then find another beside a familiar street or historic building. The Observatory’s guide presents the route as both a city walk and a way to encounter Parisian history.

An artwork you can discover by walking

The medallions make a scientific line part of everyday city life. A map gives the meridian continuity; the small disks give it moments of contact. Each one offers a simple clue—Arago’s name—while the larger artwork unfolds across neighborhoods.

That modest scale is part of the charm. The piece is easy to pass without noticing, yet it rewards anyone curious about the markings underfoot. In Paris, a stroll can double as a search for a scientist’s name stamped into the route of an older measurement.

Sources

• Paris Observatory: Le Méridien de Paris — Une randonnée à travers l’Histoire
• Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris: Jan Dibbets

At Jeffrey’s Hook, a red iron lighthouse stands in the riverfront park beneath the sweeping deck of the George Washington Bridge. The 40-foot tower’s compact silhouette gives this stretch of Manhattan a landmark with a story that links navigation, children’s literature, and a neighborhood campaign to protect a small piece of city history.

The tower began its New York-area life in 1880 as the North Hook Beacon at Sandy Hook, New Jersey. In 1921, the U.S. Bureau of Lighthouses reconstructed it at Jeffrey’s Hook, a rocky point on the Hudson River, to strengthen navigation along the busy waterway. Its flashing red light and fog signal guided river traffic beneath the steep Manhattan shore.

The George Washington Bridge rose overhead from 1927 to 1931, reducing the lighthouse’s prominence as a navigational aid. The tower continued guiding river traffic through 1947. A different kind of light had already reached the lighthouse through Hildegarde H. Swift and Lynd Ward’s 1942 picture book, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge. The fictional lighthouse in the story finds its place beside a much larger structure, giving generations of readers a way to see the real tower as a character and a neighborhood treasure.

When the Coast Guard planned to auction the lighthouse, public affection for the book became practical support for the landmark. NYC Parks’ history records an outpouring of letters and contributions from children and adults. The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission later noted that more than 50 schoolchildren’s letters supported preserving the structure. On July 23, 1951, the Coast Guard transferred the property to New York City Parks.

The lighthouse is now recognized as a New York City landmark and a place where a small, vividly painted tower carries the memory of a citywide preservation effort. In 2026, the Historic House Trust announced an initial $13 million city investment for a restoration and accessibility project, continuing the work of keeping Jeffrey’s Hook welcoming for future visitors.

More than a century after its move to Manhattan, the Little Red Lighthouse still draws families, cyclists, and riverfront visitors to Fort Washington Park. Its enduring appeal comes from the real tower, the storybook that helped generations imagine it, and the children whose letters helped secure its place beneath the bridge.

Sources: New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, Jeffrey’s Hook Lighthouse designation report; Historic House Trust of New York City, restoration announcement.

Editorial illustration

On March 3, 1876, residents of Bath County, Kentucky, reported an event that still reads like a prank headline: pieces of raw-looking material fell over a patch of ground near Olympia Springs. The story became known as the Kentucky Meat Shower. It survives because the people involved collected samples, newspapers repeated the account, and nineteenth-century observers tried to work out what had happened.

The documented record is unusual, yet it has limits. The event is real as a historical report; the precise chain of events that put the material in the air remains uncertain. That distinction is the most interesting part of the story.

A report that became a record

Historical accounts describe material falling across a sizeable patch of Bath County ground, followed by the collection of samples for examination. A Library of Congress teaching resource brings together period newspaper coverage and shows how factual reporting and humorous commentary shaped the surviving record. Its value lies in helping readers compare the historical accounts with the narrower questions that samples could answer.

Contemporary discussion also made its way into Scientific American. That matters less as a final verdict than as evidence that the incident drew early scrutiny. Writers and examiners did not agree on every explanation, and nineteenth-century microscopy could describe tissue without reconstructing a complete path through the sky.

What the evidence supports

The accounts support a modest but striking conclusion: people in Bath County reported material falling, and investigators examined samples they understood as animal tissue. The historical record also preserves competing interpretations. Some participants and later retellings offered explanations that ranged from natural growths to animal remains.

That is different from proving the exact source of every piece. A historical sample can tell us something about itself; it cannot automatically preserve the full scene, the route it traveled, or the identity of an animal overhead. Period reporting and its later scientific discussion let readers trace the evidence without requiring an entertaining retelling to stand in for proof.

