Ancient cave paintings at Lascaux, France, are approximately 17,000 years old and show remarkable artistic sophistication.

The tradition of the white wedding dress was popularized by Queen Victoria in 1840 — before that, brides wore any color.

Abraham Lincoln was a licensed bartender and co-owned a tavern before entering politics.

Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime.

In 1518, a dancing plague reportedly caused people to dance uncontrollably for days.

Atoms are 99.9999999999999% empty space — if an atom were scaled to the size of a football stadium, its nucleus would be a marble at the center.

The Olympic flame tradition was revived at the 1928 Amsterdam Games; the torch relay began at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Gagaku, Japan's imperial court music, is the world's oldest surviving orchestral tradition, dating to the 7th century.

The word 'clue' originally referred to a ball of thread — in Greek mythology, Ariadne gave Theseus a thread to escape the labyrinth.