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These days, businesses seem to open and close in the blink of an eye. In some areas, it’s rare to see a store that’s been open for more than a few years—let alone a few decades. But despite the instability of running a business, some stores have managed to stick around for a seriously long time. In some places, shoppers buy books or bicycles from the same store their grandparents and great-grandparents frequented—or eat at restaurants that once fed ancient soldiers and explorers. These stores are some of the oldest continuously operating stores in the world—all have broken some kind of record for longevity, whether they’re the oldest store of their kind in the world or their country, and all are still in their original locations.

Founded in 1745, the Moravian Book Shop in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is the oldest continuously operating bookstore in America (the Bertrand Bookstore in Portugal opened 13 years earlier, and is generally considered the oldest in the world). While the Moravian started out as a place to buy and print religious texts, it changed with the times, and now sells every book under the sun out of its (significantly expanded) 15,000 square foot shop. Bookstore employees say the shop sometimes feels haunted by its lengthy past—literally. Rumor has it, a friendly ghost haunts the shop, occasionally reminding employees to turn off appliances they’ve left running.

St. Peter’s Stiftskeller claims to have been mentioned in a document published all the way back in 803 CE. If that’s true, it’s the oldest restaurant in Austria—and may even be the oldest restaurant in the world. Located within the walls of St. Peter’s Abbey in Salzburg, the restaurant and inn hosted French troops during the Napoleonic wars and is rumored to have served everyone from Christopher Columbus and Charlemagne to Bill Clinton and Clint Eastwood.

Located in Sutton, London, UK, Pearson Cycles was established in 1860 and has been in the Pearson family for five generations. Founded by Thomas Pearson—who originally opened a blacksmiths, but quickly switched to selling bicycles—the shop is now run by Pearson’s great-great-grandsons Will and Guy Pearson. In 2011, when the historic bike shop opened its second location, Will Pearson told The Telegraph, “We have a slow roll-out program; one store every 150 years.” The shop holds the Guinness World Record for oldest bicycle shop in the world.

Founded in 705 CE in Japan’s Yamanashi Prefecture, Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan has been run by the same family for 52 generations. The hot spring inn, which is located at the foot of the South Japanese Alps, has served everyone from ancient samurai to modern vacationers for more than a millennium. Known for its luxurious rooms and warm mountain streams, the hotel holds the Guinness World Record for world’s oldest hotel.

Originally founded as a food stall in 1738, Antica Pizzeria Port’Alba opened its Naples, Italy, restaurant in 1830. Widely credited as the oldest pizzeria in the world, the historic restaurant used lava rocks from Mount Vesuvius to line its ovens. Though Antica Pizzeria Port’Alba by no means invented the pizza, its founders helped transform the cheap street food into a fine dining experience.

Santa Maria Novella Pharmacy was established by Dominican monks in 1221, which means it has been providing the city of Florence, Italy, with homemade medicines, soaps, and colognes for more than 800 years—and it’s still situated in its original building The pharmacy features vast painted ceilings, a museum, and of course, plenty of products to sample and purchase. One of its most famous products, according to Atlas Obscura, is a smelling salt called Aceto dei Sette Ladri (Seven Thieves Vinegar), which was, according to legend, used by grave robbers to protect themselves from infection during the plague.

There are two stores that claim the title of oldest pharmacy still operating in the United States: Carl’s Drug in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, and C.O. Bigelow in New York City. Carl’s Drug claims to have opened its doors in 1825, and, despite a few ownership and location changes along the way, it still sells to the people of Greencastle. The other contender, C.O. Bigelow, has sold medicines and salves from its storefront in New York City’s Greenwich village since 1838. Though it’s not nearly as old as Santa Maria Novella, its nearly 200 years in the heart of the bustling Big Apple mean that plenty of important people have passed through its doors: Over the years, the shop has served the likes of Thomas Edison (who allegedly nursed an injured finger there), Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain), filmmaker John Waters, and the glam rocking New York Dolls.

