Dunce caps were named for a famous philosopher.

Although his name draws scant recognition from most today, John Duns Scotus was among the towering intellectual figures of medieval Europe. A Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, Scotus earned renown in the late 13th and early 14th centuries for his compelling arguments regarding the univocity of all creatures — i.e., humans are beings just as God is a being — and for his defense of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary. His academic achievements earned him the prestigious post of regent master of theology at the University of Paris, while his scrupulous reasoning yielded the nickname “Doctor Subtilis” — the Subtle Doctor.

However, by the late 16th century, Europe’s rising humanist movement had taken aim at the old-fashioned rationale of the Scotists, and the Dunsmen (also known as the Duns), as his followers were known, were derided as outdated and overly pedantic. Eventually, the term “dunce” came to refer to someone who was slow or dim-witted. It’s not entirely clear exactly when dunce caps came on the scene, but they may have been modeled on the fools’ caps worn by jesters or clowns, and by 1791they were being put on the heads of British schoolchildren who had made too many mistakes in class or otherwise misbehaved. (Some accounts say the Subtle Doctor and his followers actually wore such hats themselves because they believed the conical shape would capture free-flowing knowledge, but evidence is lacking.) 

Whether adorned with a telltale “D” or other embellishments like donkey ears, the dunce cap served as a common if crude form of punishment across European and American schools in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Although it largely disappeared from the American education system by the 1950s, the concept survives in popular culture as a visual shorthand for stupidity. But don’t feel too bad for Scotus. He was beatified by Pope John II in 1993, and renewed interest in his worksin recent years has reaffirmed the decidedly non-dunce-like essence of his brain-twisting logic.

Only one ship of the U.S. Navy is authorized to fly the Jolly Roger.There are plenty of ships in the U.S. Navy (291 of them, to be precise), but only one has the curious distinction of flying the Jolly Roger — the ominous flag typically associated with pirates. Although a skull and crossbones is the most common adornment, lawless seamen during the golden age of piracy (1650-1720) flew many grisly symbols, including skeletons but also bleeding hearts and sharp weapons. After closing in on a ship, pirates hoisted the Jolly Roger at the last minute, and though designs varied from ship to ship, the message was clear — surrender or die. 

But for the U.S. destroyer USS Kidd, flying the Jolly Roger is less about striking fear into the hearts of its enemies than it is an 80-year-long tradition. The ship honors Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, who earned the nickname “Cap” while attending the U.S. Naval Academy due to his name’s similarity to the infamous 17th-century pirate Captain Kidd. During the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Kidd was killed aboard the USS Arizona. Within two years, a Fletcher-class destroyer bearing his name sailed the Pacific. The ship’s crew kept the nickname alive by adopting the Jolly Roger and calling themselves “the Pirates of the Pacific,” though their “booty” often involved retrieving downed Allied fighter pilots. Today’s USS Kidd, commissioned in 2007, is actually the third ship to bear the name and the third to hoist the fearful flag of a bygone era.

0.5% of Modern-Day Males Are Related to Genghis Khan

While Genghis Khan conquered land far and wide, his scope reached even further across the globe through his genetic lineage. During his lifetime, Genghis fathered children with six wives and an even larger number of concubines, beginning with his first marriage to a woman named Börte. With Börte, Genghis had five daughters and four sons — Jochi, Chagatai, Ögedei, and Tolui — and there were many more children to come. While it’s impossible to note just how many children Genghis sired, a 2003 study posited that Genghis Khan’s DNA could be found in 8% of Asian men along the Y-chromosome, a number large enough to account for 0.5% of the world’s total male population.

Elephants are massive and have pretty thick skin, about an inch deep. You’d think an insect smaller than a quarter, even one with a stinger, would be no big deal — but you’d be wrong. Elephants are so scared of bees that farmers use them as a natural, humane elephant deterrent. By hanging a beehive every 10 yards or so, researchers have been able to deter 80% of elephants. 

African honeybees are small, but aggressive, and can sting areas that aren’t protected by thick elephant skin, like eyes and mouths. When bees start swarming, African elephants will start flapping their ears, kicking up dust, and yelling. Asian elephants react less dramatically, but they still get visibly nervous; they shrink away from bees, comfort one another, and sometimes slap their trunks on the ground.

The Eastern Roman Empire fell just 39 years before Columbus sailed to America. 

WORLD HISTORY 

We tend to think of the Roman Empire as an entirely ancient time period. Yet while the Western Roman Empire fell in the fifth century CE, leaving it firmly in the ancient world, the eastern half of the empire kept going for another millennium — as late as 1453. Emperor Diocletian divided Rome at the end of the third century BCE, believing the empire had become too big to be ruled by just one monarch. The western half encompassed Europe and Northern Africa, and the eastern half covered the Middle East. As the west faltered, the east stayed strong, largely thanks to in-demand exports such as spices. In 395 CE, the Eastern Roman Empire split off entirely, and it eventually even took back some former Western Roman territory.

Historians often refer to the Eastern Roman Empire as the Byzantine Empire, but that term wasn’t used until after it fell; the citizens of the empire still thought of themselves as Romaioi, or Romans. The capital was Constantinople (now Istanbul in modern-day Turkey), named after Emperor Constantine I. As Constantine was the first Christian emperor of Rome, the Byzantines adopted Christianity as the state religion. But they also embraced their heritage from ancient Greece, and in the seventh century CE, Greek replaced Latin as the empire’s official language.

In the 11th century CE, the Byzantine Empire faced escalating threats from both sides — the Crusades caused tension with Western Europe, and the Turks destabilized Anatolia, the point where Asia meets Europe. The empire fell in 1453when Ottoman Turks breached the walls of Constantinople after a 55-day siege, toppling the last vestiges of the long-powerful Roman Empire. By then, Europe was in the early stages of the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration. Christopher Columbus set sail to the Americas in 1492, just 39 years later.