Animal world

This pigeon saved 500 soldiers during WWI. Read about her story

There’s a sled dog that battled a blizzard to deliver medicine, a horse that solved math problems, a cloned sheep, and that’s just the beginning. Some major events in history didn’t have people as their protagonists, but animals, and their stories deserve to be read. Here are 10 remarkable animals that changed science, war, medicine, and even the future of human flight.

It’s not uncommon to see cute animals perform impressive tricks, and there are even talent shows specifically for animals. But more than a century ago, one remarkable horse stunned Americans by appearing to read, spell, and solve math problems.

Beautiful Jim Key was born in Tennessee in 1889 and was trained by Dr. William Key, who had been born enslaved in 1833 and taught himself veterinary medicine after emancipation. Key noticed the young horse watching him play fetch with a dog and decided to see what else the animal could pick up. Using patience instead of harsh methods, Dr. Key taught Jim to recognize letters, numbers, and words well enough to amaze crowds across the country. The horse debuted in 1897 at the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in Nashville. He could spell simple words, identify coins, operate a cashier, and hand back correct change to customers. President William McKinley watched him perform and called it one of the most astonishing exhibitions he had ever seen.

Detective shows lovers know that tiny clues can crack a case wide open. Fingerprints, footprints, and stray hairs have solved countless mysteries. In 1994, a criminal case was broken through due to a cat’s hair.

In 1994, Prince Edward Island, Canada, became the setting for one of forensic science’s most unusual breakthroughs. After the murder of Shirley Duguay, investigators found white cat hairs on a bloodstained jacket belonging to the natural suspect, Douglas Beamish, her partner. Tucked inside the lining were 27 strands of long white fur. Those hairs matched Snowball, Duguay’s pet cat, through DNA extracted from the fur. It marked the first criminal conviction in which non-human DNA played a decisive role. The case demonstrated that animal DNA could connect suspects to crime scenes just as effectively as human evidence. Snowball never knew he was helping detectives, but it was his fur that changed forensic investigations forever.

During wartime, a missed message could cost hundreds of lives. Long before radios became dependable on the battlefield, armies often relied on an unlikely messenger that could succeed when every other method had failed.

Cher Ami was a homing pigeon serving with the American Expeditionary Forces during WWI. In October 1918, more than 550 American soldiers of the "Lost Battalion" became trapped in France’s Argonne Forest and were mistakenly shelled by their own artillery. Major Charles Whittlesey had already lost two messenger pigeons to enemy fire when he released his last bird, a Black Check cock named Cher Ami, carrying a note begging American gunners to stop the barrage. Despite being shot through the chest, blinded in one eye, and nearly losing a leg, Cher Ami completed the flight carrying the desperate message that identified the battalion's true position. The shelling stopped, and roughly 194 soldiers survived the ordeal. The pigeon received the French Croix de Guerre, and her body is displayed at the Smithsonian Institution.

If you were watching the news in February 1997, you probably remember the day this story broke. Dolly was born on July 5, 1996, at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, though her existence stayed under wraps until researchers published their findings the following year.

She had been created by scientists Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell from a single cell taken from the udder of a six-year-old Finn Dorset ewe using a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer. Before Dolly, scientists believed adult cells were too specialized to create an entirely new animal. Her successful birth proved otherwise and became one of the greatest breakthroughs in modern biology. Dolly went on to live an ordinary-looking life at Roslin, grazing alongside other sheep and eventually giving birth to six lambs of her own. She passed in 2003, at age six, and her body is now preserved and on permanent display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where she remains one of the most visited exhibits in the building.

If you need a medicine today, you probably walk a few blocks, get to your local chemist, and get it. However, in 1925, the inhabitants of Nome, Alaska, suffered a whole lot more than that to get some life-saving medicine, and the hero behind the story is a dog.

That year, a diphtheria outbreak threatened the people in Nome, one of the most isolated communities in the country. With airplanes grounded by brutal weather and sea routes frozen solid, officials organized an emergency relay of about 150 dogs and 20 mushers to transport lifesaving antitoxin across nearly 700 miles of Alaska. Balto is the dog that led the final 53-mile stretch through blinding snow and powerful winds, guiding musher Gunnar Kaasen safely into Nome on February 2, 1925. Although many teams contributed to the famous Serum Run, Balto became the public face of the mission. His achievement was celebrated with parades, newspaper headlines, and even a bronze statue in NYC’s Central Park.

Hot air balloons today are pretty common, but in the 18th century, they were a brand new invention, and no one really knew whether living creatures could survive the journey into the sky. Before risking human passengers, the Montgolfier brothers, French paper manufacturers from a small town in the south of France, decided to let a few animals go first.

Montauciel, whose name means "Climb to the Sky," was a sheep selected by the Montgolfier brothers for a historic balloon experiment in 1783. Accompanied by a duck and a rooster, the sheep lifted off from the grounds of the Palace of Versailles before King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, and thousands of spectators. The balloon climbed roughly 1,500 feet and traveled about two miles before landing safely. Finding the animals unharmed reassured scientists that high-altitude flight was possible for living creatures. Just a few months later, on November 21, 1783, humans made the first free hot air balloon flight.