The Balson family of Bridport, England, has been in the meat business since 1515, when John Balson started selling meat at a local market. The family set up their permanent location in 1880, and is still selling meats and specialty sausages from the same shop. According to its website, “The family joke is that we’ve just never made enough money to be able to retire.” The shop was featured on a 2014 BBC program on Britain’s oldest family businesses (above).

The store that is now appropriately known as the Oldest Sweet Shop was originally called “The Old Sweet Shop.” It was founded in 1827 in the town of Pateley Bridge in England. “To me, sweets are all about the memories,” former bank manager Keith Tordoff, who ran the business for a mere two decades, told The Telegraph in a 2013 interview. “You remember sweets from your childhood just like you remember a song. You remember the sweets your grandparents gave you, or giving a packet of Lovehearts to a girl you liked. We had a 97-year-old woman come in to the shop and say the last time she was here she was 5 years old. She said apart from the position of the counter, it hasn’t changed.”

Tordoff sold the shop to customer Ben Howie in 2021. “This business since my childhood has always been a fascination,” Howie told BBC News. “The history and heritage inside this shop is so interesting, everything from the floorboards upwards has history to it.”

If you’ve ever bought a piece of clothing and returned it to get a refund, or enjoyed perusing through products in a mail catalog, you have Le Bon Marché to thank: According to CNN, the Paris-based retailer lays claim to those firsts—as well as the title of the world’s oldest department store. Aristide and Marguerite Boucicaut became owners of the shop—then a novelty store located at rue du Bac and rue de Sèvres—in 1852, but they had much grander designs: They wanted to create a “cathedral of modern commerce.” The store moved to its current location at rue de Sèvres and rue Velpeau in 1869, and today, Le Bon Marché is owned by LVMH Group. 

A version of this story ran in 2016; it has been updated for 2023.

According to historians, modern society can learn a lot from the myriad ways people put food on the table during the Great Depression. While some people raised livestock and grew their own fruits and vegetables, others had to stretch every dollar and pinch every penny to get the most food for their buck during hard economic times. Here are 10 recipes that might seem strange today but were regular features at mealtime in the Depression Era. For more recipes from that time, pick up A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression.

During the Great Depression, potatoes and hot dogs were very inexpensive, so many meals included either or both ingredients. In the video above, Clara—who lived through the Depression and passed away in 2013—walked viewers through the process of making the “poor man’s meal”: Peel and cube a potato, then fry it in a pan with oil and chopped onions until they brown and soften. Then add slices of hot dog, cook a few minutes more, and serve.

Made with dried and salted beef, creamed chipped beef was an easy and cheap dish that originated in Eastern Pennsylvania Dutch Country, New Jersey, and the Mid-Atlantic. To make it yourself, melt two tablespoons of butter in a pot over medium heat and add two tablespoons of flour to make a roux. Slowly whisk in 1.5 cups of milk until it thickens and boils. Add 8 ounces of dried beef (like Hormel) and serve over toast.

Affectionately called S.O.S. (“sh*t on a shingle” or “save our stomachs”), creamed chipped beef on toast was also a staple of the U.S. military during World War I and especially World War II.

Hoovervilles—shantytowns that sprang up during the Depression—weren’t the only things named after America’s 31st president, who had the misfortune to be elected just before the Crash. Hoover stew was the name given to the soup from soup kitchens or similarly thin broths. One recipe calls for cooking a 16-ounce box of noodles like macaroni or spaghetti. While that’s on the stove, slice hot dogs into round shapes. Drain the pasta when it’s almost done and return to the pot; drop in the sliced hot dogs. Add two cans of stewed tomatoes and one can of corn or peas (with liquid) to the pot. Bring the mixture to a boil and then simmer until the pasta is finished cooking. No need to use corn or peas; you can substitute those veggies for anything canned and inexpensive.

Here’s Clara’s recipe for egg drop soup: Peel and dice a potato and an onion. Slowly brown them in a pot with oil until soft, then add bay leaves and salt and pepper. Once browned, add half a pot of water to the mix to make broth. Simmer on the stove and add more salt and pepper to taste until the potatoes are cooked. While boiling, crack two eggs into the pot and stir until scrambled. Add two more eggs into the soup so the yolk hardens and add cheese to finish it off. Once completed, serve the egg drop soup over toast.

