The Return of Historical Flexes, Part 1: 2 Flex 2 Furious
History is riddled with bizarre stories of flexes — things people of the past thought were somehow impressive at time. The Ridiculous Historians are fascinated by these strange stories, as are their f...
12 Touko 202041min
The Authors Of Curious George Were On The Run From Nazis
Today, Curious George is a world-famous star of children's books -- but back in the day, his name was Fifi, and his creators, the Rey couple, were desperate to flee France as Nazi forces pushed ever c...
8 Touko 202029min
People Used To Straight Up Drink Gold
For millennia various luminaries have claimed precious metals have special curative powers -- and, back in the day, people used to actually drink it. They were convinced the ingestion of gold would pr...
5 Touko 202031min
New Zealand's Tragic (And Pretty Hilarious) Exploding Pants Epidemic
For a brief span of time, farmers in New Zealand were baffled by a bizarre phenomenon -- their pants were smoldering, catching fire, and sometimes exploding, seemingly at random. So what exactly happe...
1 Touko 202030min
That Time Trainwrecks Became a Spectator Sport
Nowadays, most people use the term 'trainwreck' to describe a situation gone catastrophically wrong, but back in the glory days of the railroad, trainwrecks -- actual trainwrecks -- became PR stunts a...
28 Huhti 202033min
Miguel de Cervantes and the Case of the Fake Don Quixote
Nowadays, "The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha" has no shortage of accolades. You'll hear it called the first modern novel, one of the greatest works in the Spanish canon and so on -- and...
23 Huhti 202035min
The CIA Paid War Spies with Stuff From the Sears Catalog
When CIA agent Jon Wiant began growing a spy operation in Vietnam, he ran into a pickle: the locals he wanted to hire lived in rural areas along the boarder with Laos, and they existed primarily in a ...
21 Huhti 202028min
The Bottle Jumping Hoax (And Riot)
In 1749 London, a mob of people gathered outside The Theatre Royal -- the city was abuzz with excitement over a recent advertisement promising an amazing performance: a magician was planning to perfor...
17 Huhti 202032min
