The word 'serendipity' was coined by 18th-century writer Horace Walpole and is based on 'Serendip,' a historical Sanskrit name for Sri Lanka.

The term 'scientist' was coined in a 1834 book review by English polymath William Whewell, who needed an alternative to 'man of science' to describe Scottish writer Mary Somerville.

Coined in 1971, the man credited with naming Silicon Valley was originally writing about semiconductors

Silicon Valley gained its name from an article published in January 1971, in Electronic News. Author Don Hoefler used the term in his headline for an article he was writing about the semiconductor industry. Hoefler is credited with naming the multi-trillion dollar area that is still called Silicon Valley today.

Dr. Seuss was likely the first to use the word 'nerd' in print

The word appeared in 1950's "If I Ran the Zoo," but there are theories that the word (or forms of it) were already part of popular slang before the book was published.

The word 'hoax' comes from the phrase 'hocus-pocus'

The famous phrase "hocus-pocus" combines liturgical Latin and gibberish. It's a silly series of words often said during magic tricks. The phrase naturally evolved into "hoax" over time and became a standard English word around the year 1800.

The typo that scandalized a continent

One printing mistake in the 17th century proved so unfortunate it cost two men their careers and scandalized religious folks for centuries. Read the story here.

The unexpected origin story of the snow globe

In 1900, a Vienna tradesman named Erwin Perzy I was attempting to invent an inexpensive way to improve light amplification in hospital operating rooms. After experimenting with a glass globe filled with water, the idea for the snow globe struck. Industrious as well as inventive, Perzy eventually turned his idea into a successful business. Read the full article to learn how the invention grew to become recognized globally.

In 'Lord of the Rings,' the 'palantír' is a magical stone that allows one to see virtually anything

The company Palantir's name was inspired by this J. R. R. Tolkien reference. In fact, it's one of several Peter Thiel-cofounded companies that have a nod to The Lord of the Rings for a name, including Valar Ventures and Mithril Capital.

Penicillin was discovered by accident

In 1928, Alexander Fleming returned from vacation to find mold contaminating a petri dish of bacteria. Around the mold, the microbes had died—an accidental observation that led to the discovery of penicillin.

Synesthesia: when sensation in one sense triggers an unrelated sense in the brain

The first reported clinical case of synesthesia dates back to the early 1800s, though the perceptual phenomenon may be much older than surviving records imply. This article by researcher Richard Cytowic details the scientific history of synesthesia, a neurological trait that causes some senses to overlap, giving color to numbers and flavors to names.

The term 'gerrymander' dates back to a 1812 Boston dinner party

The term "gerrymandering" arose when Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry approved a state senate map with a district so contorted it resembled a salamander. Critics dubbed it the "Gerry-mander," cementing the term for partisan map manipulation.

Halley's comet is named after the astronomer who predicted its next appearance

Edmund Halley realized that historical accounts of a celestial object passing in the night sky in 1531 and 1607 referred to the same object he observed in 1682. By applying Newtonian mechanics to his observational data, he calculated its orbit and accurately predicted its return in 1758.

The word 'dystopia' was first used in 1868

John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher, economist, and politician, uttered the word at the House of Commons while criticizing what he considered to be the government’s insufficient land policy for the Irish, saying, “What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to favour is too bad to be practicable.”

The terms 'bug' and 'debugging' were popularized by Grace Hopper's team

Engineers working on the Mark II computer at Harvard University identified a moth in one of its components in 1947, which caused it to malfunction. Describing the incident as the "first actual case of bug being found," the term first used by Thomas Edison in 1878 to describe faults in an apparatus caught on.

The word ‘fantasy’ wasn't used to describe the genre until the 20th century

The word—at least as a word used to describe fiction—didn’t appear in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1949. Scholars believe that’s due to the arrival of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, an influential publication, and the rise in fantasy’s popularity following World War II.

Multiple sugar substitutes were accidental discoveries when lab workers didn't wash their hands.

Astronomers inferred Neptune's existence through mathematics while attempting to explain irregularities in Uranus' orbit, but Neptune had been directly observed 234 years earlier by Galileo.

'Dystopia' is an inversion of Sir Thomas More's 'utopia'

The word is derived from the Greek for “bad place," but it's also an inversion of “utopia,” a term popularized by Sir Thomas More in his 1516 book, "Utopia," which imagined an ideal society free of oppression, inequity, and want. More recognized this place was a fantasy; "utopia" is derived from the Greek for "no place."

The drink that became Coca-Cola was originally called 'Pemberton's French Wine Coca.'

Horace Walpole’s ‘The Castle of Otranto’ was the first Gothic novel

Walpole’s 1764 novel takes place in a haunted castle, with self-closing doors, moving pictures, and a wandering ghost—many of the tropes that would come to define the Gothic and horror genres, and influence other genres like fantasy.

'Muggle’ entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2003

The Harry Potter term for a nonmagical person became an official English word when the Oxford English Dictionary added it in 2003—cementing the series’ influence on modern language and popular culture.

The term schizophrenia was coined by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1908

He launched the word during a lecture at the German Psychiatric Association in Berlin. In his talk he focused on the splitting of psychic functioning as a defining feature of the disease and noted it wasn't associated with dementia or factors like early puberty onset.

'Everything you look at can become a fairy tale and you can get a story from everything you touch.'

- Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)

Stonehenge has produced wild origin stories

Built before the wheel was invented, Stonehenge inspired increasingly fantastical explanations—from a 12th-century tale of Merlin and Nephilim giants to 1960s claims that aliens built it alongside the pyramids.

The ancient Romans invented the first known artificial sweetener—it involved lead.

Scroll through a Sears historical timeline, starting in the year 1886

The Sears story starts with railroad worker Richard Sears purchasing a declined shipment of watches for a discounted price. An interactive historical timeline chronicles the history of Sears from then onwards.