In the 1930s, gelatin was considered a modern, cutting-edge food. Dishes like corned beef luncheon salad—which consisted of canned corned beef, plain gelatin, canned peas, vinegar, lemon juice, and occasionally cabbage—were very popular and inexpensive to make. According to Andy Coe, co-author of A Square Meal, the recipe was just “wrong in every possible way” when compared with today’s modern tastes and palate.

Served during the holiday season as a special treat, frozen fruit salad was made with canned fruit cocktail (or your favorite canned fruit), egg yolks, honey, and whipping cream.

One of the dishes Eleanor Roosevelt recommended and promoted with the development of home economics in schools and colleges during the Great Depression was spaghetti with boiled carrots and white sauce. It consists of spaghetti cooked until mushy (about 25 minutes) and mixed with boiled carrots. The white sauce is made from milk, flour, salt, butter or margarine, and a little pepper. After mixing, pour into a tray and bake to make a casserole.

Although he had a taste for fancy meals, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was served a humble seven-and-a-half-cent lunch, which included deviled eggs in tomato sauce, mashed potatoes, coffee, and, for dessert, prune pudding. Roosevelt’s White House ate modestly in “an act of culinary solidarity with the people who were suffering,” Jane Ziegelman, co-author of A Square Meal, told The New York Times.

Most For Your Money Cookbook, published in 1938, offers two recipes for buttermilk soup. The first involves adding raisins, some nutmeg, sugar, salt, and a lemon peel to a quart of buttermilk; bring that to a boil, then add rice. Cover and “boil slowly until rice is soft.” The authors note that “Buttermilk should sell for less than half the price of fresh milk … which makes the above soup one of the cheapest and most nutritious we know, besides being a novel change from the usual run of soups.”

Guides like 1937’s Americas Cookbook recommended using dandelion greens in a number of recipes, including salads. In the video above, you can watch Clara whip up a dandelion salad, which she noted was “free and good for you”—in fact, dandelions are a nutrient-rich superfood. She dug her dandelions right out of her backyard by the roots; next, she removed the flowers (although they’re also edible) and dead leaves and washed them rigorously to get rid of all the dirt. Clara dressed the salad with lemon juice, olive oil, and salt.

A version of this story ran in 2016; it has been updated for 2021.

Gene Roddenberry may have dreamed of a perfect future when he created Star Trek, but parts of his vision were firmly rooted in the real world, specifically in the physical makeup of the crew of the Enterprise itself.

Roddenberry, along with the show’s producers, decided to take numerous cues from the United States Navy when creating the official ranks on the show, including a captain overseeing a crew made up of a commander, a handful of lieutenant commanders, lieutenants, and several subordinate roles. But it’s the different colors of the Starfleet uniforms that really tell the story of how the Enterprise operates.

Fans know the basics: an array of blue, red, and gold shirts line the bridge of the ship every episode. Those colors weren’t just randomly picked for the sake of diversity, though. They actually correspond to the ship’s various service roles. The gold shirts are worn by the command division, which includes Captain Kirk, Lieutenant Sulu, and Pavel Chekov. Red uniforms belong to the engineering/communications division, including chief engineer Scotty and communications officer Uhura. The blue shirts are worn by the science/medical staff, including McCoy and Spock.

As with everything in Star Trek, though, it’s a lot more complicated than all of that. In addition to the red shirts belonging to engineers and communications personnel, they are also assigned to the security division. What’s the purpose of the security division on the Enterprise? Well, they’re usually the supporting characters who are immediately killed whenever the crew is confronted by a new enemy. This is something of a running gag for fans of the franchise, as whenever one of the “Red Shirts” is seen on screen, you know they’re not long for this world.

Also, those gold shirts worn by Kirk and crew might not have been so gold after all. According to an interview with Star Trek’s costume designer, William Theiss, the idea was for the show’s uniforms to be red, blue, and green. In fact, on the set, Kirk’s outfit certainly looked to be an avocado (or lime) green, but the end result was a little different when the studio lights finally hit the uniform.

