George Washington was the ninth president of the United States.The United States was established on July 4, 1776. George Wash-ington was inaugurated president thirteen years later, on April 30, 1789. During the intervening years, the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia drew up the Articles of Confederation (the first American constitution). In 1781, Maryland representative John Hanson was elected the first president of the Congress of the Confederation. His official title was "president of the United States in Congress Assembled." After Hanson, seven other men served as president: Elias Boudinot, Thomas Mifflin, Richard Henry Lee, John Hancock, Nathaniel Gorham, Arthur St. Clair, and Cyrus Griffin. In 1787, Congress held a constitutional convention. The delegates wrote the current constitution, ratified by the states in 1788. The following year, the ratifying states elected Washington our nation's ninth president (but the first president under the new constitution).
The song "As Time Goes By" was not written for the movie Casablanca."As Time Goes By" (music by Herman Hupfeld, lyrics by Irving Kahal) was originally sung in the 1931 Broadway stage show
Everybody's Welcome, and Rudy Vallee recorded the song later that year.
Casablanca premiered eleven years later in 1942. The popularity of the movie prompted RCA to rerelease the Rudy Vallee recording.
The Black Hills of South Dakota are not hills.Hills rise less than 1,000 feet from the surrounding area, while mountains rise above that height. The Black Hills rise from 2,000 to 4,000 feet above the surrounding area. Several peaks exceed 6,000 feet, and the highest "hill," Harney Peak, reaches 7,242 feet, higher than any peak in the Appalachian or Ozark mountains. The Sioux Indians named the mountains Paha Sapa ("hills of black") because from the plains, the pine trees covering the mountains appear black (and because the Sioux had no idea geologists strictly distinguished between hills and mountains).
The Earl of Sandwich did not invent the sandwich.History's first recorded sandwich is the Hillel sandwich, invented by Rabbi Hillel between 70 B.C.E. and 10 C.E. The sandwich, eaten during Passover seders, consists of charosets (a combination of fruits, nuts, and honey) and bitter herbs between two pieces of matzah (Hebrew for "unleavened bread"). As early as the Middle Ages, Arabs have eaten meat stuffed inside a pocket of pita bread, and medieval European peasants ate bread and cheese lunches in the fields. John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich (1718-1792), did eat sliced meats and cheeses between two pieces of bread to keep one hand free while playing cards at the gambling table, giving the sandwich its name, but not its origin.
The tuxedo did not originate in England.In the summer of 1886, Pierre Lorillard IV, living in Tuxedo Park, a small hamlet in Westchester County, New York, did not want to wear formal black tie and tails to the annual Autumn Ball at his country club. He commissioned a tailor to make several semiformal tailless black jackets--in the style of the scarlet riding jackets popular with British fox hunters. Black tie and tails originated in England in the early 1800s. Lorillard may have been inspired by Edward VII, who during a visit to India as Prince of Wales had ordered the tails cut off his coat to keep cool in the heat. Ultimately, Lorillard did not wear the new dinner jacket to the ball, but his son, Griswold, and some of Griswold's friends, did--starting a trend. The jacket became known as the tuxedo, after the town, which was named after Algonquin Indian chief P'tauk-Seet (the P is silent), meaning "wolf."
Congress did not sign the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania State House, formally adopted the final draft of the Declaration of Independence. Only John Hancock, as president of Congress, and Charles Thomson, congressional secretary, signed it. The State of New York did not vote on it until July 9. On July 15, Congress ordered that the declaration be written on parchment, and on August 2, fifty assembled delegates signed the final document. Six others signed the document on later dates, including some who were not members of Congress when the declaration was adopted and Thomas McKean, who signed his name five years later, in 1781.
The Battle of Waterloo was not fought at Waterloo.In June 1815, Britain's Duke of Wellington led troops against Napoleon and his troops in a small valley four miles to the south of Waterloo in Belgium between the villages of Plancenoit and Mont St. Jean. The battle became known as Waterloo possibly because Wellington slept in Waterloo the night before, or because after the victory, he returned to Waterloo to write home with the news.
