Colonial America imported brides for their beer brewing skills

Englishmen in the 17th century mixed their blood into wine to show devotion

In order to demonstrate their love for a woman, some young Englishmen would stab themselves in the arm and mix the blood into their wine. They'd then toast the object of their affection and drink to their honor.

How beer became a part of medieval culture

This history of beer's evolution during the Middle Ages unpacks how the brewing process, which killed harmful bacteria, made beer a safe alternative to water. That fact, along with the Catholic church condoning (and, in some cases, producing) the beverage, helped it evolve into a major commodity.

Many early colonists came to America to escape religious persecution in Europe

Fleeing state-sponsored religious oppression in England and Europe, many early colonists sought freedom of conscience in the New World. Many—especially in New England—established their own religiously exclusive communities: They persecuted dissenters, expelled nonconformists, and enforced orthodoxy.

In 1639, Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony banned toasting

Like the Anglo-Saxons and the ancient Greeks before them, the American colonists tended to party when they got to toasting. That led to a 1639 law banning the practice, which they viewed as excessive and superstitious. Alcohol remained legal, but the hope was that banning toasting might reduce excessive drinking.

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO

European colonization contributed to coffee's spread

European colonization created channels for large-scale coffee exports with workforces based in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Trade routes throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world carried the drink to new shores and changed the agricultural and economic landscapes of the countries in the Bean Belt.

The popular myth behind the India pale ale

Legend has it that the beer style earned its name in the late 1700s and early 1800s, when one brewer realized he had to add more alcohol and hops to his beers to survive the long boat ride to India. But as this essay by one beer historian makes clear, the facts don't line up with that myth.

Check out George Washington's beer recipe

The first American president's journal includes a recipe for "small beer," a low-alcohol beverage that was a cleaner (and slightly inebriating) alternative to the potentially sickening water of the time.

Bowling was long male-dominated, but women pushed for change through the sport

The sport was often played on lawns attached to breweries and became a leisure activity for folks in taverns—mostly men, in the 1800s. But the game's highly communal nature attracted a more diverse set of participants who pushed for social change.

Colonial Americans used tobacco, wampum, and land-backed notes to solve a chronic coin shortage

British coins rarely circulated in the colonies due to an unfavorable trade balance, forcing colonists to improvise. They traded in Spanish dollars, Native American shells, tobacco warehouse receipts, and eventually paper money backed by land rather than gold.

European colonists encountered barbecue by the 16th century

They called the food “barbacoa” and spread the technique throughout their territories, including the American colonies. The first recorded mention in English appeared in John Lederer’s travelogue of Virginia and the Carolinas in 1672.

American beer, by the numbers

This statistics-focused resource breaks down the shape of the beer industry in the US, outlining the amount of beer produced by American breweries, the state cranking out the most beer, and the states with the most breweries per capita.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

Some colonies were centuries-old before they broke from Britain

The revolution did not happen overnight, but was a culmination of centuries of settlement, policies, and war in North America. This timeline provides key, fascinating events from the 1600s through the Revolution in a smooth, easy-to-read interface.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

America's ice cream obsession began under Prohibition

The emotional attachment to the sweet treat began during Prohibition, when many brewers started churning out ice cream instead of alcohol. Eventually, it symbolized joy during wartime and the Great Depression.

Anheuser-Busch was passed from father to son for five generations

The Busch family put a couple drops of Budweiser beer onto each first-born son’s tongue when they were born, according to family lore. Given their Anheuser-Busch ownership dynasty, the Busch family was considered beer royalty, with a Busch man running the operation up until the $52B InBev acquisition in 2008.

19th-century Americans discovered tipping in Europe

Tipping waiters was a custom in medieval Europe, where masters gave their serfs money for exceptional work. Wealthy Americans vacationing in Europe in the mid-1800s discovered the behavior and brought it back to the US.

Anthropologists have found that, across the globe, nearly every culture embraces marriage customs

Despite these commonalities, different cultures have distinct customs, such as the number of people who can be married at one time, the types of marriage partners allowed, and whether elaborate ceremonies are observed. Families can range from the smaller nuclear unit to extensive multi-generation families and households.

Why art history is filled with miserable brides

Paintings from the 19th century are filled with unhappy brides. The women are often visibly disturbed by their pending nuptials, sometimes even during the wedding ceremony. This Artnet article unpacks four famous examples of this trend, analyzing how and why the respective artists portrayed these disappointed figures.

The American middle class started imitating high-society weddings in an attempt to establish its status around the 1920s

Marshall Field's, a retailer based out of Chicago, published the first bridal registry in 1924. Brides magazine—which was geared to women creating elaborate wedding celebrations—debuted in 1934. This article dives into more of the wedding-industrial complex's history.

Touring the northernmost brewery in the world

Svalbard Brewery is located in the Arctic village of Longyearbyen—in a region known for polar bears, reindeer, and miles of uninhabited frozen tundra—and caters to a diverse, international clientele who appreciate the beer's unique ingredient: 2,000-year-old glacier water.

The Irish 'sláinte!' spread outside the country thanks to immigration

The toast has spread globally because of the waves of Irish immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries. It’s not uncommon to find an Irish pub outside of Ireland, and if you step inside, you’re lucky to hear someone offer a hearty “sláinte!”

Modern Champagne owes much of its existence to one woman: Widow Clicquot

Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, better known as the Widow Clicquot, might not have actually invented Champagne, but her innovative approach to winemaking yielded many techniques still used today. Taking over her husband’s failing business after his death, the Widow Clicquot combined business savvy and innovative thinking to make the process easier, more efficient, and, most important, more profitable.

The novel broke new ground by offering realistic stories

In this brief interview, Terry Castle, an English professor at Stanford, explains the origins of the early British novel. Castle details how the novel was produced for a newly literate middle class interested in recognizable characters and stories “about life as they knew it” rather than Greek and Roman myths or medieval romances. She also explains why a newly enfranchised female demographic was attracted to the fiction of writers like Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf.

The canal carried germs as well as goods

In 1832, North America’s first cholera epidemic spread inland by way of the Erie Canal, carried by immigrants arriving on ships. Fearful towns barred passengers from disembarking, yet cholera, smallpox, and other diseases still traveled the waterway.

Abigail Adams sailed to Europe to join John during his diplomatic posting in Paris in 1784

This podcast chronicles Abigail's voyage across the Atlantic to join John in Paris during his diplomatic service, then follows the couple's return to America and their rise to the White House.

Who was Gudrid the Far-Traveled?

Considered one of the greatest female explorers of all time, Gudrid the Far-Traveled counted among her in-laws Erik the Red and Leif Erikson. Traveling from Medieval Europe to North America via Iceland and Greenland, Gudrid became the first European woman known to have given birth in North America. This article details the pioneering achievements of medieval Europe's greatest female explorer.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

Cultural norms about how to handle the bodies of loved ones in communities in West Africa have hampered Ebola responses.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Brandi Chastain, the star of the 1999 US victory over China in the 1999 Women's World Cup, was a last-second choice to take the penalty kick that sealed the victory.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts.

Some coin denominations have ridges etched on their sides, partly to prevent counterfeiting, in a practice called 'reeding.'

The boiling temperature of water decreases with increasing elevation because the molecules need less energy to overcome the lower atmospheric pressure associated with thinner air.

See this overview of the firework rules across all 50 states, ranging from a complete ban on non-professional fireworks in Massachusetts to states with more lax rules like Indiana.

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

Coral polyps reproduce via broadcast spawning, where entire reefs simultaneously release reproductive cells for about one hour, once a year.