Useless But Fascinating

Monday Belongs to the Moon. Saturday Still Belongs to a Roman God. And Friday Probably Isn't Named After Freya.

Nov 3, 2026

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3 min read

Monday Belongs to the Moon. Saturday Still Belongs to a Roman God. And Friday Probably Isn't Named After Freya.

Every day of your week is named after something people once worshipped or watched in the sky: seven moving lights, a swap of Roman gods for Norse ones, and one Roman who never left.

R. Daniels

Useless But Fascinating

A Missing Comma Cost a Dairy Five Million Dollars. America Banned Sliced Bread for Seven Weeks. And Two More Times the Rules Came Apart.

Oct 13, 2026

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5 min read

A Missing Comma Cost a Dairy Five Million Dollars. America Banned Sliced Bread for Seven Weeks. And Two More Times the Rules Came Apart.

Four stories about rules written by people who were sure they had thought it through — a punctuation mark that rewrote an overtime law, a wartime ban nobody could justify, a speeding conviction at eight miles an hour, and a brewery that turned pub arguments into the best-selling copyrighted book in history.

R. Daniels

Useless But Fascinating

The Fax Machine Is Older Than the Telephone. The Black Box Is Orange. And Nintendo Was Fourteen Years Old Before Anyone Had Flown a Plane.

Oct 9, 2026

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5 min read

The Fax Machine Is Older Than the Telephone. The Black Box Is Orange. And Nintendo Was Fourteen Years Old Before Anyone Had Flown a Plane.

Three things that arrived in the wrong order, or under the wrong name. Our sense of when technology happened is built almost entirely from when we personally first saw it — and that instinct is wrong by decades.

R. Daniels

Useless But Fascinating

Ten Thousand Steps Was an Advert. Stockholm Syndrome Was a Smear. Three More Things You Repeat That Nobody Ever Checked.

Oct 2, 2026

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4 min read

Ten Thousand Steps Was an Advert. Stockholm Syndrome Was a Smear. Three More Things You Repeat That Nobody Ever Checked.

Five things everybody knows, each of which turns out to have been invented by somebody with a motive: a clockmaker, a police adviser, a showman, a newspaper industry, and a training seminar.

R. Daniels

Useless But Fascinating

The Spanish Flu Wasn't Spanish. The Marshmallow Test Measures Your Parents' Income. And Three More Things You're Sure About That Aren't True.

Sep 22, 2026

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4 min read

The Spanish Flu Wasn't Spanish. The Marshmallow Test Measures Your Parents' Income. And Three More Things You're Sure About That Aren't True.

Five things almost everyone believes — a food scare, a famous experiment, a famous murder, a wine myth and a pandemic's name — that fall apart the moment anyone checks.

R. Daniels

Useless But Fascinating

Australia Sent Machine Guns to Fight Birds and Lost. That One Is True. The Other Four Things in This Issue Are Not.

Sep 10, 2026

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5 min read

Australia Sent Machine Guns to Fight Birds and Lost. That One Is True. The Other Four Things in This Issue Are Not.

Four things everybody knows that turn out to be wrong, and one genuine event so ridiculous that most people assume it is a joke. Telling them apart is harder than it sounds.

R. Daniels

Useless But Fascinating

Five More Things You (should) Know That Aren’t True.

Aug 13, 2026

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5 min read

Five More Things You (should) Know That Aren’t True.

Lemmings, the Great Wall, ostriches, Einstein, and knuckle-cracking — five things nearly everyone is sure of that fall apart the moment you look.

R. Daniels

Useless But Fascinating

Jul 28, 2026

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6 min read

Five Things You Know That Aren't True.

Bulls can't see red, Vikings never wore horns, and a copywriter with a deadline invented the diamond ring — five things almost everyone gets wrong, corrected in about two minutes.

R. Daniels