Camels do not carry water in their humps.Camels do not have a reservoir for liquids in their hump. The hump is a food reserve made primarily of fat. By storing most of its body fat in the hump, the camel can lose heat freely from the rest of its body without having to perspire much, thereby conserving water. A camel can go for days or even months without water because, unlike other animals, camels retain urea and do not start sweating until their body temperatures reach 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
The most abused drug is not alcohol.The most abused drug in the world is caffeine--found in sodas, coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate candies, and many over-the-counter medicines. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, caffeine is an addictive drug that creates physical dependence and causes an increase in heart rate, body temperature, urine production, and gastric juice secretion. Caffeine can also raise blood sugar levels and cause tremors, loss of coordination, decreased appetite, and postponement of fatigue, and it can interfere with the depth of sleep and the amount of dream sleep.
Paul Revere did not single-handedly make a midnight ride to warn American colonists that the British were coming.Paul Revere was one of three riders on the famous midnight ride of April 18, 1775, from Boston to Concord, Massachusetts. The other two were William Dawes and Samuel Prescott. In the poem "Paul Revere's Ride" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, only Revere rides to Concord, after seeing one lantern light in the steeple of the Old North Church. In reality, the signal was not sent to Revere. He had directed that the signal be sent to friends in Charlestown. The "midnight ride" began at 1 a.m., and along the way Revere, Dawes, and Prescott ran into a British cavalry patrol. Dawes and Prescott escaped, but Revere was captured, detained, and forced to walk back to Lexington without his horse. Dawes also returned to Lexington. Only Prescott made it to Concord.
The potato did not originate in Ireland.As early as 200 C.E., the Incas cultivated the potato in the Andes Mountains in what is now Peru and Bolivia. In the sixteenth century, Spanish conquistadors brought the potato to Europe. Soon after, English explorers brought potatoes to England. From there, potatoes were introduced to Ireland, where Irish farmers began growing them. The horrors of the Irish potato famine of the late 1840s, during which some 750,000 Irish people starved to death, cause people to wrongly conclude that the potato originated in Ireland. A statue of Sir Francis Drake in Offenbach, Germany, wrongly proclaims the English explorer as "Introducer of the Potato into Europe." There is no evidence that Drake, who sailed around South America, carried potatoes aboard his ship, the
Pelican.
The Earth is not a sphere.The Earth, flattened at the poles and bulging at the equator, is actually an oblate spheroid. In other words, the distance around the Earth along the equator (24,901.55 miles) is greater than the distance around the Earth through the North and South poles (24,859.82 miles). According to Sir Isaac Newton, this bulge is caused by the rotating Earth's centrifugal force.
Maine is not the easternmost state in the United States.
Alaska is not only the westernmost state, but also the easternmost state. Some of Alaska's Aleutian Islands (the Rat Islands and the Near Islands) lie west of the 180th meridian, the dividing line between the Eastern Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere, placing them securely in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Chess did not originate in Russia.Chess began in sixth-century India as a game called
chaturanga ("army" in Sanskrit) using miniature chariots, cavalry, infantry, and elephants as playing pieces. The game spread to Persia, which was conquered by the Arabs in the seventh century. Arab invaders brought the game to Spain in the tenth century, where it spread throughout Europe. The Europeans gradually changed the playing pieces to bishops, knights, pawns, and rooks. The Arabs had renamed the game
al-schah-mat ("the king is dead" in Arabic), which in English became the word checkmate. In Russia, chess is called
schahkmat. The English word
chess comes from the Persian word
shah, meaning "king." People think chess originated in Russia because Russians held the official world chess championship title from 1948 until 1972, when American Bobby Fisher beat Boris Spassky. The Russians regained the title in 1975 and held it through 2004.
Jesus was not born on December 25, 1 a.d.Nobody knows when Jesus when born. The New Testament does not specify the date. In the third century C.E., church father Clement of Alexandria suggested May 20, since the New Testament states that the shepherds who were told by an angel of Jesus's birth ...
