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Maybe you’re lucky enough to have a grandmother who makes knockout peach preserves, or an uncle whose pickled okra is second to none. If your family’s canned-food traditions originated in the South and stretch back to the World War I era, then they likely owe a debt to public canneries. Public canneries—a communal…

As far as anybody can tell, the origin of American schoolchildren giving an apple to the teacher cannot be traced to one definitive moment or source. The tradition seems to have been born from practicality, then nurtured by happy coincidences working in concert sometime between 1880 and 1920, with an early-19th…

Today, I bring you a story that prompted Takeout editor Kevin Pang to say this on Slack:

Picture it: I’m just sipping my morning coffee, browsing for weird internet facts (as one does), when I stumble onto a Business Insider piece that checks not one, but three of my favorite weird-fact boxes:

The Memphis Flyer is here to delight you and/or give you justification for hitting the bottle bright and early with a report on President Harry Truman’s notable fondness for Old Grand-Dad.

The debate around the precise classification of hot dogs and whether or not they exist within the sandwich taxonomy has waged for years. The website Know Your Meme traced the origin this fierce war of opposing ideas to a 2011 poll and subsequent post from Panini Happy; it escalated sharply with a 2015 episode of The…

You may not have seen the commercial in years, but you’d recognize the setup instantly. Sweeping chords play and a day-dreaming, bespectacled housewife sighs as the screen does that fuzzy flashback fade. There are quick shots of vaguely fairy tale locales—an Italian palazzo, stately fountains, a rose garden straight…

On November 26, 1863, the United States celebrated its first official Thanksgiving. Aside from the small matter of the Civil War, the Union had a lot to be grateful for. Business was good. The nation’s boundaries and population were growing. Relations were peaceful with every foreign power except the Confederate…