“It was one of those film stock things,” Theiss said, “it photographed one way—burnt orange or a gold. But in reality was another; the command shirts were definitely green.”

This might come as a surprise to Trek fans until you remember that Kirk actually did wear green on a few occasions, including the times he was in formal dress and his seldom-seen alternate green get-up, seen in the clip below.

These alternate uniforms were all the exact shade of green Theiss describes, but they were made from a different material than the standard Enterprise shirts and apparently had no issue retaining their natural color scheme when lit on set. The gold shade may have been a production mishap, but the color has since entered the Trek canon as the official hue of Kirk and his command staff. So, in the Star Trek universe, Kirk wears gold; in the real world, though, the bridge of the Enterprise was designed with a completely different color palette in mind.

It gets more confusing when you look at the later Trek series, like The Next Generation, which had the command staff in red and operations in yellow—basically the reverse of the original series. Then, of course, the movies switched costumes and colors with nearly every entry, including the powder blue monstrosities worn in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Roddenberry’s eye for detail was unique for sci-fi TV at the time, and everything on the Enterprise had a specific purpose. Despite some production fumbles, ill-fated redesigns, and inconsistencies later on, the colors that make up Starfleet’s uniforms tell a story that many viewers probably never even noticed.

A version of this story originally ran in 2016; it has been updated for 2023.

The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is one of the most iconic images from Ghostbusters (1984), but it turns out he almost didn’t make the cut. In the short video above, Cinefix tells the story of Mr. Stay Puft from his original conceptualization by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis to his laborious creation by a team of special effects masters.

Unlike the CGI-heavy movies of today, Mr. Stay Puft is all practical effects. Shooting the climax of Ghostbusters—in which the giant, sinister marshmallow galumphs down Manhattan’s Central Park West, climbs a skyscraper, and ultimately explodes—took four puppeteers, multiple marshmallow suits, and almost 100 pounds of shaving cream. Creating the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, according to the video, was both a struggle and a labor of love—one which paid off when audiences went wild for the creepy, gooey marshmallow monster.

Filmmaking presented a unique set of challenges prior to the computer age. Most practical effects in early films didn’t make use of marshmallow suits or shaving cream, but they did require creative props, sets, and camera work. After watching the video above, you can see examples of how special effects artists made movie magic in the silent film era here.

A version of this story ran in 2016; it has been updated for 2023.

Not every great invention was created according to plan. Some, in fact, were the result of a happy accident. In November 2020, for example, the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca announced that the COVID-19 vaccine it had developed in partnership with Oxford University was 90 percent effective when administered in a dosing regimen they had discovered thanks to some “serendipity.” This wasn’t the only unintentional discovery in history, of course. From penicillin to artificial sweeteners, all 10 of the everyday items below were invented entirely by accident.

On September 28, 1928, Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming discovered that a Petri dish of Staphylococcus bacteria that had been inadvertently left out on the windowsill of his London laboratory had become contaminated by a greenish-colored mold—and encircling the mold was a halo of inhibited bacterial growth. After taking a sample and developing a culture, Fleming discovered the mold was a member of the Penicillium genus, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The two Kellogg brothers—Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his younger brother (and former broom salesman) Will Keith Kellogg—worked at Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, where John was physician-in-chief. Both were strict Seventh-Day Adventists, who used their work at the sanitarium to promote the austere dietary and moralist principles of their religion (including strict vegetarianism and a lifelong restraint from excessive sex and alcohol). They also carried out research into nutrition and the impact of diet on their patients. It was during one of these experiments in 1894 that, while in the process of making dough from boiled wheat, one of the Kelloggs left the mash to dry for too long. When it came time to be rolled out, the mixture splintered into dozens of individual flakes. Curious as to what these flakes tasted like, he baked them in the oven—and in the process, produced a cereal called Granose. Some later tinkering switched out the wheat for corn and gave us corn flakes.

