Living Former Presidents

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There have been only three periods when five former American presidents were alive at the same time:

  • March 4, 1861-Jan. 18, 1862: Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan
  • Jan. 20, 1993-April 22, 1994: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush
  • Jan. 20, 2001-June 5, 2004: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton

Herbert Hoover lived for 31 years after leaving office; James Polk lasted only three months.

| History · Trivia

Riddle of the Sphinx

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For most of its history, Egypt’s Great Sphinx lay buried up to its neck in sand. This photo was taken in 1867; the sphinx wasn’t fully dug out until 1925.

Strangely, we know very little about it. It’s one of the world’s largest statues, but no one knows who built it, or when, or whose likeness it bears. We’re not even sure what it is — we call it a sphinx, but we borrow that term from Greek mythology. A true sphinx would have the head of a woman.

No one knows what the ancient Egyptians called it, but its Arabic name, Abu al-Hôl, translates as “Father of Terror.” Maybe we should cover it up again.

| History

An Early Serial Killer

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Wander too far away from the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 and you might disappear forever.

Herman Mudgett, an enterprising serial killer, built a row of three-story buildings near the Chicago fair and opened it as a hotel. Guests discovered — too late — that it was a maze of more than 100 windowless rooms, where Mudgett would trap them, torture them in a soundproof chamber, and then asphyxiate them with a custom-fitted gas line.

Then he’d send the bodies by chute to the basement, where he’d cremate them or sell them to a medical school.

This went on for three years, until a fire broke out and police and firemen discovered the trap. No one knows how many people Mudgett killed; he confessed to 27, but estimates go as high as 230.

He was hanged in Philadelphia in 1896.

| Crime · Death · History · Oddities

Fayum Mummy Portraits

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This is Eutyches, a young boy who died in Egypt during the Roman Empire. How do we know this? Because this portrait was stuffed inside his mummy.

This was actually a common practice in the Fayum region of ancient Egypt, and it’s given us some of the best-preserved paintings from ancient times.

Artists would paint the portraits on wooden panels, using hot, pigmented wax, and they’ve survived remarkably well in the region’s dry heat.

CAT scans show that the portraits match their mummies in age and sex, and they’re strikingly naturalistic, though reportedly a little formulaic.

Many, like Eutyches, were children, a sad mark of the era’s low life expectancy.

| Art · History

The Amber Room

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Finders keepers.

These amber panels, backed with gold leaf and mirrors, once dressed an entire chamber in the Catherine Palace near Saint Petersburg. More than a decade in the making, they covered 55 square meters and contained more than six metric tons of amber. Some called them the eighth wonder of the world.

The Nazis took them during World War II, but after that they disappeared. Postwar rumors have put them in bunkers, in mines, in submarines, in lagoons. One stone mosaic turned up in 1997 in West Germany, and its fellows were found in Königsberg Castle, where the Nazis had secreted them. But the rest of the “Amber Room” has simply disappeared — lost in a fire, still hidden, or safe in the hands of a lucky, and quiet, treasure hunter.

| History · Oddities