The Shirt Collar Mail

Oct 1, 2020

On April 21, 1906, three days after the terrible San Francisco earthquake, James Graves Jones dispatched a letter to his family in New York,...

Gbadolite: The Versailles of The Jungle

Sep 30, 2020

Deep in the rainforest, more than 1,000 km from Kinshasa, the capital of Democratic Republic of the Congo, lies the decaying city of Gbadoli...

The Failed British Plan to Destroy Nazi Factories With Exploding Rats

Sep 29, 2020

During the Second World War, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE)—a secret organization whose job was to conduct espionage and sab...

Pierre André Latreille: The Entomologist Who Escaped Death Because of a Beetle

Sep 29, 2020

Pierre André Latreille owed his life to a beetle. The French zoologist is often considered to be the father of modern entomology, having mad...

The 1925 Serum Run To Nome: The Incredible Story of How a Remote Alaskan Town Was Saved From an Epidemic

Sep 25, 2020

In the winter of 1925, a small Alaskan town called Nome, situated on the edge of the Arctic circle, found itself on the brink of an unimagin...

Petrozavodsk Phenomenon

Sep 23, 2020

On September 20, 1977, between midnight and the early hours of the morning, people over a vast region in eastern Europe, stretching from Cop...

The Underground Fortress of Château de Brézé

Sep 23, 2020

Château de Brézé is a small castle by European standards. Occupying less than 2 acres, this modest U-shaped building surrounded by a dry moa...

The Disgrace of Gijon: The Match That Changed World Cup Football

Sep 21, 2020

For the first time in the history of FIFA World Cup, the 1982 edition of the tournament in Spain saw 24 teams take part instead of the usual...

The Iron Bridge of Shropshire

Sep 18, 2020

The world’s first cast iron bridge still stands in Shropshire, England, across River Severn. It’s more than two hundred years old. Althoug...

The Four Inch Flight: The Comical Beginning to Project Mercury

Sep 17, 2020

Like many firsts in spaceflight, Project Mercury began with a failure. The goal of the mission was to put a man in space and bring him safel...