Polytetrafluoroethylene—better known as PTFE, or Teflon—was invented by accident at a DuPont laboratory in New Jersey in 1938. Roy Plunkett, an Ohio-born chemist, was attempting to make a new CFC refrigerant when he noticed that a canister of tetrafluoroethylene, despite appearing to be empty, weighed as much as if it were full. Cutting the canister open with a saw, Plunkett found that the gas had reacted with the iron in the canister’s shell and had coated its insides with polymerized polytetrafluoroethylene—a waxy, water-repellent, non-stick substance. DuPont soon saw the potential of Plunkett’s discovery and began mass-producing PTFE, but it wasn’t until 1954, when the wife of French engineer Marc Grégoire asked her husband to use the same substance to coat her cookware to stop food sticking to her pans, that the true usefulness of Plunkett’s discovery was finally realized.

In 1943, naval engineer Richard T. James was working at a shipyard in Philadelphia when he accidentally knocked a spring, which he had been trying to modify into a stabilizer for sensitive maritime equipment, from a high shelf. To his surprise, the spring neatly uncoiled itself and stepped its way down from the shelf and onto a pile of books, and from there onto a tabletop, and then onto the floor. After two years of development, the first batch of 400 “Slinky” toys sold out in just 90 minutes when they were demonstrated in the toy department of a local Gimbels store in 1945.

At the height of World War II, rubber was rationed across the United States after Japan invaded a number of rubber-producing countries across Southeast Asia and hampered production. The race was on to find a suitable replacement—a synthetic rubber that could be produced in the U.S. without the need of overseas imports, which eventually led to the entirely unexpected invention of Silly Putty.

There are at least two rival claims to the invention of Silly Putty (chiefly from chemist Earl L. Warrick and Scottish-born engineer James Wright), both of whom found that mixing boric acid with silicone oil produced a stretchy, bouncy, rubber-like substance that also had the unusual ability of leaching newspaper print from a page (an ability that new printing technology has now eliminated).

In 1968, a 3M chemist named Dr. Spencer Silver was attempting to create a super-strong adhesive when, instead, he accidentally invented a super-weak adhesive, which could be used to only temporarily stick things together. The seemingly limited application of Silver’s product meant it sat unused at 3M (then technically known as Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing) for another five years, until, in 1973, a colleague named Art Fry attended one of Silver’s seminars and struck upon the idea that his impermanent glue could be used to stick bookmarks into the pages of his hymnbook. It took another few years for 3M to be convinced of Fry and Silver’s idea and its salability, but eventually the inventors came up with a unique design that worked perfectly: a thin film of Spencer’s adhesive was applied along just one edge of a piece of paper. After a failed test-market push in 1977 as Press ’N Peel, the product went national as the Post-It note in 1980.

In 1878 or ’79 (sources differ), Constantin Fahlberg, a chemistry student studying Professor Ira Remsen at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, discovered while eating his meal one evening that food he picked up with this fingers tasted sweeter than normal. He traced the sweetening effect back to the chemical he had been working with that day: ortho-sulfobenzoic acid imide. Thinking he could be on to something, he quickly set up a business mass-producing his sweetener under the more pronounceable name saccharin. Although saccharin was popular with consumers, it would take the sugar shortages of two World Wars to make the discovery truly ubiquitous.

The first popsicle was reportedly invented by 11-year-old Frank Epperson in 1905, when he accidentally left a container of powdered soda and water, with its mixing stick still inside, on his porch overnight. One unexpectedly cold night later, the popsicle—which Epperson originally marketed 20 years later as an Epsicle—was born.

Safety glass—or rather, laminated glass—was accidentally discovered by the French chemist Édouard Bénédictus when he knocked a glass beaker from a high shelf in his laboratory and found, to his surprise, that it shattered but did not break. His assistant informed him that the beaker had contained cellulose nitrate, a type of clear natural plastic, that had left a film on the inside of the glass. He filed a patent for his discovery in 1909, and it has been in production (albeit in various different forms) ever since.

Next time your smoke detector goes off in the middle of the night, thank Walter Jaeger. The Swiss physicist was trying to create a something that could detect poison gas in the 1930s. But instead of alerting him to the presence of gas, his detector instead picked up on the smoke from his cigarette.

A version of this story originally ran in 2016; it has been updated for 2024.

