Stubbins Ffirth: The Doctor Who Drank Vomit to Prove a Theory
In the early 1800s, a medical student poured the black vomit of dying yellow fever patients into his own eyes, smeared it into open cuts, inhaled its fumes, and even drank it undiluted. And he walked ...
26 Jun 17min
The Donner Party: A Shortcut, a Snowstorm, and Survival
The American dream of heading west turned into a slow-motion nightmare for 87 pioneers trapped in the Sierra Nevada. Beyond the gruesome detail everyone knows lies a profound human tragedy built from ...
26 Jun 20min
Tokaimura: When a Bucket of Uranium Triggered Criticality
A licensing board declared a nuclear chain reaction so impossible at this facility that they didn't even require a criticality alarm. That bureaucratic blind spot helped pave the way for one of the mo...
26 Jun 24min
The Tarim Mummies: Red-Haired Riddles of a Chinese Desert
Archaeologists in China's Taklamakan Desert uncovered 3,000-year-old mummies with bright red hair, tartan-style leggings, and twill tunics that looked like they belonged in ancient Scotland. For decad...
26 Jun 18min
The Georgia Guidestones: America's Stonehenge Mystery
A 19-foot granite monument stood silent in a rural Georgia field for 42 years, engraved with ten guidelines for surviving the apocalypse. Then, in the dead of night, an unknown bomber blew it to piece...
26 Jun 21min
The Great Train Robbery of 1963: Crime of the Century
In August 1963, a gang of thieves sat in a remote farmhouse playing Monopoly with real cash from the 2.6 million pounds they had just stolen, leaving fingerprints all over the board. That single blund...
26 Jun 24min
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Isn't What You Think
You probably picture the Great Pacific Garbage Patch as a floating island of bottles and bags you could walk across. But sail right through it or look down from a satellite, and you would not see a th...
26 Jun 18min