How Sears helped create Discover Card

Sears owned the financial services company Dean Witter, which rolled out the Discover Card in 1986. The Discover Card is just one of many Sears inventions that seems to have outlasted Sears’ peak popularity, including Allstate Insurance and the clothing brand Lands End.

'An idea is salvation by imagination.'

- US architect Frank Lloyd Wright

A 1908 toy visualizes how the sun never set on the British Empire

Researchers uncovered an early-1900s children’s toy that romanticized the British Empire: a rotating world map showing where the sun shone on Britain’s far-flung territories. The interactive device also served as an advertisement for "The Children’s Encyclopedia."

The origins and evolution of the Triple Crown

For nearly 100 years we’ve referred to the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes as the “Triple Crown.” But where did that term come from? It was popularized by a sports writer in the early 1930s. But this Old Smoke Clothing article, authored by the woman who wrote the book on Sir Barton, explores the British origins and how it gained popularity with Gallant Fox’s win in 1930.

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.

How Scrabble got its name

Alfred Butts, a newly unemployed architect during the Great Depression, created Scrabble. But the game was named by James Brunot, who used the word to describe the most common action its players take part in: digging frantically.

How famous writers chose their pen names

From Joseph Conrad to JK Rowling, writers employ pseudonyms for all kinds of reasons. How they find those pseudonyms, however, depends on the individual.

The word 'dude' was originally used as an insult

Although the actual origin of the word is unknown, stymologists found the first recorded use in the United States was in the 1880s and referred to a young man, usually from the East Coast, who was overly concerned with his appearance. "Dude ranches" were an informal name for the ranches out West that catered to these types of men.

Conversation candy hearts were originally message-free medicinal lozenges

In 1847, a Boston pharmacist invented a machine that automated the production of his pharmacy's medicinal lozenges and then formed the New England Confectionery Company, which later became part of the company now known as NECCO. By the late 1800s, they were producing cookies with Valentine-themed messages and eventually brought the romantic messages to their smaller lozenges, which they later called Sweethearts.

The first known mention of the term 'country' to describe music was in 1736

The November 26, 1736 issue of the Virginia Gazette described a fiddling contest for "country" musicians. While the musical style would go by many names over the next two centuries, "country" was the one that eventually stuck.

Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' turned the fantasy genre upside down

A lot of 19th-century British fantasy was often stiff; its children’s literature was often overly didactic. Carroll’s novel—about a young girl who falls into an unusual world full—was neither, offering vivid, psychedelic imagery and seemingly nonsensical word games.

'Vacation' wasn't common for Americans until the mid-1800s, when it became a luxury for the wealthy.

The word 'coupon' comes from a French word meaning 'to cut.'

The first ‘Harry Potter’ book was retitled for US readers

Scholastic changed "Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone" to "Sorcerer’s Stone" in 1998, fearing the original title sounded too academic and might confuse American readers unfamiliar with the word’s magical meaning.

Coachella got its name from a typo

The Coachella Valley, the region of California where the annual Coachella music festival takes place, got its name from an unlikely place: a typographical error. The intended name was "Conchilla," which means "little shell" in Spanish, a reference to fossils found in the area. Paperwork at the printer was misspelled, however, and "Coachella" ended up sticking, all the way until it was officially designated a city in 1946.

The word 'influenza' comes from a 15th-century Italian belief in the stars

In Renaissance Italy, epidemics were thought to result from the influence of natural disasters or celestial bodies. The illness was named "influenza", meaning “influence” in Italian.

Roger Williams founded the first American colony without an established church

Banished from Massachusetts in 1636 for preaching religious dissent, Williams founded Providence, Rhode Island—one of the earliest governments in the Western world to guarantee broad religious liberty. His phrase "wall of separation" between church and state directly influenced Jefferson and the Constitution's framers.

There's no definitive reason why an ice cream sundae is spelled with an 'e' rather than a 'y.'

The US senator who found a city in the sky

Dr. Hiram Bingham, a Yale graduate and explorer, is credited with rediscovering Machu Picchu in 1911. Financially supported by his marriage to the Tiffany jewelry heiress, Bingham ventured into the Peruvian Andes in search of the lost Inca city of Vilcabamba. Instead, guided by local farmer Melchor Arteaga, he stumbled upon the awe-inspiring ruins of Machu Picchu.

Saccharin was widely used in WWI when sugar was rationed

The substance was discovered by chemists in 1878, but its use became more common during World War I and also afterward as a result of sugar rationing. It had become a typical household item in the US and Europe by 1917. During World War II, the artificial sweetener again saw significant popularity.

JRR Tolkien, author of 'Lord of the Rings,' and CS Lewis, author of 'The Chronicles of Narnia,' became close friends after meeting at Oxford and bonding over Norse mythology.

Santa Claus is the result of centuries of evolving traditions

Originating from Saint Nicholas, a 4th-century bishop celebrated for his generosity, Santa's story merged with European folk legends like Sinterklaas and Father Christmas. By the 1800s, American culture redefined him, thanks to Clement Clarke Moore’s poem "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" and Thomas Nast’s illustrations.

Dinosaur names have shifted from ancient languages to pop culture references

Early dinosaur names used Greek and Latin roots, often just attaching “-saurus” (lizard) to another word describing a notable trait. Over time, this convention has evolved to incorporate the names of where the discovery was made, local languages, and even celebrities.

German printer Richard Sellmer revived Advent calendars after World War II

Advent calendar production resumed in 1946, when German printer Richard Sellmer began issuing nostalgic winter-town designs that became classics, later exporting them to the United States. His company still operates today, producing more than 140 varieties.

'I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.'

- Author Douglas Adams (1952-2001)