College dorm rooms are often small and sometimes come with annoying roommates, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be comfortable and interesting spaces. Here are some dorm room essentials that are sure to make living on campus a lot less stressful for college students.

For late nights reading in bed, this bedside shelf is a must-have. It can safely hold up to 35 pounds, has a slot to organize cords, and is roomy enough to fit a phone, books, or even a 13-inch laptop, among other things. It’s also designed to work with most types of bed frames and can be worth holding onto even after college graduation.

Buy it: Amazon

Say hello to the workhorse of any dorm room: Command strips and hooks. Whether the college student in your life wants to put up posters or a hook for a set of keys, this combo pack of hanging strips and utility and wire hooks can get the job done. It can be good for hanging up to 19 different items—each strip can also bond to anything from finished wood to painted concrete cinder blocks, so they’re ideal for residential hall dwellers.

Buy it: Amazon

Unless the student in question has an extra-long twin bed at home, chances are they won’t be able to borrow old sheets from the linen closet to use on campus. These budget-friendly sheets from Utopia Bedding come in the right size for typical dorm beds and at under $25, they won’t break the bank. Available in seven different shades in twin XL, these sheets are made from brushed microfiber polyester for added softness and are shrink- and fade-resistant, too.

Buy it: Amazon

String lights add a touch of cuteness to any dorm room, but this set in particular can be sweet for homesick college students, as they’ll get 50 clear clips that they can use to hang up pictures of friends and family. Because the 33-foot wire is fully bendable, they can wrap them around bedposts or other furniture for some fun, decorative flair.

Buy it: Amazon

For better air quality inside dorm rooms, consider gifting your favorite college student a new air purifier. This mini one from LEVOIT only takes up a small amount of desktop space and works well in rooms up to 337 square feet; it also offers a powerful three-stage filtration system (with a HEPA filter) and can help remove unwanted odors, dust, allergens, pet dander, and more. Better still, they can use it for aromatherapy purposes as well.

Buy it: Amazon

College kids aren’t just in their dorm rooms to study. If they’re bringing a TV to campus, having a streaming device like this one can be essential so they don’t miss any of their favorite shows or movies while they’re away at school. This Fire TV stick offers access to Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, and other popular streaming apps, and it comes with an Alexa voice remote so they search for and launch shows across all the apps and control the power and volume on their television sets.

Buy it: Amazon

There’s no telling how hot those dorm rooms will be when students start to settle in come early September. While they might not need a fan all year, this 42-inch tower fan will be a big help through the early part of the fall semester and the following spring, especially once students hit finals season. This appliance offers six speed levels and four modes (including a sleep setting), and because it’s technically blade-free, the brand claims it operates at a very quiet noise volume. Using the remote, your loved one won’t even need to hop out of bed to get it running.

Buy it: Amazon

If closet or armoire space is limited, these space-saving hanger hooks can help college students maximize what they’re able to store without taking up too much extra room. These hooks can be hung vertically or horizontally to hold up to five garments at once, so all college students need are a set of classic hangers and they’ll be good to go.

Buy it: Amazon

Students can easily organize all of their bathroom essentials—from body wash to shampoo, shaving cream, toothbrushes, and more—in this mesh shower caddy. Available in six colors, it features eight side pockets and one main compartment that can fit a towel, clothes, or even a hairdryer. And because it’s mesh, they’ll always be able to see what’s inside.

Buy it: Amazon

Burning the midnight oil to get a paper or project done is easier with a mug of coffee, and this warming gadget from Misby can help keep that cup at an optimal temperature while students focus on their work. Designed to keep coffee or tea heated up to 131℉, this warmer is also groove-free, so it can work with most mugs (even glass or stainless steel varieties).

Buy it: Amazon

Whether they’re studying from their bed or at the library, the college student in your life will get plenty of use out of this two-pound lap desk. It can fit laptops up to 15.6 inches long and has a built-in mouse pad plus a phone slot so their device is always easily within reach. The microbeaded cushion on the underside adds comfort, and with six shades to choose from, you can grab one that perfectly suits their style.

