George Aiston: Outback Entrepreneur
A member of the South Australian Mounted Police, George "Poddy" Aiston was a friend to and advocate for Aboriginal peoples, a fairly accomplished photographer, and the owner of a fully-stocked store i...
10 Jul 201319min
Particle Physics and Animals
Felicia the ferret, who helped Fermilab in the early '70s, has been popping up in online stories and social media lately. How did she come to work in a particle physics facility, and what other animal...
8 Jul 201319min
The Luddites
The Luddite uprising was a series of protests in northern England, in which workers smashed machines in mills and factories. This wasn't the first organized violence against mechanization, but Luddite...
3 Jul 201329min
John Harvey Kellogg
While his last name is famous for breakfast cereal, John Harvey Kellogg was a 19th-century doctor with some unique (and groundbreaking) beliefs about health and wellness.His Battle Creek Sanitarium wa...
1 Jul 201333min
Five Historical Robots
Long before Czech playwright Karel Capek coined the term "robot" in his 1920 play "R.U.R.," mechanized creations -- automata -- were being created without electronics or computers. Many were simple, b...
26 Jun 201327min
The Cursed Mary Celeste
She's often referred to as a cursed ghost ship. The history of the Mary Celeste features one unfortunate incident after another. While this vessel is most famous for an incident involving a disappeari...
24 Jun 201323min
The Irish Potato Famine: An Unnatural Disaster, Pt. 2
In the mid-1800s, the poorest people in Ireland ate almost nothing but potatoes. Other crops were for selling. So when a blight cut a swath through the potato crop, the impact was severe, and politics...
19 Jun 201321min
The Irish Potato Famine: An Unnatural Disaster, Pt. 1
The history lesson kids often get on the Irish Potato Famine could be summed up as "a blight destroyed the potato crops, and a lot of people starved or moved away." Most kids ask, "Why didn't they eat...
17 Jun 201321min
