How old was the oldest person to ever live? The oldest recorded age anyone has reached is 122. When Jeanne Calment was born in France on February 21, 1875, the Eiffel Tower had yet to be built and the telephone wouldn’t be invented for another year. When she died on August 4, 1997, she’d lived the longest life in recorded human history: 122 years and 164 days. A longevity expert who knew Calment attributed her record-setting lifespan to the facts that she was wealthy, didn’t smoke until much later in life, and had “absolutely nothing to do except to take care of [herself], to visit France and have social activities.” There are an estimated 722,000 centenarians — people at least 100 years old — living in the world today, with Japan responsible for more than any other country (roughly 146,000). The vast majority of people who reach that milestone are women, and the oldest man to ever live, Jiroemon Kimura, “only” reached 116. Anyone perusing a list of the world’s oldest people alive today would currently have to scroll down past the top 30 names before reaching a man. Women tend to live longer than men in general, with a mix of genetics, hormones, and lifestyle choices most often cited as the main reasons for their longevity. French presidents Calment lived through 20 Percentage of American centenarians who are women 78% Age at which Calment took up cigarettes 112 Age of the world’s oldest living person as of April 2025 116 The number of U.S. centenarians is expected to quadruple in the next 30 years. As of 2025, there are about 101,000 centenarians in the United States, but the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that number will quadruple to about 422,000 by 2054. Centenarians currently account for 0.03% of the population, a number expected to reach 0.1% in the same time frame. Japan is the only country with more centenarians than the United States, with China, India, and Thailand rounding out the top five. On a per capita level, Japan is most impressive: 12 out of every 10,000 people reach 100, compared to five in Thailand, three in the U.S., and fewer than one in China and India.

Seashells used to be used as currency. Long before the gold standard came and went, seashells were a hot commodity — so much so that they were the preferred currency in various civilizations around the world. Cowrie shells, which come from small sea snails, were particularly widespread. While there’s some disagreement among historians about when cowries evolved from valuable items to functional currency, it’s likely that it happened during the Zhou dynasty in China (around 1046 to 256 BCE). The shells declined in use in the 19th century, but were still used as money in Bengal and some parts of West Africa up until the early 20th century. Unlike most shell money, cowrie shells were used whole and unaltered. In addition to their intrinsic value as an adornment, cowries are durable, portable, and hard to counterfeit. They were also exceedingly difficult to harvest — except in the Maldives, a remote archipelago in the Indian Ocean that, until relatively recently, was extremely difficult to visit. Shell money was used all over the world, although the specific type of shell varied greatly. Usually, shells would be crafted into money before going into circulation — such as wampum, which were beads made from clam and whelk shells by Indigenous peoples in the northeastern U.S. Rings made from sea snail shells called Tabu are still used in Papua New Guinea today. Did you know? An ancient pigment was worth three times its weight in gold. In ancient times, there was no color more luxurious than Tyrian purple, and some Roman emperors even threatened punishment by death to any nonroyals caught wearing the color. Not that anyone else could afford it, anyway: The deep reddish-purple shade was made from snail mucus, and it took around 10,000 snails to make a single gram of dye. The process for turning the snails into pigment was a closely guarded secret, and around the 15th century, that knowledge was lost, despite modern archaeologists trying to piece it back together.

Did you know? Bugs Bunny was named an Honorary Marine. The title of Honorary Marine was formally established in 1992, and has since been awarded to fewer than 100 people, including comedian Bob Hope and actor Gary Sinise. But decades earlier, the distinction was unofficially bestowed upon a different breed of entertainer: Bugs Bunny. In 1943, the legendary cartoon character starred in the animated short Super-Rabbit, in which he joins the Marines and sings their official song, the “Marines’ Hymn.” The actual Marines were so flattered by the portrayal that Bugs was inducted as an honorary member soon after, and the organization even issued the character a set of official dog tags and registration papers. Throughout the remainder of World War II, Bugs Bunny was “promoted” several times, rising to the rank of master sergeant before being “discharged” after the war.

