Some in ancient Rome believed that eating five raw, vinegared cabbage leaves before imbibing alcohol could prevent drunkenness.

National Shrimp Scampi Day occurs annually on April 29. But “scampi” are a type of small lobster, so “shrimp scampi” doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Samuel Seymour (1860-1956) was the last living witness to John Wilkes Booth’s shooting of Abraham Lincoln. Two months before his death, Seymour appeared on the TV game show I’ve Got a Secret.

Whitcomb Judson invented a new type of clothing fastener called the clasp-locker. The name never caught on, but B.F. Goodrich renamed it a “zipper” in 1923, 14 years after Judson’s death.

In 1989, Boris Yeltsin, then in the Soviet parliament, visited a Randall’s grocery store in a Houston suburb and was blown away by the abundance of food. He was more impressed with Randall’s than NASA, the Statue of Liberty, or Trump Tower, and the visit was later dramatized in an opera, Yeltsin in Texas.

This article appears in April 8 • 2022.

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