Everything around the FIFA World Cup revolves around taking home that golden cup and keeping it for the next four years. Imagine the chaos it must have been when the Jules Rimet Trophy was lost just before the tournament started in England in 1966.

Weeks before England was set to host the tournament, the Jules Rimet Trophy was stolen in broad daylight from a stamp exhibition at Westminster Central Hall in London, lifted from a display case despite a team of guards posted nearby. For a whole week, investigators looked for it, but couldn’t find it. On March 27, a week after the robbery, a Londoner named David Corbett was heading out for an evening walk with his four-year-old collie mix, Pickles, when the dog stopped to sniff a package tucked under a garden hedge near their home. Wrapped in a newspaper was the missing trophy. Corbett became a suspect for a brief time, but after all doubts about him were cleared, Pickles became an international celebrity, appearing on television, attending banquets, and even receiving a year's supply of dog food.

Many people grew up believing that making tools was what separated humans from every other living creature. But in the forests of East Africa, one chimpanzee challenged that belief without ever realizing how important his actions would become.

In 1960, while studying chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park, researcher Jane Goodall observed an adult male chimp she named David Greybeard poking a stem of grass into a termite mound, pulling it out coated in insects, and eating them straight off the stalk. Days later, she watched him strip the leaves off a twig first, shaping it into a more effective tool. Goodall reported her findings, and the discovery forced experts to rethink what it meant to be human. Greybeard became one of the most famous chimpanzees in scientific history and helped transform the study of animal intelligence.

If you own a small dog, you know how amazing their ability to squeeze into tiny places is. During WWII, that simple ability turned one Yorkshire Terrier into an unlikely military hero whose size helped save lives.

Smoky was discovered in 1944 inside an abandoned foxhole in New Guinea by American soldiers. Weighing only about four pounds, she soon became the companion of Corporal William Wynne. During the fighting in the Philippines, engineers needed to run telephone wire through a narrow, 70-foot pipe beneath an airfield without exposing workers to enemy fire. Smoky was small enough to pull the line through while following her owner, sparing dozens of soldiers from dangerous work under attack. After the war, Wynne began bringing Smoky to visit wounded soldiers in military hospitals, and the effect she had on morale was so noticeable that historians now regard her as the first documented therapy dog. She lived until 1957 and is buried in Ohio, where a small statue marks the spot.

Visiting the zoo is a fun activity; kids love the thrill of seeing a wild animal up close. But people don’t usually think about how difficult life can be for animals raised by people, out of their own habitat. One lioness changed public attitudes about that and inspired millions to care about wildlife conservation.

In 1956, a Kenyan man named George Adamson made a tragic mistake by taking a lioness’ life in self-defense, only to discover she had been protecting three newborn cubs hidden nearby. Two of the cubs were sent to a zoo in the Netherlands, but the smallest, a female Adamson and his wife Joy named Elsa, stayed behind with the couple. Rather than raising her in captivity, the couple gradually taught her to hunt and live independently before releasing her into the wild. Joy later wrote "Born Free," published in 1960, which became an international bestseller and inspired the Academy Award-winning 1966 film of the same name. Elsa's story introduced countless readers and moviegoers to the importance of protecting Africa's wildlife while demonstrating that careful rewilding could succeed under the right conditions.

Yes, you read that correctly

Erf, cleek, gobbledygook, and other silly-sounding words

Image: Kathas_Fotos

Words like "cattywampus" and "frou-frou" are more than just fun to say. Sometimes, etymology can take unexpected twists and leave us with gems like "erf" and "dragoon." To some, these are everyday words in areas like cuisine or urban planning, but for many fellow readers, they are a random assortment of letters that might require a second glance. Explore this list of words that ring funny—to most people, at least—and see if any of them belong to your area of expertise.

Image: Rachel Claire

"Cleek" might sound like a children’s code word or an onomatopoeia, but it’s been a noun and a verb for centuries. A golfer saying, "I think I'll cleek this one," or a Scotsman talking about how he "cleeked" or "claught" a fish from the river—both would be accurate uses. The word "cleek" has often been used in golf, where it refers to an old-fashioned club used for striking a ball with precision. Over time, the word has come to be a synonym for catching, snatching, or grasping.

The word "cleek" originates from the Middle English word "cleke," which is derived from Old Norse "kleggi," meaning a large hook. The term first appeared in English texts around the 15th century, primarily in Scotland. In the context of golf, "cleek" began to appear in records by the late 17th century, when the sport was becoming increasingly popular in Scotland.

Image: Paul Hanaoka

No, it’s not a conversational filler interchangeable with "umm" or "err." "Erf" is legal jargon that refers to an urban plot of land, especially in South Africa. The term originated there back in the early days of Cape Colony, when the land was being systematically parceled and recorded.

