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While the rest of the world sips warm drinks, Americans reflexively reach for ice in everything. This peculiar habit traces back to a crazy 19th-century scheme to ship frozen pond water from New England to the tropics — and it worked.
Before 1918, wristwatches were considered feminine jewelry that real men wouldn't wear. Then returning soldiers brought home a battlefield necessity that Swiss marketers brilliantly rebranded as the ultimate symbol of modern masculinity.
Before 1861, Americans buried their dead quickly and quietly. Then a few enterprising embalmers followed Union armies, and suddenly elaborate funeral displays became the American way of grief.
That distinctive 'ba-ba-ba-BAM-bam' knock on your door didn't just happen naturally. It started as sheet music comedy in the 1800s and somehow became the rhythm every American knows by heart.