The vulture idea is a hypothesis, not a solved case

One long-lived hypothesis proposes that vultures released recently eaten material while flying. The idea is biologically plausible in a general sense: a University of Connecticut Earth Sciences account describes vomiting as a Turkey Vulture defense. That known behavior helps explain why observers considered vultures, but it does not turn the Kentucky event into a confirmed vulture observation.

The responsible answer is therefore a two-part one. The shower belongs to the documentary record of nineteenth-century Kentucky. Its exact mechanism remains open because the available evidence does not provide a direct observation tying the falling material to a particular bird, species, or moment in the sky.

Why the mystery lasts

Most odd stories fade because they leave only a punch line. This one lasted because it left a trail: witnesses, printed reports, samples, and disagreement. It is a small lesson in how historical evidence works. A memorable claim can be documented without being fully explained, and a plausible explanation can stay a hypothesis when the final proof never arrived.

That makes the Kentucky Meat Shower more than a curious weather tale. It is a record of people trying to observe carefully when the ordinary categories of the day stopped being enough.

Sources

• Library of Congress: Exploring Unusual Phenomena: The Kentucky Meat Shower of 1876
• Scientific American archive: The Kentucky Meat-Shower
• University of Connecticut Earth Sciences: Chased Out by Vultures

For more than a century, the Voynich Manuscript has invited readers to look closely at its pages and come away with new questions. Its plants twist into unfamiliar shapes, its star charts bloom with symbols, and its lines of writing follow a script scholars have not deciphered. The book is a real medieval object with a traceable history—and a meaning that remains open.

A book built for close looking

Held by Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library as MS 408, the codex was produced in Central Europe around the end of the fifteenth or during the sixteenth century, according to the library’s catalog. Its author is unknown. The manuscript entered wider public awareness in 1912, when Polish-American antiquarian bookseller Wilfrid M. Voynich acquired it.

Yale describes six sections in the volume. Some pages show plant specimens; others feature astronomical and astrological drawings, bathing scenes, cosmological medallions, or herbs and roots arranged with pharmaceutical imagery. A final run of text-only pages marks entries with small star-like flowers. Across the sections, images and writing share the page, encouraging readers to compare repeated forms and patterns.

The illustrations offer clues about the book’s subjects, while the script’s meaning remains unsettled. Yale says cryptographic approaches have yet to decipher the writing, if it is encoded. That careful qualification matters: a script can look systematic without its underlying language or purpose being known.

What the parchment can tell us

Scientific work has narrowed some possibilities without supplying a translation. Yale reports that carbon-14 testing at the University of Arizona dated the parchment to the fifteenth century. That result makes an origin in the thirteenth century, once associated with English friar Roger Bacon, a poor fit for the material evidence. Parchment dating helps establish when the writing surface was made; it does not identify the author or reveal what the script says.

The manuscript’s earliest confirmed owner was Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, who paid 600 gold ducats for it and believed it was Bacon’s work. Yale identifies that authorship as speculation. The book later passed through the hands of pharmacist Jacobus Horčicky de Tepenec and alchemist Georgius Barschius. In 1666, Johannes Marcus Marci sent it to Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher with a letter that remains with the manuscript.

Voynich bought the codex from the Jesuit College at Frascati near Rome in 1912. After his death it passed to his wife, Ethel, then to their friend and assistant Anne Nill. New York bookseller H. P. Kraus acquired it in 1961 and gave it to Yale’s Beinecke Library in 1969. This chain of ownership gives researchers a substantial historical record even as the book’s original purpose stays elusive.

A mystery researchers can inspect

Preservation shapes how people encounter the book today. Because of its fragility, Beinecke limits access to the original, while high-resolution images of every page are available in Yale’s digital library. Since joining the collection, the manuscript has left the library once: for the Folger Shakespeare Library’s 2014–15 exhibition on codes and ciphers.

The scans let readers study the codex directly: the hand, the layout, the changing subjects, and the striking foldouts. Each feature supports new questions, but a convincing interpretation still needs evidence that other researchers can test. For now, the Voynich Manuscript’s lasting appeal lies in that balance: a physical book whose materials and ownership can be investigated, paired with a script that continues to resist a settled reading.

Sources: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, The Beinecke Cipher (Voynich) Manuscript; Yale News, “Mysterious Voynich Manuscript reborn in facsimile edition”.