She’s a real figure of mystery, this woman from medieval times. The various accounts of her life are often contradictory, but always sensational. By some accounts, Giulia Tofana helped literally hundreds of women do away with their inconvenient husbands. In fact, she was so prolific that her name was given to a famous poison: Aqua Tofana. It was means of assassination that was impossible to trace by autopsy and guaranteed to be fatal in carefully administered doses.

The romance of Napoleon Bonaparte and Joséphine de Beauharnais: a whirlwind of infatuation, betrayal, and political machinations. As Napoleon ascended through the ranks of power, beginning as a promising military officer and ultimately reaching the pinnacle as Emperor, Joséphine was by his side. For almost a decade-and-a-half, they lived as perhaps the most powerful couple on Earth. But in the end, all their issues reached a breaking point — and the life they’d built together came tumbling down.

The advance of technology means that the job market of today looks drastically different to that of the early 20th century. Social media manager certainly wouldn’t have been an option 100 years ago, for example! And there are several professions from the Roaring Twenties that no longer exist, too. From lamp-lighters to lectors, here’s a look at 40 of the most popular jobs held back then, according to the 1920 American Census and other sources.

The story of widowed seamstress Betsy Ross painstakingly stitching the Stars and Stripes of the first American flag has been lovingly taught to every elementary school kid in the nation. Betsy is a national icon who embodies everything Americans love to believe they are: patriotic, skilled, and noble. Yet over the years, the provenance of Betsy’s tale has been picked over and questioned so much that many historians now believe it to be little more than a well-intentioned myth.