How often does the press on one side of the Atlantic take interest in residents of an “old folks home” on the other? But this was special. The article in the British media referred to the investigation and arrest of a 70-year-old woman in the U.S. for, well, concocting homemade poisons in her spare time, […]

Those looking for a bit of mystery to pursue can even look in the business world, at sheer consumer products from time to time. Cut through all the shameless hype for all the junk pretending to be things we need, and once in while the question will surface: how the heck did they do that, […]

Contrary to popular belief, no witches were burned at the stake during the Salem Witch Trials. There were, however, hangings aplenty. The infamous event was actually among the last witch executions, which had raged in Europe for over 300 years and took over 50,000 lives in the 16th and 17th centuries alone. In 1662, a […]

A paramedic called to treat a notorious criminal gunned down in his garden in Essex raised doubts about the cause of his fatal injuries, a report said. John “Goldfinger” Palmer was initially thought to have died from natural causes in 2015. It took a week to establish he had been shot six times. A case […]

Close to twenty percent of the people in these villages (there’s actually more than one) just keel over one day and sleep for a full day, a week, or more, and then awake feeling vaguely lousy, but certainly alive. (“No big deal,” say the doctors, and thankfully “no one’s died from this.” “How can it […]

In a way it’s magical enough, being a mountainous island halfway between Ireland and the British mainland. And of course there’s many a century of history that evokes the magical, “little people” with a large presence, fairies that have more to say to you than any Prime Minister. So comes along little houses, fairy-sized, placed […]

I just finished an amazing one-two punch, or should I say a punch and counterpunch, of reading (one thousand plus pages). Kind of like getting blown out to sea by strong winds, and then aggressively pushed back to shore by powerful waves. I’m talking about the Jeffrey MacDonald murders, now almost half a century old, […]

Robert Leroy Johnson is ranked as the fifth best guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone Magazine and is considered to be one of the fathers of rock and roll–but he didn’t start out that way, nor did he experience great fame in his lifetime. Little is known about the young African-American man who became […]

Now, five million and fifteen million are not both “about 80 per cent of the population of Mexico,” they are very different numbers. We’ve often wondered, how can historians be sure at all about numbers from yesteryear? Modern census surveys weren’t being done, no one was carefully loading and processing data by computer. Getting a […]

NY- September 16, 2008 , age 23 First Disappearance: September, always September, it turns out. Hannah was about to begin teaching school in Harlem the day before she disappeared. She left her apartment for a run. She took nothing with her. She started her run around Chelsea Pier, where she had been previously to attend […]

It was August 6th, 1945, on a clear-skied morning as the citizens of Hiroshima, Japan went about their everyday business. A single American plan flew overhead, passing by as usual, creating little noise or concern.  Then, at 8:14am, the world as they knew it ended. A massive flash of yellow light so intense burned the […]

We need to endow acts especially dramatic acts and destructive acts with some meaning and hopefully some predictability. To cite an example coming from another species, the bizarre attack of the White Tiger that ended the long running Las Vegas show of Siegfried and Roy caused great concern in the community of the big cat […]

Note the able journalists, Moore and company, hit the important themes. Yes, it’s conceivable some “national security” issue justified the FBI sweeping though the place, closing it down, and imposing strict secrecy. But if so, a delicate security issue flowing from a small astronomy outpost…what in the world could it be? That story, should it […]

“No one wants to know who Christine was,” her brother said years later. “They want to sensationalize what happened at the end of her life.” He has a powerful point. How many people even know that Christine survived the loss of her first, early love, from death in an automobile accident? Or that she did […]