Buy it: Amazon

For sitting up in bed to read from a book or tablet (or just watch TV), this husband pillow can bring a lot of enjoyment. It comes in five hues and has a carrying handle for easy portability, plus the zippered velour outer cover is machine washable for stress-free cleaning and upkeep. Filled with shredded memory foam that will mold to their shape, this upright reading pillow will make relaxing in bed so much more delightful no matter what they get up to.

Buy it: Amazon

College kids aren’t the only folks who lose track of things, but lets be real here: Between classes, the dining halls, their dorm rooms, and even heading off campus for parties, there’s a big possibility that they’ll lose track of essentials like their wallet or their keys. This four-pack of Bluetooth trackers is compatible with both iOS and Android devices and even works with Amazon Alexa to help them recover lost items. By using the Tile app, they can get precise locations via a map for misplaced items, and it still works when they’re out of Bluetooth range.

Buy it: Amazon

Even if the dining halls are closed, students can still enjoy a late-night meal without splurging on takeout, thanks to this electric hot pot. They can cook and sauté food even if they don’t have access to a stove, and because the pot has a non-stick coating, they can use it to make eggs, noodles, rice, and more. With built-in functionalities to prevent overheating, this little gadget has a lot of versatility that can serve students well.

Buy it: Amazon

It’s tough to understate the importance of a good set of headphones, especially for college students. While models from Sony and Bose are generally the most celebrated, the best sets often retail for well over $200. Comparatively, this $60 set from Anker is a steal and provides active noise canceling; according to the brand, these headphones can reduce ambient noises by up to 90 percent, and with their 40-hour battery life, the Soundcore Anker Life Q20s offer a lot of value within this price point.

Buy it: Amazon

Anyone who has lived in a dorm knows that finding an outlet is tricky business. With the odd assortment of plug shapes out there, sometimes outlets can get obscured and therefore impossible to use. This power strip tower is a game-changer in more ways than one, as it provides 15 outlets with surge protection and six fast-charging USB ports so they boost the battery life on laptops, phones, cameras, and other gadgets. It also has a 6.5-foot retractable cord and a built-in light at the top, which can be set to emit a warm light (great for that night-light feel) or multi-colored lights for in-room parties.

Buy it: Amazon

Hard time waking up in the morning? This alarm clock can help ease the transition between restful slumber and getting a jumpstart on the day, as it emits light that simulates a gentle sunrise. Featuring a built-in FM radio, it offers seven different alarm sounds (including sea waves, chimes, and piano music). Users can choose to customize even further, selecting different shades like purple and green instead of a classic golden sunrise, and opting in to 20 unique levels of adjustable brightness.

Buy it: Amazon

Feeling cozy after a long day of classes is a priority for many college students. This eye-catching checkered throw blanket makes a bold statement but offers lots of plush comfort as well, as it’s made from wrinkle- and fade-resistant microfiber polyester. Soft and inviting, it’s available in four sizes and five colors, including bold kelly green and deep burgundy.

Buy it: Amazon

A small handheld vacuum can be incredibly useful for college students, especially if they want to keep their dorm rooms looking tidy. This one is priced reasonably at under $30 and comes with a HEPA filter plus two different types of attachments: a dusting brush that’s ideal for keyboards and carpets, and a crevice tool that can suction dirt and dust out of hard-to-reach corners. Technically it works well as a car vacuum too, but college students can easily use it to clean up small messes around their rooms as well.

Buy it: Amazon

Swiping snacks from the dining halls is a time-honored college tradition, and students can have an easier time doing that—and keeping food fresh—with the right storage containers. This 42-piece set from Rubbermaid is BPA-free and includes vented lids for easier microwave prep. The lids snap together at bases too, so students can easily store them and have less clutter.

Buy it: Amazon

Floor space is a rare commodity in a dorm room, so hooks are key when it comes to organizing your stuff. When you can’t use screws or nails and need to hang something that might be really heavy (think backpacks), these hooks might be a better investment than what you’d get from Command. Each one can hang over the door and holds up to 20 pounds apiece.

