Episodes
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Capital, Punished
Located 350 km (217 miles) southeast of Puerto Rico, the British island of Montserrat is sometimes called 'The Emeral...
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A Taste of Italy
In the mid-1800s, Italy was consumed by two parallel fights: one to rid itself of Austrian domination (a holdover fro...
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Pushing the Envelope
As is often the case with people in dangerous professions, the Apollo astronauts found that life insurance policies w...
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The Comforts of the Throne
In the days when hunting was a more common pursuit than it is today, those involved in the job cultivated a taxonomy...
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The Anticipated Future of the Moon
When the Earth was young, shortly after the moon formed, our planet was spinning so fast that a day was approximately...
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A Grubby Niche
It is down to geological and evolutionary happenstance that there are no monkeys on the island of Madagascar: a fact...
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Haydn and Seek
It can be tough to give the boss a hint, but it was even more difficult back in the days of domestic servitude when t...
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It Makes One's Head Swim
On 17 December 1967, Harold Holt--at that time the Prime Minister of Australia--decided to go for a swim. He and his...
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Buzzing on the Green
Popeye the Sailor is well known for his penchant for spinach, and the popularity of the character led to generations...
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A Day on Venus
Compared to Earth, our astronomical next-door neighbor Venus is 95 percent as large, 28 percent closer to the sun, an...
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The Trouble with Triples
What do the American bison, western gorilla, and Eurasian eagle-owl have in common? One answer is that they are all s...
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It Belongs in a Museum
In January 2010, two journalists knocked on the door of 84-year-old Frenchman Jacques Bellanger to ask him about the...
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A Wealth of Insight
At the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, social psychologist Paul Piff paired off approximately 200 u...
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The Unknown Father
Alois Schicklgruber was never quite certain who his father was. Born in 1837, Schicklgruber was the child of Maria An...
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The Overlooked Amendment
"Article the Second" was a single-sentence amendment written by James Madison in 1789, intended to be added to the Un...
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One Small Step for a Man
During the development of the Apollo moon missions in the early 1960s, the newfangled government agency called “NASA”...
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Half a Thought
The smallest denomination coin ever circulated in the United States was valued at five milles, equivalent to one 200t...
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Let Us Be Joyful
Laßt Froh Uns Sein ("Let Us Be Joyful") is a short musical canon in B-flat major for six voices, written by the celeb...
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It's Not Rocket Science
One of the most dramatic surgical procedures still performed on human patients is the hemispherectomy, or the removal...
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Misguided Missiles
In April 1929 in the town of Naco, Arizona, the Cristero War was raging just over the border in Mexico. Rebels in tha...
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Signs and Space
Sign languages rely on the use of space (locations, motions, and handshapes) to express meaning or grammatical nuance...
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During the Dark Times
In the European theater of World War 2, as early as 1943, the German Army deployed a small number of special Panther...
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For Your Eyes Only
In the midst of World War II, the British Air Ministry began publicly extolling the virtues of carrot-eating. The vit...
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Every Breath You Take
In June of 1965, a 27-year-old gentleman by the name of Angus Barbieri checked himself into the Maryfield Hospital in...
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The Original Ghostbuster
In the early 1980s, a certain Mr. Vic Tandy found himself working for a medical device manufacturer in Warwick, in th...
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Involuntary Indefatigability
Only one fictional character has ever been honoured with a front-page obituary in The New York Times: Hercule Poirot,...
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Scraping Bottom
When Germany was divided in two after the Second World War, military leaders recognized the need for liaison between...
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The Mystery Lake of the Himalayas
Nestled in a valley high in the Himalayas in northern India is a small lake named Roopkund, known locally as Mystery...
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Echoes of NASA
On 13 May 1960, a NASA Thor-Delta rocket carried the agency's new Echo 1 satellite into a 1,000 mile orbit around the...
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Water Proof
In 1936, Russian scientist Vladimir Lukyanov was confronted with the problem of devising a system to improve the qual...
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The Democratic People’s Republic of Begonias
An iconic sight in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the Kimjongilia. This hybrid begonia was bred by a Ja...
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Strange Brew
According to a 1957 US government study entitled The Effect of Nuclear Explosions on Commercially Packaged Beverages,...
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Buzz On, Buzz Off
By the 1840s the British Empire was at full tilt, operating colonies on every continent apart from Antarctica. Key fo...
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Armed Conflict
Götz von Berlichingen (1480-1562) was a German knight and warrior for hire in the first half of the 16th century. In...
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Australia's Humped Pestilence
The introduction of non-native species can be a tricky business. The feral camels of Australia are a case in point. T...
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Aluminum Illuminated
Shortly after aluminum was first discovered in the early 19th century it was counted among the most precious metals o...
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Hasty Hostilities
Zanzibar, an island nation that is now part of Tanzania, has been a contested territory for centuries. Starting in th...
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The Height of Mathematics
The height of Mount Everest was not calculated by George Everest, but by a brilliant mathematician who has since been...
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Of Meteors and Men
In the early 1960s, General Electric proposed a system whereby an astronaut in a space emergency might abandon ship a...
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Of Earwax and Ethnicity
One way of determining a person’s likely ethnicity is looking inside their ears. Simply put, there are two kinds of e...
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National Treasure
Inside America's Mount Rushmore National Monument there is a "secret" chamber known as the Hidden Hall of Records. Th...
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Well-Rounded
The most perfectly spherical object ever observed by mankind is the electron. In a series of experiments led by physi...
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Short of Giants
In the 17th Century there was a shortage of giants in Europe, and only one man was to blame. The giant-greedy Frederi...
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Fluid Identity
When a caterpillar enters the chrysalis stage, it is not merely sprouting wings to become a moth or butterfly. Enzyme...
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Tastes on a Plane
Consumption of tomato juice is unusually popular on commercial airline flights. For example, German airline Lufthansa...
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Do Not Go Lulled Into That Good Night
While today’s vision of the conductor is that of the be-tuxedoed individual standing in front of an orchestra holding...
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Poor Execution
Jack Ketch was a man in need of a career change. As the official executioner during King Charles II’s 17th-century re...
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A Googol by Any Other Name
When inventing a name for an imaginary and/or ridiculous object or concept, the best resource is often a child. A cle...
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Titan the Bolts
On 18 September 1980, an Air Force airman was conducting routine maintenance high in the missile silo at a Titan II n...
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Going Under
Among other things, former president Lyndon Baines Johnson was known for his collection of unique automobiles, which...