The term is most commonly used in South African English to describe a parcel of land or property development in legal contexts. It has its origins in Dutch, from the word "erf" meaning an inheritance or an inherited piece of land. The term was brought to South Africa by Dutch settlers in the 17th century, as part of the broader Afrikaans language, which developed from Dutch.

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It’s neither a sea creature nor a Marvel villain. An "octothorpe" is something much closer to us that many use every day. It refers to the humble "#" symbol, known by many names: pound sign, number sign, hash, and more recently, "hashtag."

The word "octothorpe" is believed to have been coined in the 1960s by Bell Telephone Laboratories employees as they worked on developing touch-tone dialing. Octo refers to the eight tip ends of the symbol, while thorpe remains mysterious—some versions say it may derive from the Old English word thorp, meaning field or village, which alludes to the eight spaces around the central square. The symbol itself has a much older history, originating as a scribal abbreviation in medieval Latin to indicate weight in pounds (lb).

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"Frou-frou" does sound like what it means—fluffy and a bit over-the-top. You might say someone with a taste for elaborate, frilly clothing has a "frou-frou" style. The word is an adjective or noun used for a flair for lace, ruffles, and particularly ornate decoration or fashion. It can be used endearingly as well as mockingly.

The word "frou-frou" comes from French, where it originally referred to the rustling sound of silk or other fine fabrics. It first appeared in English in the late 19th century, around the 1870s, at a time when ornate aesthetics were very much in vogue. Today, though not used much, the word is still associated with whimsical fashion that mixes elegance with excessive detail.

Image: Aleksandra Sapozhnikova

Your room might look cattywampus after having guests over, or the picture frames might be all cattywampus after your cat took a stroll through the shelf. The funny and informal term is reserved for things that appear askew, crooked, or not quite right, whether objects or projects that went off course.

The origin of the word is unclear, though it’s believed to be a blend of Southern American slang with elements of Scots-Irish language brought over by settlers. The term first appeared in print in the early 19th century and has been used in American English ever since, particularly in the South. Some theories suggest that "catawampus," an earlier variant, may have derived from cata, meaning diagonal or crooked, combined with wampus, a playful term for a strange or imaginary creature.

Image: Zaaruli

"Penuche" might sound like an elegant garment bought in France, but it’s actually a sweet treat. Pronounced "puh-NOO-chee," it’s a type of fudge made primarily from brown sugar, butter, and milk. It has a distinct light brown color and a flavor that’s often described as somewhere between caramel and maple. It’s particularly popular in New England and the southern United States, where it’s sometimes made as a holiday treat or sold in old-fashioned candy shops.

The word "penuche" may derive from the Spanish word "panocha," a coarse grade of sugar made from unrefined cane. Penuche fudge became popular in the United States during the 19th century, especially in regions where brown sugar was readily available.

Image: Paracordstyle

A road, building, or startup that never got finished might be referred to as a "boondoggle." It means that it was a total waste of time or money. Silly as the word sounds, it’s often used as a serious accusation: The people involved in a boondoggle might have been only pretending to be productive over unnecessary tasks.

The word was originally coined to name the braided leather lanyards made by Boy Scouts. However, during the 1930s, critics of the New Deal began using the term to describe programs they considered wasteful. The term caught on, and by the mid-20th century, it was commonly used to refer to any deceitful or unnecessary project, particularly one funded by taxpayers.

Image: Patricia Jekki

Yes, the term might be distantly related to the mythical creature. When someone gets "dragooned," they are experiencing the all-too-familiar feeling of being pressured into something against their will, often with a touch of resentment.

The term originally referred to a type of cavalry soldier from European armies in the 17th and 18th centuries. Dragoons were known for their fierce, often brutal tactics, and the label came to symbolize the act of forcing someone to comply with demands through intimidation or coercion. The name "dragoon" is believed to come from the French word dragon, referring to the firearm carried by these soldiers, which was said to "breathe fire" like a dragon.

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If you check whether the napkins at a dinner party are all perfectly folded, you might be a bit persnickety. The adjective describes being overly particular, fussy, or meticulous, to the point of amusing or annoying others.

The word is rooted in the older Scottish word "pernickety," from the late 19th century. "Pernickety" itself is believed to be a combination of per, a prefix meaning thoroughly, and nick, possibly derived from "knick-knack," referring to a small detail or object.

Image: Raphael Schaller

It might sound like something a turkey might warble, but "gobbledygook" is a term that refers to overly complex or unintelligible language. When an explanation is filled with jargon or technical terms that replace the more straightforward meaning, it can be called out for being gobbledygook, or pretentious.

The word was coined in 1944 by Maury Maverick, a U.S. Congressman, who used it to criticize the convoluted language of government documents. So, yes, he made up a term to evoke the sound of nonsensical speech. Maverick’s intention was to denounce pompous legislative and bureaucratic writing and aim to make it less ambiguous and more direct.