The Great Auk: Extinction of the Original Penguin
On June 3rd, 1844, three men cornered the last breeding pair of great auks on a rocky Icelandic islet, strangled them, and crushed their single egg underfoot. We rarely know the exact day a species di...
30 Jun 22min
Agent Garbo: The Spy Whose Fake Army Saved D-Day
He held the Iron Cross authorized by Hitler and was made a member of the Order of the British Empire, commanded a network of 27 active spies, and was paid the modern equivalent of over six million dol...
30 Jun 22min
Oscar Zeta Acosta: The Real Man Behind Dr. Gonzo
The wildly unhinged 300-pound Samoan attorney in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was based on a real man who was not Samoan at all. Oscar Zeta Acosta was a Mexican-American activist, novelist, and radi...
30 Jun 17min
The Phantom of Heilbronn: A Serial Killer Who Never Existed
For 16 years, European investigators hunted a female serial killer whose DNA appeared at roughly 40 crime scenes across three countries, linked to murders, jewel heists, and petty burglaries alike. Th...
30 Jun 19min
The Bobby Dunbar Case: A Stolen Identity Solved by DNA
In 1912, four-year-old Bobby Dunbar vanished on a Louisiana fishing trip. Eight months later a boy was recovered from a traveling handyman, identified by the wealthy Dunbar family, and welcomed home w...
30 Jun 22min
Anthrax Island: Scotland's 50-Year Bioweapon Death Zone
Off the coast of northwestern Scotland sits Gruinard Island, a small, perfectly oval slice of the Highlands that looks like a postcard. For nearly 50 years, setting foot on it meant almost certain dea...
30 Jun 22min
The Cocoanut Grove Fire: How 492 Deaths Reshaped Safety
On November 28th, 1942, a busboy lit a match in a dark Boston basement lounge to find a light socket, then blew it out. Minutes later, 492 people were dead in the deadliest nightclub fire in history, ...
30 Jun 25min
Wittenoom: Australia's Toxic Asbestos Ghost Town
In Australia's remote Pilbara region sits the largest contaminated site in the Southern Hemisphere, an exclusion zone of red dirt and gorge country baking under 47-degree heat. We explore Wittenoom, a...
30 Jun 19min