Buy it: Amazon

From notebooks to pens, Post-Its, and more, office supplies can lead to clutter fast—especially in dorm rooms where space is often quite limited. This sturdy organizer features rubber grips at the bottom so it’ll stay in place, and has nine different compartments plus a drawer so there’s ample storage for all kinds of desk accessories. Choose from different patterns, including white marble.

Buy it: Amazon

The beauty of Echo Show devices overall is how much capability they have. Whether someone wants to set an alarm, listen to music, or order products on Amazon, they can with these Alexa-enabled devices. For college students, the all-new Echo Show 5 (3rd Gen, 2023 release) boasts better audio and an extra mic compared to earlier models, but also has a mic/camera off button and built-in camera shutter so they can enjoy added privacy.

Buy it: Amazon

Roommates staying up late to study can be disruptive, but it’s an avoidable part of dorm life. For students who want more shut-eye while their roommates play video games, watch TV, or generally cause a ruckus, a light-blocking eye mask can be an important investment. This one has 3D contoured cups for better comfort, an adjustable strap, and a silk fabric lining so it feels soft to the touch.

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A version of this article was originally published in 2016 and has been updated for 2023.

With their massive tails and iridescent colors, peacocks have long fascinated their human observers—and we’re still learning their secrets.

For example, a study in The British Journal of Animal Behaviour suggests that when a peacock fans its dazzling train for the ladies during mating season, its quivering feathers emit and amplify a low-frequency sound inaudible to human ears. Depending on whether they want to attract females from far away or up close, they can change the sound by shaking different parts of their feathers.

Here are a few other interesting facts about these impressive birds.

The collective name for birds in the genus Pavo is “peafowl.” There are two species of peafowl: the Indian peafowl (Pavo cristatus) and the Congo peafowl (Pavo muticus). The males of both species are called peacocks, females are peahens, and the babies are peachicks.

A group of the birds is also sometimes called an ostentation, a muster, or even a party.

The male peachicks don’t start growing their showy trains until about age 3. In fact, it’s hard to tell the sex of a peachick because they’re nearly identical to their mothers. At around 6 months old, the males will begin to change color.

Luckily, the peacocks shed their train every year after mating season, so the feathers can be gathered and sold without the birds coming to any harm. The average lifespan of a peacock in the wild is about 20 years.

A peacock’s tail feathers can reach up to six feet long and make up about 60 percent of its body length. Despite these odd proportions, the bird flies just fine, if not very far at a time.

Thanks to selective breeding, it’s common for captive peafowl to have only white feathers. This is called leucism, and it’s due to a genetic mutation that causes loss of pigmentation in some of the birds’ pigment-producing cells. These peafowl are often mistaken for being albino, but instead of having red eyes, leucistic animals retain their normal eye color.

The birds were plucked, roasted, and then re-dressed in their feathers for the dinner table. The birds may have looked beautiful, but they reportedly tasted terrible. The meat “was tough and coarse, and was criticized by physicians for being difficult to digest and for generating bad humors,” writes Melitta Weiss Adamson in her book Food in Medieval Times.

These birds aren’t just nice to look at—they’re also clever, according to a review in the journal The American Naturalist.

When peacocks mate with peahens, they give out a loud “copulatory call.” Canadian researchers Roslyn Dakin and Robert Montgomerie discovered that the birds can “fake” this call to attract more females. By doing so, he may be signaling to females that he’s more sexually experienced—and thus more genetically fit—than other peacocks in the neighborhood. Dakin and Montgomerie found that a third of the calls were fake, and the birds that made them scored more hookups. Sneaky.

What makes the some of the peacock’s feathers so brilliant? Microscopic structures that reflect different wavelengths of light depending on how they’re spaced, resulting in bright fluorescent colors. Hummingbirds and shimmering butterflies demonstrate a similar visual effect on their own wings.

A female peacock has special sensors in her crest that allow her to feel the vibrations of mate who may be located far away. The feathers are “tuned to vibrate at the exact same frequencies at which a displaying peacock rattles his tail,” according to The Atlantic. Whenever a male peacock fans his tail, he shakes it at a rate of 26 times a second, creating a pressure-wave that literally rattles the female’s head for attention. 

A version of this story ran in 2016; it has been updated for 2023.