Some of the most famous séances took place in the White House in 1863, when Mary Todd Lincoln invited the female medium Nettie Colburn Maynard to help her contact the spirit of her dead son Willie. Colburn’s stories from the Lincoln séances include some fantastic occurrences: supposedly a grand piano began levitating when she played it, and another time a bench levitated with the president still sitting on it. Historians disagree on whether Lincoln actually took part in these séances, but it seems... READ ON

Washington wasn’t always the old, white-haired patriarchal Founding Father we know and love. At six feet three inches, the young Washington had the ladies of pre-Revolutionary Virginia swooning. On closer introduction, they were enchanted by his magnetic gray-blue eyes and auburn... READ ON

The same year that saw the invention of the atomic bomb also gave the world another hot device: the microwave oven. The principle behind microwave cooking was discovered by Percy Spencer, an engineer who worked for defense contractor Raytheon. After noticing a chocolate bar melted after accidentally being placed in front of a new “magnetron” vacuum tube, Spencer experimented with other foods, including popcorn (yes!) and an egg (not exactly). After these experiments, Spencer deduced that the food was... READ ON

In 1862, at the age of 15, Thomas Edison’s first job was selling newspapers at a train station near his home in Mount Clemens, Michigan. While hawking papers one day, Edison saved a three- year-old boy, Jimmy Mackenzie, from a runaway freight car. The boy’s father, the train station’s telegraph operator, was so grateful that he trained Edison in telegraphy, beginning his lifelong love affair with technology (and especially electricity). Later, at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, Edison went... READ ON