Think croissants are French? Think again. Croissants originated in Austria, not France. Few things are as quintessentially French as croissants, which, in addition to being delicious, provide an opportunity to test your most egregious French accent when you talk about them. As it turns out, however, croissants aren’t originally from Paris or anywhere else in France — they actually originated in Vienna and are known in Austria as kipferl, the German word for “crescent.” (As you may imagine, that’s also what “croissant” means.) According to legend (though it’s most likely apocryphal), kipferl were created in celebration of a 1683 military victory against the Ottoman Empire, with their shape mimicking that of the Ottoman crescent moon symbol. Others have traced the pastry’s origins as far back as the 13th century. Croissants are classified as viennoiserie in France, a term referring to breakfast pastries made in the Viennese style, and they became popular in France after an Austrian baker opened a shop in Paris in the 1830s — though they were less flaky and buttery than the croissants we know today, as French bakers began using a laminated dough in the early 20th century. Croissants share their surprising origins with another pastry that’s usually associated with a different country: Danishes, which, despite their name, aren’t Danish. They also hail from Vienna, hence why they’re known as wienerbrød (“Viennese bread”) in Denmark. Maybe it’s time Austrian bakers were given their well-earned due.

Today April 23rd, 1969 Sirhan Sirhan receives death penalty for assassination of Robert F. Kennedy On April 23, 1969, Sirhan Sirhan is sentenced to the death penalty after being convicted in the assassination of politician Robert F. Kennedy. In 1972, Sirhan’s sentence was commuted to life in prison after California abolished the death penalty. In the early morning hours of June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy, a U.S. senator from New York who had just won California’s Democratic presidential primary, gave a victory speech in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. After the speech, Kennedy was making his way toward the hotel kitchen to greet supporters when he was shot three times at close range by Sirhan Sirhan with a .22 caliber revolver; a fourth bullet went through Kennedy’s jacket. Five other people were shot as well, none fatally. Several of the senator’s friends and aides subdued Sirhan on the scene. Kennedy died at the hospital the next day, June 6, at age 42. The funeral for Kennedy, who served as U.S. attorney general from 1961 to 1964 and had been a senator since 1965, was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. His body was then taken to Washington, D.C., by train, with thousands of people lining the route to pay their respects. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery next to his brother, President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963. Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a Palestinian immigrant born in Jerusalem in 1944, moved to the United States with his family as a boy and attended high school in California. He later stated he killed Robert Kennedy because the senator had supported Israel in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. Following a three-month trial, during which Sirhan’s lawyers argued he was mentally unstable at the time of the murder, he was convicted on April 17, 1969. On April 23, he was given the death penalty. However, in 1972, the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty and Sirhan’s sentence was commuted to life in prison. His requests for parole have been denied over a dozen times, and he continues to serve his time in a California prison.

Americans once paid to receive their mail, not send it. Popping to the post office to purchase a book of stamps is a routine task for many Americans, though it wasn’t the norm until 175 years ago. At one time, American letter senders didn’t pay postage — the recipient of their message did. That is, until 1847, when Congress allowed the U.S. Postal Service to issue its first official stamp. Although mail service had existed in America since the Revolutionary period, by the 1840s the USPS was operating at a budget deficit, in part because delivery fees weren’t always paid upon delivery. Postage upon delivery was not cheap — the cost of sending a letter from New York City to Buffalo, New York, was as much as 25 cents at a time when many workers barely earned $1 a day. Mail recipients could refuse letters, meaning the postal service was on the hook for the round-trip delivery cost. Many Americans were skeptical of prepaying postage, believing it an insult that suggested the recipient was too poor to cover the fee, but by 1855 Congress’ mail reforms made stamps mandatory, while also standardizing and lowering the cost of mail delivery.

