1. Lynnewood Hall – Elkins Park, Pennsylvania Lynnewood Hall was built in 1897 for industrialist Peter A.B. Widener, and for a while, it was the crown jewel of Gilded Age luxury. With 110 rooms, sprawling grounds, and priceless artwork, it […]

1. Black Cats Crossing Your Path In many European villages, especially in the Middle Ages, a black cat crossing your path was seen as a terrible omen. People truly believed it meant misfortune was coming their way, and they would

1. Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo da Vinci was celebrated as a painter, inventor, and thinker, but after his death in 1519, notebooks he had kept hidden revealed a whole new side of him. These journals were crammed with sketches of

1. The Rotor If you’ve ever seen an old photo of people stuck to the wall of a spinning cylinder with their feet dangling, that was the Rotor. Riders would step inside, the floor would drop out, and the centrifugal

1. Bread with Alum In the 1800s, bakers sometimes stretched their flour supply by adding alum, a substance once used in pickling and tanning hides. It gave bread a whiter look and firmer texture, which shoppers thought meant higher quality.

1. The Electric Bath Imagine climbing into a cabinet that looks like a giant toaster, and instead of heat, it’s buzzing with electricity. The electric bath was marketed as a cure-all in the early 1900s, claiming to fix everything from

1. The Lincoln Memorial’s Phantom Figure Many people visit the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to pay respects to the 16th president, but some late-night visitors claim there’s more than marble and silence there. Stories say Abraham Lincoln himself has