Electric Facts

Electric lights for Christmas trees were first used in 1882, when Thomas Edison's business partner Edward H. Johnson hand-wired 80 red, white, and blue bulbs and strung them around a rotating tree in his New York City home.

In 1846, a 14-year-old French peasant girl named Angélique Cottin became famous for allegedly possessing strange physical powers. Witnesses claimed that furniture moved away from her, compasses spun wildly in her presence, and people felt electric-like shocks when near her. Scientists of the era studied her, though they never explained the phenomenon.