How did the Pacific Ocean get its name? The Pacific Ocean was named because Ferdinand Magellan thought it was "pacific," or peaceful. The largest and oldest ocean basin on Earth, the Pacific has roughly twice as much water as the Atlantic. Yet it didn’t receive the name we know today until the 16th century. On November 28, 1520, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan — after 38 days of weathering the treacherous waters of the strait that’s now named after him at the tip of southern Chile — became the first European to reach the ocean by way of the Atlantic. Happy to have the harrowing journey behind him, Magellan referred to this new ocean as “Mar Pacifico,” meaning “Peaceful Sea.” While the moniker made sense at the time, today we know that both the Pacific and Atlantic can be tumultuous at times. Yet “Pacific” isn’t the only name this big blue expanse has been known by. In 1513 — seven years before Magellan glimpsed the Pacific — Spanish conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa led an expedition across the isthmus of Panama and named the sea he found on the other side the far less poetic “el mar del sul,” or the “South Sea.” However, the most authentic moniker for the Pacific Ocean may be the Hawaiian term “Moananuiākea.” Interestingly, this name — perhaps over a thousand years old — is closely related to the Maori “Te Moana Nui a Kiwa,” meaning the “Great Ocean of Kiwa” (Kiwa being a Maori guardian of the sea). So while “Pacific” is the name most of us now know, it’s certainly not the one used by the people who mapped and sailed the Pacific’s 63 million square miles for centuries before the Europeans arrived. Ferdinand Magellan wasn’t the first person to circumnavigate the globe. Most people learn in history class that Ferdinand Magellan was the first person to circumnavigate the globe during his famous voyage from 1519 to 1522, but the truth is a lot more complicated. For one, the famous (or infamous) explorer never actually finished the voyage from Spain to the Moluccas (Spice Islands), because he was killed in the Philippines in 1521. Another mariner on his expedition, Juan Sebastián del Cano, brought the Victoria, the last surviving vessel of Magellan’s fleet, back to Spain in September 1522. But even if Magellan had survived that skirmish, the first person to actually circumnavigate the globe may have been an enslaved individual named Enrique, whom Magellan had seized during the Portuguese conquest of Malacca in 1511. Eight years later, Enrique served as an interpreter on Magellan’s globe-trotting quest. After Magellan’s death, Enrique abandoned the mission only a few hundred miles short of Malacca. If he returned home in 1521 (we’ll likely never know), then he’d officially be the first person to ever travel the entire globe.

Coca-Cola accepted mobile payments in the 1990s. Though they’re commonplace today, digital payments didn’t exist before the 1990s. The first legitimate online transaction was in 1994, when someone purchased a copy of the Sting album Ten Summoner’s Tales online for $12.48 plus shipping. In 1997, Coca-Cola launched a rudimentary method of paying for products with a cellphone. The company installed two vending machines in Helsinki, Finland, allowing customers to send payment using SMS text. The service was called “Dial-a-Coke,” and the charges were eventually added to the customer’s monthly telephone bill. The idea caught on, with just under one-third of the vending machines’ cans successfully purchased with a mobile phone. The concept later expanded to Tallinn, Estonia, by 1999 and Australia in 2001.

Credit cards were invented because of this one mistake. Credit cards were invented because a businessman forgot his wallet. The modern credit card may not exist if it weren’t for a businessman who forgot his wallet more than 75 years ago. In 1949, Frank McNamara was dining with clients at Major’s Cabin Grill in New York City, when he realized he didn’t have any cash on him and couldn’t pay. Accounts differ about whether McNamara’s wife came to his rescue or he simply promised to pay the restaurant back later. In either case, he was reportedly determined never to allow this embarrassing situation to occur again and began brainstorming new ways for people to pay if they also found themselves cashless. With the help of lawyer Ralph Schneider, McNamara conceived of a company called the Diners Club, which issued pocket-sized cardboard credit cards featuring details such as a person’s name, address, and membership number. The idea was for members to use the cards at participating restaurants, each of which kept track of a running personal monthly tab connected to each card. While the concept of a running tab wasn’t new, this was the first card that could be used at an array of businesses instead of one establishment. At the end of each month, each eatery would tell the Diners Club how much debt was owed, and the company would collect money from its members and send the necessary amount to each restaurant, minus a processing fee. The service made its debut on February 8, 1950, when McNamara returned to Major’s Cabin Grill for a dinner that Diners Club International now refers to as the “First Supper.” At the end of the meal, McNamara provided his charge card and signed his name, serving as proof of purchase. The Diners Club became an immediate sensation, amassing more than 330 participating businesses and 42,000 card holders within a year.

The “greatest single act of corporate espionage in history” The British once sent a spy to China to steal secrets about tea. What one historian called the “greatest single act of corporate espionage in history” wasn’t in search of stock market tips or a coveted algorithm. It was about tea, which by 1800 was the most popular drink among the British — something of a problem for the empire, as all tea was produced in China at the time. And so the English did something at once sinister and cunning: They sent a botanist to steal tea seeds and bring them to India, a British colony at the time. The thief in question was Robert Fortune, who was recruited by the East India Trading Company for the job. This leafy skulduggery inspired the aforementioned historian Sarah Rose to write For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History. The book details how Fortune not only came into possession of precious seeds but also learned the tools of the trade: how tea leaves were cultivated, dried, processed, and manufactured. The plan succeeded, with India overtaking China as the world’s largest tea producer within Fortune’s lifetime. China eventually reclaimed that title, but it took more than a century, and India remains the second-largest today.