Futility Closet

In December 1943, American bomber pilot Charlie Brown was flying a severely damaged B-17 out of Germany when he looked out the cockpit window and saw "the world's worst nightmare" off his right wing -...

4 Aug 201432min

In 1944, fully a year before the first successful nuclear test, Astounding Science Fiction magazine published a remarkably detailed description of an atomic bomb. The story, by the otherwise undisting...

28 Jul 201437min

In 1898, 19-year-old W. Reginald Bray made a thorough study of British postal regulations, which laid out rules for mailing everything from bees to elephants and promised that "all letters must be del...

21 Jul 201434min

In 1942 Navy lieutenant Ernest Cody and ensign Charles Adams piloted a blimp out of San Francisco into the Pacific, looking for Japanese subs. A few hours later the blimp drifted back to land, empty. ...

14 Jul 201431min

In 1943 German submarines were devastating the merchant convoys carrying supplies to Britain. Unable to protect them with aircraft or conventional ships, the resource-strapped Royal Navy considered an...

7 Jul 201430min

In 1864 Nevada mining merchant Reuel Gridley found a unique way to raise money for wounded Union soldiers: He repeatedly auctioned the same 50-pound sack of flour, raising $250,000 from sympathetic do...

30 Jun 201429min

In 1900 three lighthouse keepers vanished from a remote, featureless island in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. The lighthouse was in good order and the log showed no sign of trouble, but no trace of the ke...

23 Jun 201432min

Stewardess Violet Jessop was both cursed and blessed -- during the 1910s she met disaster on all three of the White Star Line's Olympic class of gigantic ocean liners, but she managed to escape each t...

16 Jun 201431min